Media world mourns

Writer and photographer Michael Horowitz dead

Michael Horowitz died at the age of 73

(Bild: Styria Buchverlage / Ela Angerer)

Journalist, writer, publisher and photographer Michael Horowitz has died at the age of 73 after a short, serious illness. As the "inventor" of the Kurier magazine "Freizeit", of which he was editor-in-chief for 25 years, he wrote Austrian media history.

He was one of the most versatile, an all-rounder in the Austrian media landscape, which he helped to shape for many decades. As the son of a theater photographer, he picked up a camera at an early age during his school years. He was particularly interested in Vienna's cultural life and its influential personalities. Portraiture was one of his favorite disciplines, as can be seen in an exhibition at the Albertina in Vienna in 2020, which paid tribute to his photographic work.

As early as 1969, he accompanied the pop artist Kiki Kogelnik with his camera in New York. His portraits of greats such as Thomas Bernhard, Oskar Werner, Sir Peter Ustinov, H. C. Artmann and Andy Warhol have been published in numerous books and magazines and shown in many galleries. The Jewish Museum Vienna also honored him with the show "Horowitz. 50 Years of Human Images."

As an author, he has written over 30 books, including biographies of Heimito von Doderer, Egon Erwin Kisch, Karl Kraus, Leonard Bernstein and his friends H. C. Artmann, Otto Schenk and Helmut Qualtinger. He has also written scripts for film and television, including documentaries for ORF. His articles on poets and thinkers for the "Presse am Sonntag" were published as the book "100 Menschen, die Österreich bewegtten".

He has received numerous Austrian awards, such as the Grand Decoration of Honor for Services to the Republic of Austria, the Gold Medal of Honor of the Federal Capital of Vienna, the Golden Decoration of Honor for Services to the State of Vienna and the Cross of Honor for Science and Art I Class. In 2014, he was presented with a Romy for his 25 years as head of the Kurier weekend supplement "Freizeit".