ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the academic and professional identity of Walter Hagemann, the leading protagonist of West German communication study in the first decade after the Second World War. It also illuminates a way of being in the West German field of communications, which was in no way academically cloistered. The central issue of this chapter is Walter Hagemann's development of Publizistikwissenschaft in Germany in the first decade after the Second World War. It aims at delivering a systematic and careful insight into the history of the field of communications, combining social, intellectual, and institutional aspects with the greater goal to globalize the study of the field. Hagemann's polemic activity in the communication battle between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) undid his merit as an academic. The case study concerning the academic and professional identity of Walter Hagemann shows that the orientation toward social requirements can be a probate strategy to assure a discipline's further existence.
