Otto Fuerbringer
Otto Fuerbringer was an editor for the American news magazine Time.
Early life and education
Fuerbringer was born in St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. to Ludwig and Anna Zucker Fuerbringer. His father was a Lutheran minister. He was the youngest of five children. His brother was Alfred Fuerbringer, a Lutheran seminary president. He later attended Harvard University, where he was president of The Harvard Crimson.Career
After graduating from Harvard in 1932, he started working for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, before being hired by Time in 1942. Reaching the rank of assistant managing editor in 1951, he was appointed managing editor in 1960. Later, as head of Time [Inc.]'s magazine-development group, he also introduced People and Money magazines. He did much to rejuvenate what was a rather austere publication, and once famously said of the journalism his staff did that "It only has to be true this week." Though a social conservative, Fuerbringer nevertheless did much to focus the magazine's attention on the counter-culture and the political and intellectual radicalism of the 1960s.During Fuerbringer's tenure as editor, the magazine's circulation rose from three to five million. His best known act as editor was probably his April 8, 1966 cover story "Is [God Dead?]" In the accompanying article he explored the role of religion in an increasingly secular society, and investigated a trend among contemporary theologians to write God out of the field of theology. Fuerbringer had initially been a supporter of the Vietnam War, but in 1968 he wrote an editorial conceding that the war was unwinnable.
Shortly before his death, in 2007, he wrote an autobiography, titled "On TIME".