Alternative magazine

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Alternative magazines (also known as underground / underground magazines , alternative press) are press products that originate from the new social movements in the Federal Republic of Germany and, to some extent, also from the GDR. As part of the gray literature , the term initially includes print products (not just magazines, also leaflets or wall newspapers ) that were initially published more or less regularly, in small editions (less than 1,000 copies) and beyond the established distribution channels such as bookshops and publishers.

Alternative magazines were initially produced and distributed by the editors themselves ( self-published ). Because of their unconventional nature, the early writings in particular are barely recorded in the bibliography and are difficult to obtain. Joachim Radkau states a pronounced lack of historical awareness in the environmental movement, regardless of which there are now a number of archives with important holdings of alternative magazines.

The alternative press in the broader sense includes some literature or student magazines (as opposed to university-funded university magazines ), fanzines, or city ​​magazines . The city magazines, in particular, of which the Münchner Blatt , founded in 1973, is seen as the model , saw rapid commercialization. This effect, such as the inclusion of formats and content of the alternative press in the mainstream, makes it difficult to define exactly.

The total circulation of the alternative press in the Federal Republic of Germany was estimated at 1.5 million in the 1980s, with the local alternative newspapers produced in small editions making up just over half a million in 1981. In the 1990s, there was considerable concentration and professionalism. Many of the subcultural journals from 1960 to 1980 did not last. The circulation increased from an estimated 700 titles to a total of 2 million. Essentially, however, this was denied by around 83 city magazines.

background

Badge of the movement “Dispossessed Springer”, 1969. The campaign was a reaction to the reports of the Springer media on the student movement which were perceived as unbearable.

The press landscape in the Federal Republic had been subject to increasing concentration since the 1950s. At the same time, representatives of the student movement and the democratic left felt that they were no longer adequately represented in the print media by the end of the 1960s under the heading of daring more democracy . At that time, a counter-public was mainly achieved through nationally distributed media such as pardon and twen . In the course of the 1970s there were a large number of start-ups, particularly at the local level.

The alternative press benefited from the switch from lead to phototypesetting and the increasing use of computer-aided printing and typesetting processes, while tough wage disputes and strikes in the established printing industry in 1976, 1978 and most recently in 1983 accompanied the introduction of the new technologies.

Leaflet literature and underground literature

The alternative press also includes leaflets and pamphlets that were banned or that can or were assigned to the environment of anti-constitutional or terrorist activities. Examples can be found not only from the environment of the Red Army Faction and its supporters. In 1975, on a court order in Berlin, rooms of a residential collective and an apartment in Kreuzberg were searched. The background was two issues of the magazine “Info - Berliner Undogmatic Groups”, in which people were asked to drive illegally. After Peter Lorenz's release, the magazine also published a song of ridicule against the police, which was printed shortly afterwards on numerous leaflets by members of the June 2nd Movement , the alleged kidnappers. Counterfeit BVG trading cards were distributed by strangers in various districts.

In the GDR, as in the former Eastern Bloc in general, typewriter carbon copies were used under the title samizdat in the 1950s to the 1970s to distribute forbidden or unwanted literature. Copy machines were locked up by the state and only very poorly accessible. At the beginning of the 1980s, periodicals with the character of a magazine were created that were mainly produced and distributed in church rooms using the Ormig and later wax matrix processes - such as the Streiflichter (published by the environmental protection working group at the Leipzig City Youth Parish Office) and Schalom (published by Rainer Eppelmann and Thomas Welz from the Friedenskreis) of the Samaritan community Berlin-Friedrichshain). By the end of the 1980s there were over 30 artistic-literary periodicals with editions of between 20 and 200 copies and around 50 magazines, information booklets and periodicals, some of which were published by civil rights, peace, opposition and environmental groups in large numbers (up to 5,000 Copies) were distributed.

The telegraph was distributed during the Peaceful Revolution by the East Berlin Environment Library (next to the Umweltbl Blätter ). It is published today by the left ostbuero . The various environmental libraries in Leipzig, Berlin and Bielefeld have corresponding publications in their archives. Alternative literature specific to the GDR can be found in the Matthias Domaschk archive in the Robert-Havemann-Gesellschaft e. V. in Berlin and the Thuringian Archive for Contemporary History "Matthias Domaschk" , e. V. in Jena.

Topics and direction

Subcultural and social movements express their way of life and worldview through alternative magazines; in particular politics, but also the subjects of leisure time, music, sexuality and society are dealt with (in contrast to fanzines, however, without explicit definition). The editors, either individuals or small groups of people (e.g. citizens' groups, church associations, women's and peace groups, political groups or associations), independently determine the content and form, which is why there can be frequent changes in the editorial team, thematic orientation and publication frequency. In many cases, contributions are published anonymously or under a pseudonym .

The subjective style of alternative magazines is often related to the fact that they were initially not produced with a view to financial success, but out of passion or conviction. For the same reason, alternative journals have less informative value, but are (not just literary) documents that can serve as sources for the mood of different generations and the zeitgeist . Their sometimes unconventional design adds an additional aesthetic dimension.

Alternative magazines were initially aimed at a small audience and initially enjoyed a certain popularity in the autonomous scene as an instrument for creating a counter- public . Due to the self-chosen position beyond the journalistic mainstream, alternative magazines have a lot of freedom in terms of content and design, which on the one hand makes them the nucleus of the avant-garde , on the other hand leads to some violations of personal rights as well as copyright and press law . With commercial success, there was usually a clear professionalization.

Historical development

1960s

With the emergence of the hippie, provo and student movements, there were also the first magazines of this counter-scene, but they often appeared only briefly. In the Hotcha! Published by Urban Gwerder ! No. 16 from October 1968, only three German-language titles of the approximately 60-member Underground Press Syndicate (UPS) were listed. It was next to Hotcha! from Zurich to Linkeck from Berlin and Peng from Wuppertal. In 1969, Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser listed 40 “counter-newspapers” in his book on the counterculture of the 1960s, including 10 magazines from Berlin alone.

1970s

In the 1970s, in the course of the New Social Movements , numerous startups were founded, initially in major German cities. The first alternative city newspaper is the Münchner Blatt , which was founded in 1973 and appeared fortnightly until 1984. Leaf was a model for a number of later city magazines. There was talk of a general trend as early as the mid-1980s. In 1984 in the university city of Münster, in addition to the city newspapers Stadtblatt and City , which are sold, a number of free papers were available. What these press products had in common was a combination of program information and local political and cultural coverage, and advertising funding through the alternative advertising market.

Josef Wintjes was in the 1970s and 1980s with his Ulcus Molle Info ("Literary Information Center"), as was the Fire Signs campaign , an important sales point for alternative literature. He was one of the pioneers of the alternative press and strictly refused to commercialize it or to accept state funds.

Regional controversies

The Münster weekly newspaper Stadtblatt was sued because of a satirical report published in December 1984 about the oath of the then Lord Mayor Jörg Twenhöven . In the accompanying article, the wooden cross in the town hall was referred to as a “Christian fetish ”. Thereupon the responsible editors of the Stadtblatt were accused of blasphemy according to § 166 StGB and convicted by the Münster District Court in August 1985 , but acquitted in December of that year in the appeal hearing before the Münster District Court . On the other hand, two other editors of the Stadtblatt were convicted of blasphemy for a report from the district court hearing, in which, among other things, a papal caricature was printed. Klenke noted anti-clerical and anti-Catholic clichés in the alternative scene. However, by reporting on the close amalgamation of politics and the church, the Stadtblatt had tackled a topic that was also viewed as problematic far beyond the alternative scene. This indirectly led to a significant structural reform within the local CDU. Ruprecht Polenz , among others , campaigned for modernization and image improvement. Similar incidents and conflicts have been found in other university towns with a bishopric such as Passau, Paderborn and Freiburg. For the city newspapers themselves, such conflicts were problematic on the one hand due to the local advertising customers, but the associated profiling attracted additional attention to the newspapers involved. For a long time the focus remained on regional politics as well as news from the respective alternative scene.

Increasing professionalization

As early as the end of the 1970s, the first commercial, so-called alternative papers joined together as part of advertising associations. The initiative for this came from the Berlin city magazine zitty in 1979 and initially included 12 city magazines in the Scene Programm Presse (SPP). The first advertisements from large companies came from the cigarette industry. AIDA (now adeins ), a spin-off from SPP that was founded by a former managing director, was soon joined by other advertising associations in the press environment such as Citicombi and PrinzMedien.

The integration into advertising associations and increasing commercial success went hand in hand with a clear professionalization. The corresponding press products increasingly stood out from the traditional alternative papers of the 1960s and 1970s. The structures were hierarchized, the key positions were filled with specialists and, similar to the established press, a combination of shell and regional section was offered beyond the founding locations. This was accompanied by a reduction and standardization of the titles. For the alternative free magazines that are part of the Citymedienverbund, the regional content is mainly created by an editorial pool concentrated in Frankfurt am Main. The magazines themselves have very few employees in the region.

Archiving

An important archive is the afas in Duisburg and the archive for alternative culture . Archival materials can also be found at environmental associations, foundations, such as the Green Memory Archive of the Heinrich Böll Foundation , museums (Eco-Museum Reinhardswald), the Hamburg Institute for Social Research and in state archives. Important documents from the environmental movement in Bavaria, in particular on the dispute about the reprocessing plant in Wackersdorf, can now be found at the Bavarian main state archive, among others.

German-language alternative magazines

This selection shows just how far the political and content-related spectrum that is expressed in alternative magazines extends:

In a broader sense, prisoner newspapers also belong to the alternative press.

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See on this: U. Pasterny, J. Gehret (Hrsg.): German-language bibliography of counterculture. and Günther Emig: The alternative press.
  2. ↑ ID archive from, among others, the German-language alternative press. Available online  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Documentation collection, German. With introduction, story, user guide. In the IISG (Amsterdam). "Information service for the dissemination of missing messages" (ID) formerly in Frankfurt am Main.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.iisg.nl  
  3. ↑ Joachim Radkau : The era of ecology. A world story. Beck, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-406-61372-2 .
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Nadja Büteführ : Between aspiration and commerce: local alternative press 1970–1993: systematic derivation and empirical review. Waxmann Verlag , 1995, ISBN 3-89325-368-8 .
  5. ↑ Document in the LeMO ( DHM and HdG )
  6. ↑ Quoting an article in the Tagesspiegel at the link portal trend.infopartisan.net
  7. ↑ Uncensored protest postcards, samizdat and taboo topics on jugendopposition.de with photos
  8. ↑ thueraz.de
  9. ↑ Hotcha !, No. 16, 1968, title page
  10. ^ Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser: Underground? Pop? No! Counterculture! A book collage. Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne / Berlin 1969, p. 205
  11. ↑ Thomas Gesterkamp , Holger Jenrich : City newspapers and their competition - Urban newspapers and their rivals. In: Journal for Journalism and Communication. Vol. 3, No. 4, 1984, pp. 197-198 (1 fig.)
  12. ↑ Thomas Gesterkamp : Nothing but flowers for the ladies. In: Stadtblatt. No. 22 of November 5, 1984, quoted from Dietmar Klenke .
  13. ↑ a b Dietmar Klenke: Schwarz - Münster - Paderborn. An anti-Catholic cliché. Waxmann Verlag, 2008, p. 81 ff.
  14. ^ Website of the afas in Duisburg , where, among other things, the holdings of the Environmental Center Archive in Münster 2011 were incorporated