Stefan
Lorant was born in Budapest, Hungary,
on 22nd February, 1901. He worked as a filmmaker in Germany
before becoming a photo
journalist.
An
opponent of Adolf Hitler, Lorant was arrested
and imprisoned in 1933. After being released Lorant moved to London.
A book about his experiences in Nazi
Germany, I Was Hitler's Prisoner,
was published in 1935.
In 1937 Lorant launched Lilliput
with £1,200 lent to him by a girl friend. Although it sold well
it carried no advertising and lost money. Sydney
Jacobson joined the magazine and invested his savings in the venture.
Unable
to make a profit the magazine Lorant sold Lilliput
to
Edward
Hulton for £20,000 in 1938. Hulton then employed
Lorant and Tom Hopkinson to establish
a new journal, Picture Post.
The magazine was an immediate success and after four months was selling
1,350,000 copies a week.
Lorant
emigrated to the United States in 1940. He published
a series of pictorial history books including Lincoln:
His Life in Photographs (1951). Stefan
Lorant died
on 14th November, 1997.
(1)
Tom
Hopkinson,
Picture
Post: 1938-50 (1970)
The idea of Picture
Post - most British of magazines - came from abroad. Its first
editor, Stefan Lorant, was a Hungarian Jew - one of a small and brilliant
band who left their country after the First World War because they
found its political climate oppressive, and Hungary too small
to give scope to their talents; and the paper's two first cameramen,
Hans Baumann (or Felix H. Man as he signed himself) and Kurt Hubschmann
(K. Hutton), were both Germans who had mastered their craft on magazines
in Berlin and Munich.
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