August Theodor Kirsch junior

August Theodor Maria Josef Kirsch (born May 7, 1902 in Vienna ; † October 17, 1959 there ) was an Austrian newspaper editor.

Life

He was the son of August Theodor Kirsch senior and Anna Kirsch (born June 19, 1877 Anna Katzmayer). He had two sisters: Marianne (married upholsterers) and Sissi.

After the death of his father in February 1931, Kirsch junior took over the editorial board of the Weltblatt newspaper and subsequently developed the Catholic press that he had inherited. On the one hand, Kirsch was one of the most outspoken advocates of the authoritarian corporate state and was considered a confidante of Engelbert Dollfuss and Kurt Schuschnigg , but he also managed to remain the only private newspaper publisher in Vienna after the " Anschluss " and on the other hand after the end of the Second World War to regain his position as a highly honored functionary of the Austrian press. From April 6, 1938, the flagship of Kirsch's press group, the Neuigkeits-Welt-Blatt, had the subtitle "Vienna's oldest Aryan daily newspaper".

The press policy of the Nazi regime soon had a clear impact on the Austrian newspaper market. As early as 1940 August Theodor Kirsch was the only private publisher of a newspaper in former Austria. Kirsch's anti-Semitic attitude and the otherwise rather apolitical orientation of his papers are regarded as reasons for this privileged special position. Kirsch junior was also part of the Nazi regime because of his active membership in the " Austrian Leo Society ", founded in 1892 and dissolved in 1938, after Pope Leo XII. named Catholic educational association suspect. Kirsch's anchoring in Catholic institutions was likely to have been instrumental in his resurgence after 1945.

An extremely critical article on October 6, 1945 in the daily newspaper “ Neues Österreich ” led to Kirsch's arrest. Shortly after the first elections to the National Council on November 25, 1945, Kirsch was able to continue his career as a printer and newspaper publisher with the support of the ÖVP . On January 4, 1946, he received permission to publish the two sheets "Illustrierte Wochenschau" and "Illustrierte Romanzeitung" again. Kommerzialrat Kirsch's high-circulation weekly newspapers played an important role in the Austrian media market in the 1950s, in 1954 Kirsch became a member of the Association of Austrian Newspapers (VÖZ) founded in 1946, and in 1956 chairman of the weekly newspapers section.

literature

• Silke Pixner: Master's thesis (e-thesis, University of Vienna ): Press policy in the NS era - a group biographical analysis of the editors of the newspaper "NeuigkeitsWelt-Blatt" , which was discontinued in 1943 , Vienna 2010, especially p. 67 ff ( PDF )