General Advertisements GmbH

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The General Display GmbH (Ala GmbH) was one of the leading display companies in the German press at the beginning of the 20th century within the Hugenberg Group , which was acquired and after the Nazi seizure of power under the leadership of the Nazis expanded.

Founding by big industry

Before the First World War, parts of large German industry saw themselves at a disadvantage with regard to exports due to the inadequate presentation of their products in the foreign press. On March 6, 1914, Alfred Hugenberg, the then director of the Krupp company, took over the initiative in which leading industrialists in Rhineland- Westphalia such as Emil Kirdorf , Hugo Stinnes , Wilhelm Benkenberg ( Phoenix AG ), Fritz Baare ( Bochumer Verein ), Peter took part Klöckner , Paul Reusch ( Haniel Group ), the Stumm brothers ( Neunkirchen ) and Friedrich Springorum ( Hoesch-Dortmunder Union ) participated and founded the Auslands GmbH based in Essen . The company had an initial capital of 200,000 marks and was entered in the Essen register of associations on April 28, 1914.

The purpose of this society was to promote the relationship and position of Rhenish industry with the important foreign economic and cultural regions. This should be done by improving the means of communication and other appropriate measures. Furthermore, the company should be able to participate in all transactions which served these purposes of the company and which were suitable for obtaining the necessary funds.

Hugenberg takes the initiative

Hugenberg now proposed a concept that should convey the advertising business to German industry. This concept was intended to expand the tasks of Auslands GmbH and to replace the previous practice of placing advertisements with foreign advertisers. On April 30, 1914, he founded the Auslands-Werbung GmbH with an initial capital of 200,000 marks, first in Essen, then in Berlin. The Auslands GmbH provided 28,000 marks of the initial capital. The other capital shares were held by the shareholders, the judiciary Ludwig Grundlach, the legation councilor Georg Irmer, Hermann Albrecht and the banker Dr. Friedrich Swart represented. Albrecht, a trained editor, took over the position of managing director. Dr. Andrew Thorndike became General Director and Chairman of the Supervisory Board, as he was also a partner in Auslands GmbH .

The beginning of the First World War on August 1, 1914 prevented almost all opportunities to implement the intended concept of business with foreign countries. Therefore, the company turned to the placement of domestic advertisements. For this purpose, the share capital of Auslands-Werbung GmbH was increased to 1 million marks on March 9, 1916, and a year later on July 8, 1917 to 2 million marks. With this capital increase, the name of the company was changed to Allgemeine Werbung GmbH (Ala GmbH). The purpose of the capital increase was to buy up other companies in order to increase its own market share in the advertising business.

Attack on the main competitor

Now the activity of the GmbH was geared towards attacking Rudolf Mosse's existing monopoly in the domestic advertising business . In order to win as many shareholders as possible, a cooperative principle was followed in that each shareholder only had to raise a share of 500 marks. Leo Wegener called this concept an advertisers' cooperative .

In order to obtain a sufficient level of knowledge about domestic and foreign newspapers, an archives department was set up in 1916, which was supposed to collect all information related to the placement of advertisements. In cooperation with the German Overseas Service Syndicate , an independent company, the Deutsche Archiv GmbH, was founded on May 23, 1917 and belonged to Ala Anzeige GmbH until 1920 . For legal reasons to secure the naming rights, the Auslands Werbung GmbH was re-established on September 5, 1917 , whereby the purpose of the company was expanded to support Ala Werbung GmbH. In 1927 the Auslands Werbung GmbH was removed from the commercial register.

In the meantime the Ala's activities had expanded so that they offered economic advice and a service for designing advertising drafts and planning sales opportunities. At the end of 1917, Ala GmbH acquired the majority of shares in Haasestein & Vogler AG , which owned an extensive advertising network, from the shareholder Charles Georg . Since this company also controlled the Daube & Co. advertising expedition , it also came to Ala GmbH. This takeover was completed on December 16, 1919 and the new company founded from it was called Ala United Advertising Companies , Haasenstein & Vogler AG, Daube & Co. mbH . In 1923 this company was taken over by Ala Ads AG .

Composition of the shareholders

In the journal " Nachrichten für Wertpapierbesitzer" of April 14, 1918, 200 shareholders were named for Ala GmbH. Leading partners were Borsig (Berlin), Vulkan-Werke , Buderussche Eisenwerke , Bochumer Gußstahlverein , Maschinenbaugesellschaft Schwartzkopff (Berlin), Friedrich Krupp , Mannesmann , Hoesch , Rheinische Metallwaren , Norddeutscher Lloyd , Rheinische Stahlwerke , the Woermann-Linie , Manoli cigarette factory, the Kalisyndikat , Waggonfabrik Linke-Hofmann-Werke , Phoenix-Bergbau , Rütgers-Werke , Chemische Fabrik Goldschmidt , the Essener Kreditanstalt , the German-Luxembourg and Gelsenkirchen mining company , the Association for Germanism Abroad and the Delbrück, Schickler & Co banking company . In 1919 the number of shareholders rose to 400. In 1922, 75 newspaper publishers had joined the company.

Attacks on the ala

The rapid growth of Ala GmbH and the knowledge that it was supported by large-scale industry led to fears that the advertising agency could be misused to influence the press. The Düsseldorfer Volkszeitung , which is close to the Social Democrats, published an article on November 22, 1915, in which the Ala GmbH was described as a danger to the interests of the less well-off . After initial attacks in 1916, the von Mosse company began a press campaign in February 1918 under the slogan The independence of the press is threatened! . On February 25, 1918, the article Die Vaterlandspartei by Professor Walter Goetz appeared in the Leipziger Tageblatt , in which he attacked Ala GmbH because of its connection to heavy industry.

Matthias Erzberger took up this article in his Reichstag speech on February 27, 1918, when he attacked German heavy industry, the Pan-German Association and the German Fatherland Party . These would all be organized in the so-called Ala . The management of Ala GmbH then circulated a statement to the German press and all members of the Reichstag entitled The Ala and their opponents . In it, the accusation of monopolizing the advertising business was rejected as unfounded, because this accusation would apply more to Mosse's business. The public dispute over the advertising business was carried out on the side of Ala GmbH by the German daily newspaper , on the side of Mosse in the Berliner Tageblatt . Even in England the subject was picked up in March 1918 when the Times wrote an article in the Krupp press .

Conversion into a stock corporation

The continuous expansion of the business of Ala GmbH after the war and the inflation of the mark required a further purchase of operating resources and further increases in the share capital. Therefore it was decided to choose the corporate form of a stock corporation. When this transformation was carried out, the public limited company belonging to Haasenstein & Vogler AG (Huvag) was involved in the sale of real estate . The share capital of this AG was increased to 200 million marks, with which it was able to buy Ala GmbH by means of a payment of 84 million marks in the form of shares. This also included the right to change the name of Ala GmbH to Ala Anzeige AG . This was intended to ensure that legally the Ala Ads GmbH could continue to exist in order to carry out business of processing and administration. Ala GmbH was able to continue the existing business on behalf of Ala Anzeige AG until December 31, 1924 .

However, Ala GmbH continued to run the main advertising department on its own until July 27, 1928. In 1928 the Ala Vereinigte Werbung GmbH was liquidated and removed from the commercial register on February 5, 1935. The Ala ads AG now bought 90.75 percent of shares in Huvag and in 1928 all shares of Daube & Co. mbH . Hugenberg's influence remained dominant in these transactions. The distribution of the shares in the newly founded AG was not limited to the leading shareholders. At the end of 1928, Hugenberg had 89 percent of the capital of Ala Anzeige AG under control through his trade association . The AG has now been recommended by many chambers of commerce and trade associations for advertising activities.

Expansion of business and global economic crisis

The placement of advertisements abroad was also resumed after the war. The newspaper archive, which has now been built up and contained around 55,000 entries on the tariffs of foreign advertisers, proved helpful. However, Ala Ads AG refrained from setting up foreign branches. The AG did not participate in newspaper publishers either, because such investments were reserved for the Hugenberg Group . The business with calendars and address books, which in 1921 still comprised 342 so-called leased objects, was reduced to around 100 objects by 1927. When the effects of the global economic crisis became increasingly clear after 1929 , the profits from these leases broke away and the AG terminated the contracts as soon as the clauses of the contracts allowed.

In the meantime, Ala Werbung AG had also concentrated on offering special advertising (Spekla) based on American models . This was expressed in the growing need to use posters as an advertising medium. At the Reichsreklame-Messe in 1925, Ala Werbung AG announced that 92 percent of sales came from advertising and only 8 percent came from other advertising materials. In 1936 Spekla's share was around 3 percent of sales. For the purpose of self-promotion and advice, Ala Werbung AG published a newspaper catalog and the Ala news and advice service .

Nazi seizure of power and end of the Hugenberg group

In 1932 the Mosse company went bankrupt, which was run by his son-in-law Ismar Lachmann-Mosse after the death of Rudolf Mosse. The boycott of Jewish companies, the collapse of the advertising business as a result of the global economic crisis and the competition from Ala Werbung AG had led to the collapse of the company. After the Nazi seizure of power, the company was deleted from the list of advertising agencies at the Association of German Newspaper Publishers (VDZV) and Max Amann , who later became President of the Reich Press Chamber (RPK), who had since taken over the management of the VDZV, put Dr. Max Winkler as a bankruptcy administrator. He subordinated almost the entire company to his holding, CAUTIO Treuhand GmbH .

Takeover by the central publishing house of the NSDAP

A year later, Ala Anzeige AG was taken over by the National Socialists in the course of the break-up of the Hugenberg Group. On May 4, 1934, the shares in the AG were transferred from August Scherl GmbH and Außenendienst GmbH to CURA Revisions- und Treuhand GmbH and CAUTIO Treuhand GmbH . The CURA was assigned to the administration office of the Reichsleiter for the press of the NSDAP , with Amann as general director of the Franz-Eher-Verlag and the central publishing house of the NSDAP. Amann now put the former advertising manager and authorized signatory of Eher Verlag, Erwin Finkenzeller , at the head of the board of directors of Ala Werbung AG , who thereby also became general director. A friend of Amann, the owner of the large printing company M. Müller & Sohn KG in Munich, Adolf Müller, was appointed chairman of the supervisory board . Müller printed almost all of the publishing objects that appeared in the central publishing house of the NSDAP.

In the course of these transactions, the AG was converted back into a GmbH, so that one could avoid reporting on the balance sheets in public. Amann now also initiated a merger of Ala Werbung GmbH with the National Socialist Advertisement Center (NAZ) founded in 1932 . The now fixed share capital of Ala Ads GmbH in the amount of 500,000 Reichsmarks (RM) was taken over by Herold Verlagsgesellschaft mbH at 352,000 RM and Knorr & Hirth KG at 148,000 RM . The Herold belonged to the central publishing house of the NSDAP. The Knorr & Hirth KG was under the supervision of the Advertising Council of German Economy , headed by the President Ernst Reichard stood.

On December 23, 1936, the Reichsanzeiger published the composition of the supervisory board of Ala Anzeige GmbH . Thereafter, Max Amann took the chair, with Dr. Jakob Herle was his deputy. More seats on the board had Otto von Halem , Hugo Henkel , Adolf Müller, Rolf Rienhardt , Dr. Georg von Schnitzler and Baron Edgar Uxkull . In 1943 Ala Anzeige GmbH had 28 branches and achieved a turnover of 42.5 million RM, with the head office in Berlin accounting for approximately 20 million RM. With the concentration of the party press, the NSDAP had achieved a monopoly position, with the party newspapers being able to attract national advertisements through Ala Ads GmbH .

credentials

  • (Fritz Schmidt): Press in Shackles - A description of the Nazi press trust , Berlin 1947.
  • Oron J. Hale : The Captive Press in the Third Reich , New Jersey (German: Press in the Straitjacket 1933-1945 , Düsseldorf, 1965).
  • Otto Groth: Die Zeitung - A system of newspaper studies (journalism) , second volume, Berlin 1929.
  • Walther Heide (Ed.): Handbuch der Zeitungswissenschaft , Volume I, Leipzig 1940.

literature

  • The fight for the ala , Berlin 1918.
  • Ludwig Bernhard : The "Hugenberg Group". Psychology and technology of a large organization of the press . Facsimile-Verlag, Bremen 1983 (reprint of the Berlin 1928 edition).
  • Wilhelm Herrmann: The history of the Ala. A newspaper studies study as a dissertation in Berlin 1938, printed in Frankfurt / Main 1938.
  • Gerd F. Heuer: Development of the advertising expeditions in Germany as a dissertation in Berlin 1937, printed in Limburg an der Lahn in 1937 (in: Newspaper and Time New Series, Volume 5).