Marion Doenhoff, 92; German Journalist

Marion Doenhoff, 92, who helped shape German postwar journalism as publisher of a leading weekly newspaper and author of best-selling books on her native East Prussia, died Sunday in Berlin of unstated causes.

Born to an aristocratic family in East Prussia, Doenhoff studied in Switzerland after the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933. But she returned to look after family holdings near Koenigsberg, now Kalingrad, Russia, during the war.

As the Soviet army approached toward the war’s end, she fled west to Germany on horseback. The seven-week journey provided the material for her 1962 best-selling book on East Prussia’s people and their history. She later wrote a book warning of the dangers of globalization.

Doenhoff joined the liberal Hamburg-based newspaper Die Zeit in 1946, rose to chief editor in 1968, and became co-publisher from 1972 until her death. Doenhoff also helped found the German Council on Foreign Relations in 1955.