Max Jordan interviewing Hindenburg Captain Ernst Lehmann after the airship's first arrival in the US

Max Jordan (later Father Placid Jordan - April 21, 1895 in Sanremo, Italy [1] - November 1977[2]) was a pioneering radio journalist for the NBC network in Europe in the 1930s. Later, he became a Benedictine monk.[3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]

Early life and career

He received a PhD in Religious Philosophy from the University of Jena.[3] He worked for William Randolph Hearst's newspapers in the 1920s.[5]

He covered many important stories (and had many scoops) in the 1930s, when the medium of radio was still relatively new. His first report for NBC was on a 1931 speech by German President Paul von Hindenburg. Jordan also reported on the first Atlantic flight of the Hindenburg in 1936,[6] the Anschluss of Austria in 1938, the text of that year's Munich Agreement (giving Germany the ethnically-German regions of Czechoslovakia), the 1940 invasion of France,[3] and the 1945 surrender of Japan.[7]

In 1931, he became domiciled in Arlesheim, Canton of Basel-Landschaft.[1] In 1939 he became a US citizen.[1]

He also hired Martin Agronsky in 1940 to cover the war.[7]

Horten stated that part of Jordan's success was his networking with the governments of Germany, Austria, and Hungary, which provided NBC "privileged use" of their broadcasting facilities.[3]

During the war, he worked on NBC's religious shows, which included prayers, bible stories, and a series about military Chaplainship, Chaplain Jim.[3]

Monk

Around 1954, he joined the Beuron Abbey, in Germany.[4] He became a monk and took the name of Placid Jordan.[8] He would later argue (in print) against Gordon Zahn's assertions that the Catholic Church had not properly resisted Nazism. Specifically, Jordan wrote responses to Zahn's papers regarding the Catholic Church and Nazi Germany.[9] He also wrote a letter to William F. Buckley Jr.'s magazine National Review that was critical of Zahn's book German Catholics and Hitler's Wars.[10]

Jordan died in 1977.[4][7]

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Staatsarchiv Basel-Stadt Signatur: PD-REG 3a 18095 ()
  2. ↑ "MAX JORDAN (1895-1977) - SSDI"
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 "Religion: A Job for Jordan - TIME". Time. time.com. 1943-02-15. Archived from the original on December 14, 2008. Retrieved 2009-11-10.
  4. 1 2 3 "Thomas Merton's Correspondence with: Jordan, Placid, Fr., O.S.B., (Max Jordan) 1895-1977". The Thomas Merton Center, Bellarmine University. Retrieved 2009-11-10.
  5. 1 2 Gerd Horten (2003). Radio goes to war: the cultural politics of propaganda during World War II. University of California Press. p. 30. ISBN 978-0-520-24061-2. Retrieved 2009-11-10.
  6. 1 2 Edward D. Miller (2003). Emergency broadcasting and 1930s American radio. Temple University Press. ISBN 978-1-56639-993-7. Retrieved 2009-11-10.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Edward Bliss (1991). Now the news: the story of broadcast journalism. Columbia University Press. pp. 73, 120. ISBN 978-0-231-04403-5. Retrieved 2009-11-10.
  8. 1 2 "Billboard". Billboard. Nielsen Business Media, Inc. 1955-01-15. p. 4.
  9. 1 2 "Gordon Zahn Papers (ZHN 131), University of Notre Dame Archives (UNDA), Notre Dame, IN 46556". University of Notre Dame. Retrieved 2009-11-10. Finding aid, ZHN 131
  10. 1 2 "Gordon Zahn Papers (ZHN 028), University of Notre Dame Archives (UNDA), Notre Dame, IN 46556". University of Notre Dame. Retrieved 2009-11-10. Finding aid, ZHN 028
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