Henri Nannen

Henri Nannen (25 December 1913 – 13 October 1996) was a German journalist and art collector. He became one of the most prominent journalists and magazine publishers in Germany.

His father was a police officer in Emden who was removed from his post by the NSDAP. After a one-year book dealer apprenticeship he studied the history of art at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. In the 1930s, he started working as a journalist. During the war he served in SS-Standarte Kurt Eggers, a propaganda unit in Italy. Being large, well-built and fair haired, he corresponded to the racial ideals of the time in Germany. This made him the speaker of the Olympic Oath during the 1936 event in Berlin – for Riefenstahl's film, but not in reality. Many years after the war, he confessed that "I knew what was happening ... but I was too cowardly to do something against it."

He was married to Eske Nannen (born 1942), a former actress. Henri Nannen has a son Christian Nannen (born 1946), co-owner of Hamburg suitcase-producer Travelite.