Busch Manor

Haus Busch is an old manor house of the noble family von Syberg zum Busch in Hagen-Helfe, which since 1974 has served as the seat and as a so-called Journalists' Centre for the German Institute for Journalistic Education, or Haus Busch for short, run by the Society for Journalistic Education.

Manor House

The former knight's estate had been owned by the von Syberg family since 1369. The manor house, which still stands today with an impressive cellar vault, was built around 1700 on the grounds, which are still characterised by a park garden with old trees. At the beginning of the 20th century, the city of Hagen acquired the house with its surrounding areas.

German Institute for Journalistic Education

The Society for Journalistic Education was founded in 1960 in Düsseldorf, primarily by Emil Dovifat and Karl Bringmann, who had opened the first professional newspaper training course there in the 1950s as a precursor to today's common trainee seminars. In 1974, the German Institute for Journalistic Education, which had been founded in the meantime, moved to Haus Busch in Hagen. The institute provides training and further education for journalists in short-term courses.

Since then, the old building has housed the institute's administration with offices, smaller seminar rooms, and a reference library. The cellar vault is used as the Buschkeller pub. Modernised and extended outbuildings contain lecture halls and the canteen, as well as the hotel operation belonging to the Journalists' Centre.

Haus Busch is also the seat of the Vogel Foundation, founded by former Handelsblatt publisher Friedrich Vogel, and the German-language section of the Society for Newsdesign (SND).

In June 2005, it became known that Haus Busch was on the verge of insolvency, which was also filed in July, after cuts in subsidies from the state of NRW and the announced withdrawal of the publishers' associations (Bundesverband Deutscher Zeitungsverleger BDZV and Zeitungsverlegerverband NRW) from the sponsoring organisation. The drastic decline in participant numbers for the offered one-year training course for press office journalists or multimedia news designers, which costs around 9,000 euros per person, was cited as the main cause of the financial difficulties. The reason for the decline was the loss of state funding due to Hartz IV, particularly the assumption of accommodation costs in Haus Busch.

Today, a non-profit association is the sponsor. Although the former partners have mostly withdrawn from sponsorship, the DJV supports Haus Busch with regular institutional funding.