Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung
The Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung ( AIZ ) was a weekly socialist magazine in Berlin from 1921 to 1933 and in exile in Prague from 1933 to 1938 . The founder and responsible editor was the German publisher Willi Munzenberg .
history
The history of the AIZ begins in 1921 with a famine in Soviet Russia and Lenin's appeal on August 2, 1921 to the working class for solidarity aid. The “ International Workers Aid ” (IAH) was formed as a support organization to fight the famine , which was largely built up and directed by Willi Munzenberg . To support the work of the IAH, the monthly magazine “Soviet Russia in Pictures” was founded on November 7, 1921. Initially, the main focus of this newspaper was on reporting on the young Russian Soviet state, its achievements and problems.
According to the later editor-in-chief of AIZ Lilly Becher, the magazine was : “... not a masterpiece. Their gray, unadorned pages, the technically highly inadequate photos ... “did not correspond to the usual standards achieved by the big publishers at this early stage.
As early as 1922, the editorial staff also included reports on the German proletariat . At that time the sheet had a circulation of approx. 10,000 copies. Out of the need to create its own revolutionary magazine for the German proletariat - the bourgeois model was the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung - the paper was still in 1922, with a further expansion of the reporting, which pointed beyond the scope of the paper as an organ of the IAH, renamed sickle and hammer . Here, too, the propaganda for the Soviet Union and the work of the IAH still had an important place, but employees such as George Grosz , Maxim Gorki , George Bernard Shaw , Käthe Kollwitz and others regularly broadened the scope in the direction of social criticism. The magazine was now published in large format.
The growing influence was also reflected in the circulation figures; In 1922 there were around 100,000 copies; by 1924 there were 180,000 copies. At the end of 1924 the paper finally grew out of the status of an IAH body.
On November 30, 1924, Willi Munzenberg's new German publisher published the first AIZ with a new layout, now every two weeks. With this renewed change began the rapid rise of the AIZ, which had now become the socialist illustrated magazine in Germany. The newspaper now covered a wide range of topics. In addition to current reports and reports , the AIZ also regularly published stories and poems, for example by Anna Seghers , Erich Kästner and Maxim Gorki as well as Theobald Tiger ( Kurt Tucholsky ). With his newspaper, Willi Münzenberg pursued a strategy of connecting the communist movement with the most important figures of his time.
When the circulation rose to 200,000 copies in 1926, the publisher switched to weekly publication in November. In order to be able to distribute the magazine, a separate organization with several thousand employees - mostly unemployed - had to be created. Alfred Hugenberg , whose newspaper company actually controlled the newspaper market, had called for a boycott of the newspaper among dealers. By 1933 the circulation of the AIZ had increased to over half a million. Their sphere of activity was much larger, however, as it was mostly read by several people together due to its poor target group.
After the transfer of power to the National Socialists in 1933, the AIZ also had to go into exile . It was able to continue to exist in Prague under its editor-in-chief Franz Carl Weiskopf . In 1936 she changed her name to Volks-Illustrierte . It continued until 1938, albeit with a much smaller edition.
The illustrated
Most of the illustrations in the AIZ came from worker photography . The photo collages of the graphic artist and photo montage artist John Heartfield , who became her permanent collaborator in 1930 , are particularly well known . He remained associated with the newspaper until 1938.
From 1931 Walter Reuter worked as a permanent freelancer for the AIZ. He took the photos of the report Der Mordsturm 33 about the SA attack on the Berlin dance hall Eden, for which the lawyer Hans Litten wrote the text. Two weeks after the Reichstag fire in 1933, Reuter fled to Spain. In his later exile in Mexico he is considered to be the founder of modern documentary photojournalism .
literature
- Marcel Bois, Stefan Bornost: Uncompromising on the side of the oppressed. The Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung. In: Bernd Hüttner, Christoph Nitz (Eds.): Using media worldwide. Shaping the media world . VSA, Hamburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-89965-412-7 , pp. 185-194.
- Gerd Lettkemann: Children's comics and class struggle - the Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung. In: Eckart Sackmann (Ed.): Deutsche Comicforschung 2006 . Comicplus, Hildesheim 2005, ISBN 3-89474-155-4 , pp. 68-72.
- Peter de Mendelssohn : Berlin newspaper city. People and Powers in the History of the German Press . Ullstein, Berlin 1959 (revised and expanded edition. Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1982, ISBN 3-550-07496-4 ).
- Willi Munzenberg : Propaganda as a weapon. Selected Writings 1919–1940 . Edited by Til Schulz. March publishing house, Frankfurt am Main 1972.
- Willi Munzenberg: Solidarity. Ten years of international workers' aid. 1921-1931 . New German publishing house, Berlin 1931.
- Gabriele Ricke: The Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung. Counter model to the bourgeois magazines . Internationalismus-Verlag, Hanover 1974.
- Erich Rinka: Photography in the class struggle. A worker photographer remembers . Fotokinoverlag, Leipzig 1981.
- Eckhard Siepmann: Montage: John Heartfield . From Club Dada to Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung. Documents - analyzes - reports . Elefanten Press Verlag, Berlin 1977 ( Elefanten-Press - EP 1), (exhibition catalog).
- Heinz Willmann : History of the Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung 1921 to 1938 . Dietz, Berlin 1974. (Licensed edition: deb, Westberlin 1975, ISBN 3-920-303-21-0 )
Web links
- Through light to night, title page of the AIZ No. 18 on the book burning in 1933 (from the collection of the DHM )
- The historical development of picture reporting to photojournalism
Individual evidence
- ↑ in the foreword to Heinz Willmann's AIZ book (1974)
- ^ Karl Retzlaw : Spartacus . New Critique Verlag, Frankfurt 1971, pp. 337–338, ISBN 3-8015-0096-9