Berliner Morgen-Zeitung

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Berliner Morgen-Zeitung was a regional German daily newspaper in the greater Berlin area from 1889 to 1939 . It was published by Rudolf Mosse Verlag until 1934 , then by Buch- und Tiefdruck GmbH and from 1937 by Deutsches Verlag . The paper cost 10 pfennigs and was published once a day with an average of eight pages, with the Monday edition mostly only comprising two and the Tuesday edition only six pages. Conceived as a popular paper, the newspaper was aimed at workers and petty bourgeoisie . The newspaper was of little political importance.

useful information

The first edition of the Berliner Morgen-Zeitung appeared on April 1, 1889. With the paper, Rudolf Mosse specifically competed with the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger of the Scherl-Verlag and the Berliner Morgenpost of the Ullstein Verlag . ". Wide lower classes" in their own words of the founder, got the paper from the beginning a "popular, middle-class character without high political ambitions" and was aimed at as motto the newspaper had the honest sentence : "In essence genuine. Right in action. Clear in words. True in the sense. "

Accordingly, only brief information was provided about events in politics, agriculture, trade and industry. The main focus was on sensational reports such as records, accidents, assassinations, crimes and other exceptional facts. There was an unmistakable close relationship to the Berliner Volks-Zeitung and the Berliner Tageblatt , which also came from the Mosse family. It was not uncommon for the same serial novels, photos, reports and sometimes the same supplements to appear on the pages of the Berliner Morgen-Zeitung . As a special special print supplement, the paper contained an annual cookbook in booklet form, a yearbook and a calendar .

According to the Mosse group, the circulation shortly after the newspaper was founded was just under 60,000, then 150,000 in 1902 and stagnating at 100,000 from 1911 to 1929. At that time, shareholders, lenders and advertisers were already questioning these company statistics . There was an aggressive battle for advertisers among the approximately 4,700 daily and weekly newspapers that existed, so that even then publishers were happy to correct the circulation upwards because of the cost of thousands of contacts. In this context, the house bank of the Mosse Group found in 1929 that the 3.2 million inhabitants in Berlin only had 308,900 households and 147 daily and weekly newspapers published in the Reich capital or 4,700 throughout the Reich.

The information is also improbable because often in the same period of time the circulation figures for the Berliner Volks-Zeitung were 160,000 and for the Berliner Tageblatt 300,000. If only Ullstein Verlag is then taken into account, which claims to have achieved 1,952,740 copies at the same time with its Berliner Morgenpost 623,000 and the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung say und Schweige 1,952,740, then the whole thing can be described as “ reductio ad absurdum ”. Uniform control mechanisms were not installed until 1933. Only the information for the following years is considered certain:

Theodor Wolff , editor-in-chief of the Berliner Tageblatt , had a considerable influence on the content of the Berliner Morgen-Zeitung at the latest after the November Revolution of 1918 . Contrary to the intentions of the founding father, the paper became increasingly politicized after his death, which led to a dramatic decrease in circulation. Wolff's closeness to the German Democratic Party (DDP) and his left-wing liberal agitation in all Mosse publications were in clear contradiction to the needs and problems of the Berliner Morgen-Zeitung in particular . This culminated in articles on programs of “social capitalism” in which workers and entrepreneurs should recognize each other's “duty, right, achievement and profit”. With rising unemployment, cuts in social benefits, tax increases and the pressure of reparations burdens, these visionary ideas were completely unrealistic. Accordingly, towards the end of the Weimar Republic, the left-wing liberals only achieved about one percent in elections and sank to insignificance.

After the economic collapse of Rudolf Mosse OHG , the newspaper was to be wound up in 1932. At the instigation of Joseph Goebbels , the liquidation was stopped. Especially for this purpose, the Buch- und Tiefdruck GmbH was founded in 1934 as a collecting company , in which from then on newspapers of the insolvent Mosse group were produced. As part of the four-year plan and the associated rationalization measures, the Berliner Morgen-Zeitung came to Deutscher Verlag in 1937. The last edition appeared on February 15, 1939. It was officially stated that the newspaper would not be discontinued, but would be merged with the Berliner Morgenpost and the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger to form the Berliner Morgenpost .

literature

  • Carl Schneider: Handbook of the German daily press. Published by the Institute for Newspaper Studies at the University of Berlin. Armanen-Verlag, 1937.
  • Günther Schulz (Ed.): Business with words and opinions. Media entrepreneur since the 18th century. Oldenbourg Publishing House, 1999.
  • Elisabeth Kraus: The Mosse family: German-Jewish bourgeoisie in the 19th and 20th centuries. CH Beck, 1999.
  • Karsten Schilling: The Destroyed Legacy: Portrait of Berlin Newspapers of the Weimar Republic. Diss. Norderstedt, 2011.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Karsten Schilling: The Destroyed Legacy: Portrait of Berlin Newspapers of the Weimar Republic. Diss. Norderstedt, 2011. pp. 209 f.
  2. ^ Elisabeth Kraus: The Mosse family: German-Jewish bourgeoisie in the 19th and 20th centuries. CH Beck, 1999. pp. 522 f.
  3. ↑ Monica Cioli: Pragmatism and Ideology. Duncker & Humblot, 2003. p. 264.
  4. ↑ Wolfgang Duchkowitsch, Fritz Hausjell, Walter Hömberg, Arnulf Kutsch, Irene Neverla: Journalism as Culture: Analyzes and Essays. Springer-Verlag, 2013. p. 34.
  5. ↑ Kraus, ibid. P. 183.
  6. ↑ Karsten Schilling, likewise. P. 209 f.
  7. ↑ Sabine Rennefanz: The IVW's circulation numbers are not always exact. Berliner Zeitung, November 28, 2001.
  8. ^ Otto Altendorfer, Ludwig Hilmer: Media Management: Volume 2: Medienpraxis. Media history. Media regulations. Springer-Verlag, 2015. p. 164.
  9. ↑ Institute for Comparative Media and Communication Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences
  10. ↑ David Oels, Ute Schneider: "The whole publishing house is simply a bonbonniere": Ullstein in the first half of the 20th century. Walter de Gruyter, 2015. p. 266.
  11. ↑ Institute for Comparative Media and Communication Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences
  12. ↑ [Kraus, ibid. P. 184.]
  13. ↑ Werner Stephan: Rise and Decline of Left Liberalism 1918-1933. The history of the German Democratic Party. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973. P. 94 f.
  14. ^ German Democratic Party (DDP) / German State Party 1918–1933 ( German Historical Museum )
  15. ↑ Kraus, ibid. P. 522.
  16. ^ Günther Schulz (ed.): Business with words and opinions. Media entrepreneur since the 18th century. Oldenbourg-Verlag, 1999. pp. 88 f.