Deaths: Albert Speer Jr., prominent architect whose father was in Hitler's inner circle

Albert Speer Jr., 83, an internationally prominent architect who sought throughout his life to distance himself from the dark legacy of his father, a member of Adolf Hitler's inner circle, died Sept. 15 at his home in Frankfurt.

The cause was complications from surgery.

Speer was the oldest of six children of Albert Speer, one of Hitler's closest confidants. The elder Speer was Hitler's chief architect and later his armaments minister and was convicted of war crimes for his use of slave labor.

The younger Speer's impact on urban landscapes was ultimately far greater than that of his father, whose grandiose architectural plans for the Nazi Third Reich were never realized. Albert Jr.'s firm designed master plans for Expo 2000 in Hanover, Germany; the Nigerian capital city, Abuja; and an Automobile City on the outskirts of Shanghai, close to a large Volkswagen factory.

He had a particularly strong impact on Frankfurt, his home city, where he served as an adviser to the municipal government for many years and worked on master plans for the European Central Bank, as well as for a new section of the city known as the Europaviertel, which was built on land reclaimed from railroad freight yards.

Albert Speer Jr. was born in Berlin on July 29, 1934, only days before Hitler declared himself Führer of Germany. Albert Jr. grew up in Berchtesgaden, Germany, the Alpine village used by Hitler as a retreat. Films from the 1930s show a young Speer playing at Hitler's villa while the dictator looks on. But Speer once told an interviewer that he had only vague memories of that time.

Katherine Bonniwell, 70, a former publisher of Life magazine who was widely considered a role model for female magazine managers, died Aug. 31 at her home in Manhattan.

Bonniwell was an "early glass ceiling breaker" who led a "groundswell of very talented women" into top positions at Time Inc., Life's parent company, said Chris Meigher, who was president during her time there.

"She was strong and stalwart and could stand toe to toe with anybody," he said.

Life was published weekly until 1972 and then monthly from 1978 to 2000. It now exists as a depository of 20 million photos and images on the Time website.

Bonniwell was publisher from 1988-91, a period marked by high readership but also by advertising downturns and shifts in consumer interest. During her tenure, the magazine increased its circulation to 1.4 million from 1.2 million and won two National Magazine Awards.

Bonniwell, known for her innovative solutions to complicated problems, was the second woman to serve as publisher of Life; the first was her immediate predecessor, Lisa Valk. She also served as worldwide director of circulation at Time Inc. and business manager for People magazine.

Bonniwell's efforts to put Life back on a weekly publication schedule for the first time in a decade were driven by "amazing intellectual and political brilliance on her part," said Jim Gaines, who later succeeded her as publisher.

She made a compelling business case for producing more issues and very likely would have succeeded, Gaines said, if not for external market pressures and concerns that a weekly Life could cannibalize readership from other Time publications.

Katherine Marbury Bonniwell was born in Manhattan on May 29, 1947.

Daniel Yankelovich, 92, a pollster, author and public opinion analyst who for a half-century mirrored the perceptions of generations of Americans about politics, consumer products, social changes and themselves, died Friday at his home in La Jolla, Calif. The cause was kidney failure.

Until the late 1950s, market research, when done at all, was a relatively crude way of trying to figure out whether a new soap or a set of kickable tires would go over with the American public. Often it was just guesswork.

One of the nation's most respected social researchers, Yankelovich devised innovative surveys of small representative groups not only to track American preferences in cars and toothpaste, but also to understand the values and goals of ordinary people — what made them feel happy or fulfilled, or miserable and marginalized, in an affluent but impersonal society.

Unlike pioneering pollsters George Gallup, Elmo Roper and Louis Harris, Yankelovich did not stress election results, though he accurately called some presidential races, and his work helped national leaders, including Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, shape political agendas and domestic and foreign policies.

He focused more on detailing, and explaining, shifting trends in American life: the "generation gap" of the 1960s, the rise of the women's movement in the '70s, the neoconservatism of many young people in the '80s, the emergence of a "me first" self-indulgence in the '90s, and in recent years a widespread feeling that Americans have no voice in the decisions that affect their lives.

"People feel they don't have that voice, that they are not consulted, they're not listened to, their views don't really count," Yankelovich said in a 2002 PBS interview.

But he offered a suggestion: "We find when we bring average Americans together that they listen to one another, that they can contribute and that they can build, develop a vision of what they want our society to be like. And it's really inspiring."

Daniel Yankelovich was born in Boston on Dec. 29, 1924.

New York Times