Stefan Wehmeier 1968-2018.
A promising scientist and colleague has left us much too soon. Dr. Stefan Wehmeier, Professor of Organizational Communication at the University of Greifswald in northern Germany, died on 13 February 2018 in Greifswald after a long and severe illness.
Stefan Wehmeier was born on 5 April 1968 in Northrhine-Westphalia. From 1989 to 1997 he studied public communication (Publizistik), contemporary history and economic policy at the University of Münster. He earned his doctorate with the dissertation “Television in Transition. Differentiation and economization of a medium “. After several years of journalistic work, he worked as a research assistant at the University of Leipzig from 1999 to 2006. I had hired the promising young scientist as scientific assistant. We have published a lot together, he also had many independent publications especially on topics such as PR theories, organizational communication, public relations and society, online-public relations, but also PR history and PR historiography. With his habilitation thesis, in Germany a “second dissertation” with a higher standard than a “normal” dissertation (title: Public Relations: Status and future of a field of research, published in 2012), he presented an interesting metatheoretical study about the field of PR research. After leaving Leipzig (his contract had expired) he took over a junior professorship in Greifswald in 2007, then he earned professorships in Denmark, Vienna, Salzburg and again Greifswald since 2012. There he taught and conducted research for the last eight years.
He was member of EUPRERA, ICA, the German communication association (DGPuK), he attended many conferences and presented many outstanding presentations.
Stefan was not only a very popular colleague for all of us. From a scientific perspective, he was always interested in the reflection of organizational communication and PR-science, scientific and historiographical questions. He has written important contributions to these topics (also together with other colleagues). We all will miss Stefan, as an inspiring scientist and as a loveable person.

Günter Bentele