George Warnecke

Glen William "George" Warnecke (30 July 1894 – 2 June 1981) was an Australian journalist, editor, and publisher. He was born in Armidale, New South Wales and began his journalism career in 1913 as a junior reporter for The Evening News. He went on to become the founding editor of The Australian Women's Weekly, the Editor-in-chief of Australian Consolidated Press, and a co-founder of Atlas Publications. In his later years Warnecke settled in Dublin with his Irish-born wife Nora Hill who had had an active career as a concert and opera singer. He died in Dublin at the age of 86 and was buried there next to his wife. His papers and correspondence are held in the State Library of New South Wales.

Life and career Early years Warnecke was born to Joseph Warnecke, a blacksmith of German descent, and Emily Jane née Mapletoft in Armidale, New South Wales. His family had strong Labor Party sympathies which Warnecke would share throughout his life. The Warnecke family moved to Sydney in 1912 and the following year he joined the Australian Journalists' Association, working as a junior reporter for The Evening News and its offshoot publication, Woman's Budget. It was there that he became known as "George" when printers misread his scribbled initials on copy sheets as "Geo."

In 1915 Warnecke enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force and served on the Western Front with the 19th Battalion. He had a weak left eye but had passed the medical examination by memorising the sight-testing card. He was wounded twice in 1916 and also diagnosed with shell shock. While convalescing at the AIF hospital in England near the hamlet of Hurdcott, he launched and edited a small review entitled The Hurdcott Herald. On returning to Australia in 1918 he was discharged from the army as medically unfit. Warnecke had kept an extensive diary of his war time experience, described in the Sydney Morning Herald as "the story of a young, idealistic patriot transformed by the horrors of World War I into a man old before his time." His diary entry on his 20th birthday in July 1916 read: Red and green flares burst like a fountain of joyful fireworks from the German lines. Other flares, white ones, rose and fell in endless succession. Machine-guns rattled from a score of points and the crackling of bombs could be heard. The wounded began to limp back. A man with only half of his face. Another with broken hands ... We hardly dare ask how the stunt had gone ... It was a failure all right.

Warnecke served as chief sub-editor of the Daily Guardian from 1926 and became a protégé of its proprietor R. C. Packer. He was appointed editor of Packer's new Sunday Guardian in 1929 and later became the Editor-in-Chief of Frank Packer's Australian Consolidated Press, responsible for the relaunch of The Daily Telegraph. However, his most enduring achievement during the inter-war years was the founding of The Australian Women's Weekly. Warnecke wrote of his plans: Give it an unswerving Australian outlook [...] Above all, whether the journalists are writing about fashion, cookery, baby care or diet there has to be a element of news in what they write. By 1939, the magazine's circulation had reached 400,000 copies a week and for its first 50 years it remained the highest selling per capita magazine in the world.

American sojourn and post-war Australia Warnecke's relations with Frank Packer became increasingly strained after 1935 and in April 1939 he resigned from Consolidated Press. He and Nora went to the United States. There he studied printing and magazine methods for The Herald and Weekly Times company owned by Keith Murdoch and wrote regular articles for the Melbourne Herald on US foreign policy and other topics. In 1940 he became a foreign correspondent for the McClure Newspaper Syndicate and in 1943 joined the US Office of War Information as a special writer. Many of his articles from that period were syndicated in Australian newspapers.

Final years in Ireland

The Warnecke's settled in Dublin where George became the "resident patriarch" of the Irish-Australian Society. His last years were increasingly marked by deafness and illness, but he continued writing up until his death. When he died in Dublin's Meath Hospital at the age of 86, he left three books unfinished, his memoirs entitled Miracle Magazine, a work on "Australianism, as identified by press, politics and religion", and a biography of John Macarthur for which he had received a grant from the Literature Board of the Australia Council. He was buried in Dublin next to Nora who had died in 1969. They had no children. Nora's Australian-born niece Meg Sordello, who had inherited Warnecke's papers and correspondence, donated them to the State Library of New South Wales where they have been held since 2003. Warnecke's World War I diaries are held in the Australian War Memorial.