Hamburg, 16 June 2025. The Hans Bredow-Institut in Hamburg is celebrating its 75th anniversary with a reception hosted by the Senate on 17 June and an academic event on 18 June. Since the institute’s founding in 1950, the media landscape has undergone significant changes. The institute has accompanied this evolution through its research, contributing to the advancement of media studies. Its focus has always been on providing practical knowledge for politics, regulation, business, and civil society. The institute has been a member of the renowned Leibniz Association since 2019. Its research combines the perspectives of empirical social science communication research with legal and IT perspectives.
“The research conducted by the Leibniz Institute for Media Research is becoming increasingly important for society because it analyzes changes in public communication with independent, interdisciplinary expertise. This lays the foundation for an informed, reflective, and resilient democracy in an increasingly digital world,” emphasizes Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulz, the Institute’s Scientific Director and Chairman of the Executive Board.
Since joining the Leibniz Association, the institute has been known as the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI). This admission was an honor and an incentive. With the Leibniz Association’s approval of a strategic expansion, the HBI will receive additional funding starting in 2026 and have a doubled basic budget by 2030. These changes will allow for the systematic expansion of computer science as an equal disciplinary perspective within the institute and the development of new, agile formats for social knowledge transfer.
The institute is named after Hans Bredow (1879-1959), a pioneer of broadcasting in Germany who played a decisive role in shaping the organization of broadcasting until the Nazis came to power. In the post-war years, he was honored as the “father of broadcasting.”
The Hans-Bredow-Institut was founded as an independent foundation by the Universität Hamburg and the former Northwest German Broadcasting with modest initial resources, consisting mainly of furniture. Today, the institute is an internationally renowned partner, not least for the Universität Hamburg, with which it has many links.
To mark the anniversary, the HBI is publishing
- The brochure Broschüre “Facetten aus 75 Jahren Hans-Bredow-Institut“, [Facets from 75 Years of the Hans-Bredow-Institut], which highlights stages in the institute’s development and focuses on its unique features;
- A special episode of the BredowCast podcast, in which Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulz and Dr. Hans-Ulrich Wagner, research program director and media historian, reflect on 75 years of media research at the HBI.
Contact for Inquiries
Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI)
Christiane Matzen
Email: c.matzen@leibniz-hbi.de
Telephone: +49 (0)40 45 02 17-41
https://leibniz-hbi.de/en
Information about the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI)
The Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut researches media change and the associated structural changes in public communication. Cross-media, interdisciplinary, and independent, it combines basic science and transfer research, thereby creating problem-relevant knowledge for politics, business, and civil society. In 2019, the institute was accepted into the Leibniz Association. More at https://leibniz-hbi.de/en