The influence of the German picture magazines and their editors and photographers on publisher Henry Luce and his staff during the early years of "Life" magazine has been overlooked. However, there is strong evidence in the Time, Incorporated, archive files indicating that the year Kurt Korff spent as a consultant to the company's newly reorganized experimental department (1935-36) was extremely beneficial in the development of America's first picture magazine. Korff, a German Jewish immigrant, was just one of the Europeans whose photography training and experience on the German picture magazines provided Time, Incorporated, with a model proposed picture magazine, which encouraged Luce to hire him as a consultant to the prepublication staff, and whose contents were prophetic of the content found in later issues of "Life." Many of the suggestions Korff made concerning which photographers should be hired for "Life," how the photographs should be obtained and laid out, and for what audience the magazine should target its material were followed by the publisher. Korff was a likeable man, according to all reports, but he was unable to give up the style of the German magazines, which "Life" planners had no desire to duplicate. Apparently upset that there were no plans to make him a permanent editor on the new magazine's staff, Korff resigned in July, 1936, to work for the Hearst publishing organization. (HTH)