Decades ago, collective memory gave him a permanent place in recent German history - however, Klaus Rainer Röhl always refused to take this place: He was the "Herr Meinhof", the man who was the publisher of the left Magazin Konkret made beautiful profits thanks to the brilliant articles that his clever wife Ulrike wrote there;
later he was the man she had to abandon in order to assert herself.
And even those who had little sympathy for the path that Ulrike Meinhof then went knew what to think of Röhl.
Claudius Seidl
Editor in the features section.
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Left-wing activists, as his daughter Bettina later said, punctured the tires of his Porsche and threatened to burn his fur coat.
Peter Rühmkorf, with whom he had organized cabaret and published magazines since the fifties, called him the "inevitable puke".
And everyone took the chic parties that the couple had celebrated in their Hamburg villa before they separated as evidence of Röhl's cynicism.
The editorial work, says Stefan Aust in his autobiography, was done by Aust anyway.
A salon linker, which should actually be an honorary title. A person who already understands something about the good life that is to be fought for. And if only half of what Röhl says about his stubbornness as a teenager under the Nazi regime is true; if one takes note that he joined the KPD out of spite when it was banned in the Federal Republic; and when you know that at some point he turned down the money from the SED, which made Konkret possible the start, for political reasons - and the magazine only became successful afterwards: Then you can be impressed by Röhl.
Later he became a salon lawyer, wrote essays and polemics in dubious publications and was one of those who wanted to transform the FDP back into a national liberal party.
However, anyone who was invited to his salon came back with the message that Röhl did not take himself terribly seriously.
He died on Tuesday, the day before his 93rd birthday.