In 1949, when Aenne Burda formed Burda Moden, she was inviting the women of a stymied nation to look across its borders for the first time in many years. Fashion was hardly a priority in post-war Germany, but that is why, ironically, fashion was important: Fashion is one way cultures communicate with each other.

Born Anna Lemminger on 28 July 1909, she married the printer and publisher Dr. Franz Burda in 1931. The couple had three sons, Franz, Frieder and Hubert.

As Burda Moden’s publisher, editor-in-chief and columnist, she offered women in post-war Germany affordable fashion. Aenne Burda was one of the very few women who played a decisive role in Germany’s economic miracle. And her decision to offer sew-at-home patterns of the latest clothes made Aenne Burda’s style revolution accessible to everyone.

Only a few decades after the first magazine went to print, Burda Moden became the world’s largest fashion publishing house, with a global circulation of more than five million. And by the time Raisa Gorbacheva made her plea for a Russian version of Burda Moden, Aenne Burda herself had become an icon of style and entrepreneurial success on par with Coco Chanel and Estee Lauder and it was hardly surprising that Burda Moden would be the first Western magazine to publish in the Soviet Union.

Her whole life is charcterised by a quote of Rabindranath Tagore: I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.