The year of publication of the magazine Burda is fashionable. What is Burda moden Magazine? The success story of a famous tailoring magazine. Anne Burda. The "Queen of Dresses" would have turned one hundred years old

"If only there were no Burda
In cities and villages,
We would never have known
Patterns ready."
lora, our forum

The apt words of the epigraph contain all the love of Russian sewing lovers for Burda magazine. If Enne Burda had heard them, she would probably have smiled with satisfaction. Her magazine not only filled an empty niche in the market, it took a big place in the hearts of its readers. But not all women's magazines succeed in this!

Recently, the Burda publishing house published an interesting one, with an excerpt from which we would like to introduce you to in this publication. The 400-page book reveals to us the world of Anne Burda, a German post-war housewife who opened her own business at the age of 40 and achieved worldwide fame.

She didn't know how to sew, she didn't know anything about publishing. But she had an inner sense of elegance, a lot of energy and a husband whose betrayal just started the flywheel new history. The stories of Enne Burda, an outstanding entrepreneur of the 20th century. How can one not remember the famous Russian proverb “If there was no happiness, but misfortune would help.”? And so, in an amazing way, a woman’s personal tragedy was transformed into a magnificent magazine that still inspires us and is the ultimate example of a pattern magazine.

Read about how Burda magazine was born back in 1950 in the following excerpt from the book "Anne Burda: Burda is fashionable - it's me!", which we publish with the permission of the Burda Publishing House.

PS. Anne Burda died in 2005. On July 28, 2009, she would have turned 100 years old. In honor of the anniversary, we published a note in which you will find a lot interesting photos from the story of this unique woman.

Plaster was falling off in pieces from the dirty façade of the Wirtschaft zum Badle inn. This two-story house in Lara was gray, like all of post-war Germany. In the large hall, where theatrical performances and dance evenings were once held, there was a cylindrical iron stove, next to it lay a pile of coal with a shovel stuck into it. The walls were blackened with soot. The windows were so high that only a piece of the sky and the tops of fir trees could be seen through them. A narrow steep staircase led to the second floor, where there were two small rooms, the same ones that Cinderella must have once lived in.

The hall, which still smelled of sour beer, was supposed to house the publishing house's office, but so far there was only a table and a chair there. There was desolation everywhere. But Enne Burda, an esthete who always furnished her houses with great taste and expensively, this time cared little about the squalor of the premises: after all, if you do your job conscientiously, the glass slipper will certainly find its owner.

At Enne’s direction, the following was written in black paint on the shabby white façade: "Fashion publishing house A. Burda".“I was confident in my abilities and persistent in achieving my goals. You don’t need to be emancipated at all for this,” Enne Burda recalled the beginning of her publishing career. “Besides, I was also very pretty and knew how to win people over.”

In October 1949, Enne Burda took over the household that Effie Breuer left behind: more than modest furniture, a small staff and a huge debt for printing services - 200,000 marks. It is worth recognizing that Anne had no idea about the work of a publisher. Yes, from time to time she took it upon herself to edit a women’s page in SURAG for her husband, but that was the extent of her experience.

How is a magazine made? Working like Breuer is absolutely unacceptable for her. She will still show what she is capable of. Everyone. And first of all, to my husband. He took a mistress who bore him a child, and also gave her a publishing house! But okay, the first point of the program has been completed, Breuer has been eliminated, the publishing house belongs to her. “If my husband had loved me as I loved him at the beginning of our life together, I would never have created Burda Moden,” Enne Burda later said. “The happiness of family life would have been enough for me.” Now she was overwhelmed by vanity. "I was no longer interested in my family", she recalled.

When exactly did Anna find out that husband has a mistress, exactly unknown. Betrayal hurt her heart. She believed that husband and wife should be inextricably linked “in sorrow and in joy” and belong only to each other. She believed in this because she was raised that way, and she always treated the rumors spread by evil tongues as a manifestation of envy. And she also loved Franz, believing that he loved his “savage” in the same way. The world collapsed for her in an instant, and she couldn’t even count on anyone’s support.

Early in the morning she got into her brand new Volkswagen Karmann convertible and rushed to Lahr, 25 kilometers from Offenburg. She was the last one to leave work, at 10-11 pm. Anne sat at her desk and thought. She saw women dressed in practical but ugly dresses from the post-war era, already altered twice. How can you feel like a woman in such a dress? But there were few ready-made clothes on sale, and their prices were sky-high. But the fabrics are quite accessible: shop owners hid them before the monetary reform, and now they have reappeared on the shelves. Industry gradually came to life.

The rhythm of her work was set by Ludwig Erhard, director Economic Administration Anglo-American occupation zone, future Minister of Economics and Chancellor of Germany. He achieved the abolition of central planning, which gave freedom to industry. The financial reform he carried out made it possible to hope for the stability of the new currency - the German mark. In May 1949, the Constitution of the Federal Republic was adopted. On August 14, the Bundestag met for its first meeting in the temporary capital, Bonn. Christian Democrat Konrad Adenauer became chancellor, and the chairman of the Free Democratic Party, Theodor Hayes, became president of the Bundestag. East Germany elected its president, Wilhelm Pieck. Newspapers wrote a lot about the blockade of West Berlin and about the American air bridge for the enclave. All this excited the minds. But Berlin is too far from Offenburg.

Here, as throughout Germany, there were still refugees and exiles, and there was a lack of work and decent housing. But people wanted to forget the recent past, like a bad dream. The opportunity to start all over again was intoxicating, like the aroma of newly appeared natural coffee. It seemed that if there is strength, will, energy and the desire to create, wonderful dreams can become reality. A new style New Look, invented by the Parisian couturier Christian Dior, became an expression of these hopes, glossy magazines Those years were filled with photographs of extravagant women. Wide skirts with narrow waists instead of robes and headscarves, silk stockings instead of woolen socks - German women again wanted to be beautiful and feminine. And the pragmatic Enne understood how to help them.

Patterns solved the problem.“I myself didn’t know anything about sewing, but I knew that only a dressmaker can make patterns.”, - recalled Anne Burda. She invited Lilo Dürschnabel, a quick-witted young dressmaker from Offenburg who knew her business very well. Lilo, by the way, remained faithful to the publishing house until her retirement. Gunter Krieger came from the Stuttgart Art Academy. Anne appointed him to the position of graphic artist and always spoke highly of him: “He made amazing patterns, even invented a special wheel for transferring patterns onto fabric, which we later patented.”

Enne lured an experienced editor away from her competitors in Nuremberg, and she, in turn, brought two young women, textile specialists, to the publishing house. Finally, Enne “stole” the wonderful graphic artist Oswald Moser, who had worked for Franz Burda since 1942, from her husband. “One after another, smart people came and brought ideas with them.”, - recalled Anne Burda. At first, her secretary Louise Weiss provided her with invaluable help; she worked for Enne for the next twenty years until she retired.

The first issue of the magazine was published in January 1950. Anne wanted to call it Favorit. The issue was already in print when a Viennese publishing house suddenly laid claim to this title. A decision had to be made urgently. Changing the name from Breuer Moden to Anna Moden did not suit Anna: “It evoked the feeling of a bored housewife.”. In the end, she decided on the option Burda Moden. Her intuition did not let her down.

Who then could have imagined that this particular name would glorify the Burda surname throughout the world? That her magazine will be read by women in a hundred countries in twenty languages? That even today, in the era of H&M and Zara, there is probably not a person on Earth whose mother, grandmother, aunt or cousin did not have at least one item sewn according to a pattern from Burda Moden? That in distant Moscow taxi drivers will willingly take not money for travel, but Burda Moden magazine? Yes, Franz could say: “If you had called your magazine Lemminger Moden, it would not have been so successful.”, but in the depths of his soul he probably admitted that his last name became known to the whole world thanks to Enna.

"When reporters from Bunte, one of the leading publications of the Burda Media group, gave their Business Cards in South America, the USA, Australia or Asia, they often heard: “Ah, Burda Moden!”, recalled Imre Kustrich, who worked for many years as editor-in-chief of various publications of Franz Burda. “Anne created a fashion empire. What Dr. Burda did was wonderful, but without Enne none of this would have happened.”, - pays tribute to her friend Karl Lagerfeld.

So, Enne excitedly held in her hands the first issue of Burda Moden magazine, published in a circulation of 100,000 copies. “Clothes, linen, handicrafts,” read the subtitle. All models of the issue were accompanied by patterns, which were placed on two sheets attached to the magazine. In At retail, an issue of the magazine cost 1.40 marks, by subscription it was slightly cheaper - 1.20. The cover was decorated with a photograph of Renata, a philology student, the daughter of the Offenburg surgeon Paul Schaeffer - her parents were friends with the Burda family and often spent time with them. The girl turned 21, she looked extremely pretty in a blue and green double-breasted jacket with patch pockets and a pointed collar, complemented by red gloves and a lipstick-matched neckerchief.

"Anne was not at the forefront of fashion, she was a woman of her time, and this time was very difficult, said Karl Lagerfeld. Women in Germany rejected the frankly petty-bourgeois values ​​and behavior patterns imposed on them by the ideologists of the Third Reich, and sought to make up for lost time during the years of war and devastation. - Thanks to Enna, representatives of the middle and lower middle classes gained self-confidence and became acquainted with fashion, which they had never known before.".

The first success strengthened Enne's self-confidence. She was 40 years old. Having survived two world wars, got married, gave birth to three sons, and fulfilled her duty. And now she wanted to live her own way. She was still attractive, the small wrinkles around her sparkling eyes only added to her charm. She retained her figure, had taste and was quite wealthy, so she could afford to dress very well. But then, as she herself later admitted, she was by no means an inveterate fashionista. "I became interested in fashion when I started publishing a magazine, - said Enne Burda in an interview with Kultur-Spiegel magazine in 1999. - Before that, I was interested in beautiful dresses, but not fashion. After all, following fashion means changing your wardrobe four times a year.".

Starting work on a new issue, Anne gathered dressmakers, directors and editors in a room where there were racks with the latest models from Berlin, Zurich, Florence and Paris. She tried on these outfits one after another, like a fashion model: "So ladies, this is Burda Moden style!"

"She always looked gorgeous. But first I heard her and only then saw her", recalled the artist Oswald Moser. The appearance of the owner was preceded by the energetic clicking of heels and the legendary angry tirades against careless employees. Franz sent Moser to Lahr at the insistence of Enne, and in his parting words he warned: “You will go to Lahr, to my wife. Keep in mind, there are a lot of women there, and where there are a lot of women, there are a lot of problems.”. And Moser, who drew maps of North Africa for Rommel, was in French captivity until 1948 and participated in the publication of Revue d'Information, now had to switch to a fashion magazine. “I did the work on time, sometimes staying up until one in the morning,” he recalled. “However, she was no less demanding of herself than of the others.”. ...

Anne Burda was the greatest publisher of the last century, achieving tremendous success in the business niche occupied by men. But if you follow her path, this continuous assault on the summit, which began in the small house of a railway worker in Offenburg and ended in the crystal palace of the world of Haute Couture, you understand that true meaning her achievements are immeasurably greater. Her fate is proof that in life you can break out of any boundaries, that boundaries are inviolable only for those who set them for themselves. Anne Burda has become a role model primarily for women. Her meteoric rise was the result of a lifetime of hard work every day. For everything that Enne Burda put into our hearts and minds, we erect a monument of love to her.

Anne Burda was the “queen of clothes” and the founder of the world’s largest fashion publishing house. Having created Burda Moden, the daughter of a railway worker from the Baden town of Offenburg, achieved world fame. In 2009, Enna Burda would have turned 100 years old. The Burda Moden publishing house is celebrating its 60th anniversary.

“I am Burda Moden!” A photograph from 1973 eloquently confirms the publisher’s quote. Confident, with a fashionable hairstyle, wearing large sunglasses, dressed in an elegant sporty style, she stands next to her Riley car, popularly called a Mini Rolls Royce, in front of the Offenburg publishing house designed by architect Egon Eiermann. On the flat roof of the building glitters, written in huge letters, the name - Burda Moden. The glamor of Enne Burda, her professional success, and her hometown of Offenburg are reflected here.

Burda Moden is sold in 120 countries. The highlight is the first foreign fashion show in Moscow in 1987 and the entry of Burda Moden into the Soviet market.

The success story of her publishing house is inextricably linked with the idea of ​​making women beautiful and thereby helping them gain self-esteem. Enna Burda succeeded, and she focused on patterns that fit perfectly, looked fashionable and were comfortable to wear.

The famous Burda Moden patterns provided inspiration not only to those women for whom sewing was a hobby, but also to artists.

“Make a Hollywood smile!” - Hubert Burda urged his mother in 1973, when Andy Warhol was visiting Offenburg to photograph Anne Burda. It was not difficult for her, because for ten years in a row she and her husband organized the most famous ball in Germany, “Bal paré” in Munich. World-famous movie stars, show business stars, politicians and businessmen attended this ball, and Anne Burda always shone in the center of the events.

Enne Burda loved luxury and was not shy about showing it off: pictured in 1952 in a convertible, the Rometsch people's car of the "Elegance" series in Baden-Baden.

The most famous designers created models for Burda Moden magazine. "Hollywood" patterns brought glamor to any woman's wardrobe. The photo shows the creation of Heinz Østergaard (1959) - an embroidered dress made of noble silk duchess.

In 1957, the magazine's circulation reached half a million copies, and each issue featured up to 80 models, each model with its own pattern in three sizes.

"Burda Moden - it's me!" Enne Burda manages all the work from start to finish (pictured with her deputy Irena Bayer) and always takes a direct part in the creation of the magazine, from the selection of sketches to the selection of fabrics and transparencies.

News and new products

Journey

beauty

Childhood

Anna Magdalena Lemminger was born on July 28, 1909 in the provincial town of Offenburg in southern Germany in the family of a machinist.

Youth

After graduating from the monastery school and receiving a matriculation certificate, Anna took a one-year course at a commercial school and went to work as a cashier at the city power plant. One of her responsibilities was to accept payments for electricity from local businesses. Thanks to this circumstance, a meeting took place that became fateful for her: one fine day she met the owner of a small printing house, Franz Burda, a young and ambitious businessman. Franz was fascinated by Enne, and on July 9, 1931, the young people got married.

Carier start

Success and world recognition

Anne Burda in the USSR

First issue of Burda Moden in Russian

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