Richard Tüngel (1893 – 1970) was a German journalist and publisher, originally an architect and a longtime Director of Construction (Baudirektor) in Hamburg.
After that it is remarkably difficult to find biographical information about him, not least because he had a rather inglorious departure from Die Zeit: He had to leave, after Marion Dönhoff had provoked a scandal by enforcing a decision concerning the political line of the paper.
Brilliant and the embodiment of antagonism and artistic temperament," (Ralf Dahrendorf in his biography of Gerd Bucerius), stood politically on the right and was steering Die Zeit into a current "farther right than the CDU" (the German Christian Democratic Union).
The book Auf dem Bauche sollst du kriechen... Deutschland unter den Besatzungsmächten (Upon thy belly shalt thou go... Germany under the Occupying Powers) published in 1958, which Tüngel wrote together with journalist Hans Rudolf Berndorff, is sometimes referred to as his "memoirs".
In this work, the two authors describe their experience of the immediate post-war years, and so one learns a bit about the founding of Die Zeit.