Arno Scholz

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Arno Helmut Erwin Scholz (born February 22, 1904 in Rixdorf near Berlin , † July 30, 1971 in Berlin) was a German journalist , publicist and publisher . The daily newspaper Telegraf , which he published , was one of the most influential newspapers of the Berlin post-war years.

Life

Arno Scholz 'parents were the future district mayor of Berlin-Neukölln Alfred Scholz (1876-1944) and the city ​​councilor of Berlin Gertrud Scholz (1881-1950). His older sister was Hertha Beese (1902–1987), who was appointed city ​​elder in Berlin in 1972 .

During his apprenticeship as a publishing clerk, he joined the SPD in 1922 . Two years later he volunteered at Vorwärts and then worked there as a permanent editor until he accepted a position as editor of the newspaper Volkswille in Hanover in 1930 . After the " seizure of power " by the Nazis in 1933 he was politically persecuted and banned from his profession .

The British military newspaper Der Berliner appointed Scholz as managing director in 1945. In the following year he was able to win both the former Reichstag President Paul Löbe and Annedore Leber , the widow of the social democratic resistance fighter Julius Leber, who had been murdered by the National Socialists, as co-license holders for the telegraph , and thus also laid the foundation for the rapidly developing publishing company Arani-Verlag . The rulers there resented his unswerving struggle for an independent SPD in the Soviet zone - the sale of the telegraph there became completely impossible with the construction of the Wall in 1961, after it had already been forced into illegality in the 1950s.

In December 1948, Scholz was elected to the city council, of which he was a member until 1950.

Scholz, who had been involved in party politics for the SPD throughout the years (he was one of the founding members of the Kuratorium Indivisible Germany ), was elected deputy chairman of the Federal Association of German Newspaper Publishers in 1970. Because of his contribution to the city of Berlin, he received in 1964 by the then Mayor Willy Brandt , the Federal Cross of Merit .

The Telegraf was one of the most important newspapers in West Berlin in the 1950s and 1960s . Scholz also established the Nacht-Depesche as the morning paper , in which he appointed Werner Nieke as editor-in-chief. In the heyday of Telegraf and nacht-depesche , outstanding post-war journalists worked in Scholz's publishing house on Bismarckplatz in Berlin-Grunewald - among them the editor and later editor-in-chief Eberhard Grashoff , Rudolf Brendemühl and Hans Hermann Theobald , who jointly headed the local editorial office, the correspondent at Economic Councilor of the Bizone Hilde Purwin , the head of the cultural policy department Georg Zivier , the head of the weekly supplement Frauen-Telegraf Susanne Suhr , the head of the feuilleton Dora Fehling , and the reporter Alexander Kulpok .

After Scholz's death in 1971, the SPD could no longer save his publishing house, which had gotten more and more into difficulties due to the political circumstances. SPD treasurer Alfred Nau finally stopped the telegraph on June 30, 1972; the group was "wound up". Only the private photo archive and parts of the estate could be preserved within the archive of social democracy through the takeover of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation .

literature

  • Werner Breunig, Siegfried Heimann , Andreas Herbst : Biographical Handbook of Berlin City Councilors and Members of Parliament 1946–1963 (=  series of publications by the Berlin State Archives . Volume 14 ). Landesarchiv Berlin , Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-9803303-4-3 , p. 243 (331 pages).
  • Siegfried Mielke (Ed.) With the collaboration of Marion Goers, Stefan Heinz , Matthias Oden, Sebastian Bödecker: Unique - Lecturers, students and representatives of the German University of Politics (1920-1933) in the resistance against National Socialism. Lukas-Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-86732-032-0 , p. 112 f. (Short biography).
  • Susanne Grebner: The telegraph. Creation of a licensed newspaper close to the SPD in Berlin from 1946 to 1950 . LIT Verlag, Berlin / Hamburg / Münster 2002, ISBN 3-8258-4540-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ spiegel.de: Der Steinige Weg / DER SPIEGEL 22/1948 , (accessed on September 6, 2018)
  2. ↑ berndbauerverlag.de: The honorary citizen. Press comments after the Berlin premiere in 1963 , (accessed on September 6, 2018)
  3. ↑ zeitzeugen-portal.de: Alexander Kulpok - journalist by chance , (accessed on September 6, 2018)
personal data
SURNAME Scholz, Arno
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Scholz, Arno Helmut Erwin (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist, publicist and publisher
DATE OF BIRTH February 22, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Rixdorf near Berlin
DATE OF DEATH July 30, 1971
Place of death Berlin