Otto Fuerbringer, 97; led Time during a 'newsy decade'

OTTO FUERBRINGER (Time Inc.)

NEW YORK - Otto Fuerbringer, the hard-driving, conservative-leaning managing editor of Time magazine during the political and social upheavals of the 1960s - a time of change for the magazine, too - died Monday at his retirement home in Fullerton, Calif. He was 97.

His death was confirmed by his son Jonathan.

With political inclinations attuned to those of Time's founder, Henry R. Luce, with whom he had a close working relationship, Mr. Fuerbringer was appointed to the magazine's top editorial position in 1960. The Cuban missile crisis, the Vietnam War, political assassinations, mass protests, and a roiling youth culture were the stuff of headlines and Time magazine cover stories during Mr. Fuerbringer's eight years as managing editor.

His tenure marked a shifting, if not quite a liberalizing, of Time's political positions. From the earliest days of US intervention in Vietnam, Time had supported the war.

A major shift came in 1968, the last year of his editorship, when Mr. Fuerbringer wrote an article that said the war could not be won. He had previously met several times with President Lyndon B. Johnson, but when they met again, after his article had appeared, the president said, "I'd rather see you than read you," Mr. Fuerbringer recounted in 2007 in his autobiography, "On Time."

Mr. Fuerbringer brought a vibrancy and a degree of controversy to what had long been a rather taut, tartly written publication.

Unlike in most previous issues, Time's lead story on April 8, 1966, had no portrait on the cover, just a bold-red headline on a black background that asked, "Is God Dead?" It was an indication of Mr. Fuerbringer's willingness to examine cultural shifts and previously taboo subjects.

"Is God Dead?" the article began. "It is a question that tantalizes both believers, who perhaps secretly fear that he is, and atheists, who possibly suspect that the answer is no." The article set off a backlash by religious conservatives.

It was one of a number of cover stories during Mr. Fuerbringer's tenure that took on volatile issues. In 1964, for example, the magazine examined the sexual revolution; in 1967, it was the birth control pill.

Time's circulation rose to 5 million from 3 million under Mr. Fuerbringer's leadership.

In 1968, a year after Luce's death, Henry A. Grunwald was appointed managing editor, the start of a shake-up at Time. Mr. Fuerbringer was named editor of magazine development for Time Inc. and went on to lead the team that created two of the company's most profitable publications, People and Money magazines.

Born in St. Louis, Mr. Fuerbringer was the youngest of five children of Ludwig and Anna Zucker Fuerbringer. His father, like both of his grandfathers and three of his uncles, was a Lutheran minister. The family had come to the United States from Germany in the 1830s.

The ministry was not for Mr. Fuerbringer. At Harvard, he was president of the campus newspaper, The Harvard Crimson. After graduating in 1932, he returned to his hometown and got a $14-a-week job at The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, writing a column about Boy Scout news. After 10 years at the paper, he was hired by Time to be a national affairs writer.

He lived in Greenwich, Conn., for more than 45 years. In an interview with Greenwich magazine in 1991, Mr. Fuerbringer summed up his time as managing editor succinctly and with decided understatement: "We were very lucky in the '60s. It was a newsy decade."

Besides his son Jonathan, a former reporter for The Boston Globe and The New York Times, Mr. Fuerbringer leaves his wife of 68 years, the former Winona Gunn; another son, Peter; two daughters, Alexis Selwood and Juliana Fuerbringer; six grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.