What's New

Berlin natives set new direction with North & South

Flagstaff Team

Konstantin Richter and Verena Friederike Hasel arrived in New Zealand early in 2020. Six months later, they had bought landmark national magazine North & South. In a year of change and the unexpected, they spoke to Rob Drent about their journey.

Aotearoa adventurers… Konstantin Richter and Verena Friederike Hasel at home with daughters Salome (11), Penelope (8) and Juno (5)

It was the New Zealand trees and their variable shades of green that Verena Friederike Hasel couldn’t get out of her mind.

Aged 24, she first came to New Zealand in 2004 with two mates. They had won a 10-country, round-the-world trip in a contest and squeezed in three weeks in Godzone between Hong Kong and Mexico.

“The colours were so incredible – the blues and the forest. There are so many shades of green in the trees… I could not forget the light and the forests and the birds.”

Australia, she says like a born-and-bred Kiwi, did not compare to New Zealand’s natural beauty.

Those were arguably the most important three weeks of her life. Soon after meeting Konstantin Richter – now her husband – back in Berlin in 2007, she talked to him about New Zealand and the impression it left on her.

By 2015, she was back in the country, this time with Richter and daughters Salome, Penelope and Juno, touring New Zealand on a five-month campervan trip. They stayed with friends in Devonport for five days. “I didn’t particularly want to get back in the van after that,” says Richter.

In 2017, they returned to Devonport for six months, settling in Narrow Neck, with their girls enrolled at the local school and kindergarten.

Friederike Hasel was so impressed by the Kiwi schools that she wrote a book – The Dancing Principal (now in its third edition and translated into Turkish and Korean) – on what other countries can learn from the New Zealand education system.

“Its got a systematic science-based approach, but focused on 21st-century skills, and encourages empathy and creativity,” she says.

New Zealanders are often critical of our schools, but Friederike Hasel embraces the curriculum, designed with the combined knowledge of students, teachers, Maori, politicians and scientists.“The book was saying what schools could be like.”

After returning again to Germany, the family found they were missing New Zealand. The pull was felt strongly by eldest daughter Salome, who would set her alarm clock so she could do Vauxhall School’s kapa haka at same time as her classmates back at Narrow Neck.

“Berlin is an interesting, exciting city,” says Friederike Hasel, but the girls missed running around without shoes, and the forests and the beaches.

The decision to return here was made when Covid-19 was almost unheard of. When Friederike Hasel left Germany in February, brief news reports of a virus were coming out of China. By the time Richter boarded a plane to follow, the first wave was sweeping Germany.

New Zealand was, by comparison, untouched, until lockdown was ordered in March. Having looked forward to the wide open spaces and integrating again into the Devonport community, the family found they were trapped at home.

But in a year of change, the couple – both career-long journalists and authors – were soon contemplating another monumental step.

Four days after lockdown began, German company Bauer announced it was leaving New Zealand, closing its local publications. More than 250 staff – including many of the country’s top journalists – lost their jobs and landmark magazines like North & South, the New Zealand Listener, Metro and the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly were gone in what seemed like the stroke of an accountant’s pen.

Both Friederike Hasel and Richter had become North & South readers and loved its national scope, the breadth of its coverage and longer, crafted feature writing. They wondered, could they buy it?

It seemed unlikely – Bauer wanted to sell the whole stable to one buyer. But Richter and Friederike Hasel went through North & South’s books and made an offer.

“We didn’t think we had a chance – we thought someone with a lot of money would buy it just to keep it going,” says Friederike Hasel. But a faltering media landscape became even more uncertain after Covid, and meetings to discuss their offer continued. They became owners on 17 July.

Coincidentally, North & South was launched in the 1980s by another Devonport couple, the late Warwick Roger and Robyn Langwell, who edited the magazine for many years.

Speaking to Richter and Friederike Hasel at their rented Devonport villa, there is no sense of new brooms shaking up the magazine. They see themselves more as journalistic guardians keeping the torch alight.

Both were born in Berlin. Friederike Hasel graduated with a degree in forensic psychology from Berlin Free University. She also obtained a degree in screenwriting from Berlin film school DFFB. She worked for many years at the Berlin-based daily Der Tagesspiegel, then for weekly Die Ziet. She mainly wrote features – in one long-form piece she followed a politician for 100 days. She has written four books – and just finished her fifth. One is a novel, two are non-fiction and two are children’s books.

Richter studied English Literature and Philosophy at Edinburgh University, before completing a Masters in Journalism at Columbia University, in New York. He was an assistant editor for the Columbia Journalism Review and 20 years ago was a staff reporter on the Wall Street Journal. He’s worked as an editor and publisher for two German publishers and published three novels. More recently, he’s written for Die Ziet, the daily Die Welt and for Politico.

The last few months have been a whirl of meetings with former North & South staff, freelancers, printers and designers. A small office was secured in downtown Auckland.

The couple were acutely aware of their obligations to paid-up subscribers: the magazine needed to get back on the shelves as soon as possible.

Meetings were held with former editor Virgina Larson and deputy Joanna Wane, who were supportive but have moved on to other publications. (Larson has since been appointed editor of KiaOra magazine and Wane is now senior writer on the New Zeaand Herald’s Canvas magazine.)

North & South’s new editor, Hastings-raised Rachel Morris, was lured from the Huffington Post, in the US.

“It has been a crazy few months,

but crazy in a good way.”

Interviews and planning for the upcoming issue were done on Zoom. Richter and Friederike Hasel only met Morris in person last week after she left managed isolation, where she had been working on commissioning articles and planning.

“We were relieved we got on as well with her in person as we did on Zoom,” Richter said.

“We were incredibly excited when [the purchase] first happened, then a bit overwhelmed.

“It has been a crazy few months, but crazy in a good way.”

Most of North & South’s freelancing network has been retained, and award-winning reporter Donna Chisholm, one of the country’s top journalists, is on board as a contributor.

The couple were keen to have New Zealand journalists at the helm to make the editorial decisions. But it’s a small team of five at the office at the moment and “we’ll all be mucking in and doing a bit of everything,” says Friederike Hasel.

The couple are heading into town to work at the office in the daytime, returning in the afternoons to look after their kids, then working on North & South again at night.

They will be publishers, “but we have a lot of ideas and will provide a sounding board for the editor,” says Richter, who has spent the last few weeks reading through the magazine’s back issues, deep-diving into a crash course of New Zealand’s recent history.

“It really is a magazine that connects with people right across the country,” he says.

“We hope people do not see us as Germans taking over, but as people who feel strongly about journalism.”

The relaunch was set for October, but due to the second lockdown in Auckland, was put back to mid-November. Advertising response has been good, and the couple hope the re-emergence of other iconic titles, like the Listener and Metro, and the launch of other new magazines to replace those axed by Bauer are a good sign.

“There’s been a rejuvenation of the magazine category… it’s exciting to be part of that,” Richter says.

Outside work, Friederike Hasel is finding time to learn to play the piano, and the couple enjoy time with their daughters in the outdoors, particularly Auckland’s west coast beaches.

As we chat on their back deck, the girls are running around barefoot, and exploring underneath the house.

“It’s not something they have in Germany,” says Richter, observing his children embarking on an adventure in their own backyard – as he and Friederike Hasel embark on their own venture embracing the whole country.

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