Dönhoff, Marion, Countess (1909–2002)

German journalist and publisher. Name variations: Doenhoff or Donhoff. Born Marion Hedda Ilse, Gräfin Dönhoff, at Schloss Friedrichstein near Loewenhagen, East Prussia, Dec 2, 1909; died Mar 11, 2002, in Hamburg, Germany; dau. of August Count Dönhoff (soldier and diplomat) and Maria Countess von Lepel Dönhoff (once lady-in-waiting to Augusta of Schleswig-Holstein); attended University of Frankfurt am Main; granted doctorate from University of Basel; never married.

Editor-in-chief of Die Zeit, Germany's most influential liberal weekly newspaper, served for many years in leading positions; tangentially involved in plot to kill Hitler, was arrested and interrogated but not betrayed; escaped Germany (1945); joined staff of Hamburg's newspaper Die Zeit (1946); appointed associate editor in charge of the political section (1955), then general editor-in-chief (1968), then co-owner (1972); became the 1st woman in post-1945 Germany to address a national—indeed international—audience, playing a major role in the reorientation of the foreign policy of the German Federal Republic in the post-Adenauer era; was a major factor in the emergence of West Germany's Ostpolitik which transformed the political landscape of Europe in 1970s; wrote Foe into Friend: The Makers of the New Germany from Konrad Adenauer to Helmut Schmidt (trans. by Gabriel Annan, 1982); is universally acknowledged to be the Grand Old Lady of German journalism.

See also memoir, Before the Storm: Memories of My Youth in Old Prussia (Knopf, 1990); and Women in World History.