Karl Ude

Karl Kurt Friedrich Ude (14 January 1906 – 1 April 1997) was a German journalist and writer.

Born in Düsseldorf, Ude came from a family of white-collar workers.

He originally studied evangelische Theologie, but also philosophy, German studies, theatre studies, history of art and historical musicology at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, the Philipps-Universität Marburg and Paris.

Attracted by Schwabing cultural life and Munich as the "capital of the movement", he settled in Munich in 1926, where he heard among others lectures with Artur Kutscher, who later also became one of his friends.

Ude worked as literature and theatre critic for various Munich newspapers.

The Bund für Geistesfreiheit Bavaria accused Ude - but without elaborating - of having an approving attitude towards the Nazi book burnings in 1933.

The Munich author Johann Türk has collected approximately 5,000 articles by Ude published before May 1945 from 20 newspapers for which Ude wrote as a Munich correspondent from 1933 to 1945.

According to Türk, in 80 per cent of these articles, Ude engaged in "partly nasty Nazi propaganda".

From 1946, he was a member of the editorial board of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, and from 1949 to 1973 he was an influential figure in Munich literary life as editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Welt und Wort.

Ude and his wife Renée Madeleine, née Guggisberg are the parents of the former Mayor of Munich Christian Ude.

In addition to his journalistic work, Ude has published narrative works and edited anthologies on the subject of Munich.

Among others, he received the following awards: the medal München leuchtet in 1966 and 1986, the Toucan Prize in 1967, the Ernst-Hoferichter-Preis, the Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon in 1976, and the Schwabing Art Prize in 1977.