Berliner Volks-Zeitung

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The Berliner Volks-Zeitung (BVZ) was a regional German daily newspaper in the greater Berlin area from 1904 to 1944 . It was published by Rudolf Mosse Verlag until 1933 , then by Buch- und Tiefdruck GmbH and from 1937 by Deutsches Verlag . The direct predecessor of the paper was the Volks-Zeitung , founded by Franz Duncker in 1853 .

A broad section of the population, especially workers and petty bourgeoisie, was envisaged as the target group . The main focus was on sensational reports and entertainment. Information from business life was clearly underrepresented throughout its existence. In the German Empire , the paper dominated particularly in the strong street sales and developed into a successful tabloid . Until 1918 the editorial team practiced an interpretive journalism , in which attention was paid to neutrality and political balance of the reporting.

In the Weimar Republic , the Berliner Volks-Zeitung represented republican positions. During this time it took a left-liberal position , often with the subheading Mitteilungsblatt der DDP Berlin , and developed into an unofficial party publication of the German Democratic Party (DDP). In doing so, the editorial team practiced clearly recognizable opinion journalism , which contributed to a significant drop in circulation and a threat to the publisher's existence . After the seizure of power of the Nazis and mandatory DC circuit of the tabloid style was retained. Thanks to a particularly affordable subscription insurance and a relaunch in which graphics, fonts , text, images and mettage were given a modern look, the newspaper once again developed into a popular capital city newspaper from 1933 onwards.

Until 1943 the Berliner Volks-Zeitung appeared twelve times a week, from Tuesday to Saturday with a morning and an evening edition, on Sundays only with a morning edition (later called "Sunday BVZ"), on Mondays only with an evening edition. Around a year before the newspaper was closed, there was a reduction to seven issues a week, which went on sale every evening. It was made in the Berlin format . The morning edition cost 10 pfennig in retail and the evening edition 5 pfennig. The head office of the newspaper was in the Lützowstrasse 104-105 until 1904, then in the Mossehaus until 1939 and then in the Ullsteinhaus in Berlin.

prehistory

Title head from November 29, 1891

The origins of the Berlin Volks-Zeitung go to the Franz Duncker and Aaron Bernstein founded and from April 1, 1849 periodical primary voters newspaper back. Due to communist and radical democratic content, the paper was banned several times by the Prussian Ministry of the Interior for a longer period of time. On April 9, 1853, Duncker took over the shares in Bernstein and continued the newspaper as the people's newspaper - organ for everyone from the people . In the early 1860s, according to the publisher's own statistics , the Volks-Zeitung is said to have been one of the highest-circulation publications in the Prussian capital with around 22,000 copies .

In 1885 the publisher Emil Cohn bought the sheet. The editor-in-chief of the newspaper was Adolph Phillips between 1884 and 1886 . His successor was Hermann Trescher , who handed over the editor-in-chief to Franz Mehring in April 1889 for health reasons . Mehring had been working for the Volks-Zeitung since 1884 . Because of his Marxist views and the associated steady decline in circulation, he came increasingly into conflict with Emil Cohn. Mehring's campaign against the socialist laws led to the repeated banning of the newspaper and endangered the publisher's existence . In the fall of 1890, Franz Mehring was dismissed without notice.

In 1892 Karl Vollrath took over the chief editor, who held this position for 23 years until his death. Vollrath gave up the Marxist reading of the newspaper, but could not stop the decline in circulation in the following twelve years. Due to the competition with the Berliner Tageblatt , the Volks-Zeitung got increasingly into financial difficulties and only led a shadowy existence. In 1904 Cohn sold the newspaper to his ex-partner and brother-in-law Rudolf Mosse , who renamed the paper from July 1 of the same year the Berliner Volks-Zeitung .

Rise to the mass newspaper

Rudolf Mosse around 1916

When Mosse took over the newspaper, the circulation was less than 20,000 copies. Ten years later it had risen to 140,000 and in 1916, according to the company's own statistics, even reached 225,000. The positive development was due not least to the fact that the Berliner Volks-Zeitung was able to benefit from the news and picture service of the Berliner Tageblatt as well as from the routine advertising and sales organization of the Mosse Verlag. Confirmed information on the number of copies does not exist, however, as there were no official surveys until 1933 and it can be shown that the statistics at Mosse were interpreted very generously until then .

In terms of content, Mosse changed the sheet completely. The focus was on sensational reports such as records, accidents, assassinations, crimes and other exceptional facts. There was an unmistakable close relationship with the Berliner Morgen-Zeitung and the Berliner Tageblatt , which also came from the Mosse family. It was not uncommon for the same serial novels, photos and reports to appear on the pages of the Berliner Volks-Zeitung . As a special reprint, the sheet contained a cookbook in booklet form, a yearbook and a calendar each year . The regular supplements, for example the illustrated house and garden newspaper , the Technische Rundschau or the Ulk , were also identical to the Berliner Tageblatt .

The newspaper, like all Mosse publications, contained many classified ads and, especially on weekends, very large commercial advertisements . In contrast, the morning and evening editions of the Berliner Volks-Zeitung differed considerably in their presentation. The morning edition consisted mostly of ten pages with a few pictures. It wasn't until 1929 that the front page had two photos in miniature form at the top of the head. Below the head of the newspaper, the first page was mostly blank and contained an editorial and one or two other reports along with sensational headlines . The insides dealt with politics, local things, sports and culture. Sensational reporting was a permanent feature in all categories. In contrast, the evening edition only had four pages on average, on which only photos were shown. Thematically, images with unrelated sensational motifs predominantly of accidents, crimes, catastrophes or scandals predominated. The only text elements on the photo pages were headlines above and below the pictures.

With this form of appearance, Mosse deliberately and successfully attacked the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung and the Berliner Morgenpost of its main competitor, Ullstein Verlag . Until the collapse of the German Empire , the Berliner Volks-Zeitung dominated, especially in street sales, and developed into a mass medium in Berlin . Although Mosse as well as Vollrath were active members of the German Freedom Party , the paper represented exclusively proletarian interests - in line with the target group of the readership. During Mosse's lifetime, strict attention was paid to a certain neutrality and / or partisan balance on political issues. Basically, the Berliner Volks-Zeitung at that time did not report facts as a comment , but as a report or news . When Karl Vollrath died of a stroke on October 20, 1915 , Otto Nuschke took over the editor-in-chief, who had been working as parliamentary editor for the Berliner Tageblatt at Mosse-Verlag since 1910 .

Development in the Weimar Republic

Nuschke, who was less a journalist and more a politician, remained editor-in-chief of the Berliner Volks-Zeitung until 1930 . From 1910 he represented the left-liberal Progressive People's Party as General Secretary, in 1918 he was a co-founder of the German Democratic Party (DDP), from 1919 to 1920 a member of the National Assembly and from 1921 to 1933 a member of the Prussian Landtag . To investigative journalism Nuschke contributed little. In any case, the so-called “Tageblatt Group” ( Berliner Tageblatt, Berliner Morgen-Zeitung, Berliner Volks-Zeitung ) had actually been under the direction of Theodor Wolff , editor-in-chief of the Berliner Tageblatt, since 1917 .

Rudolf Mosse died in 1920 at Schenkendorf Castle . His son-in-law Hans Lachmann-Mosse became the new owner of the publishing house . However, Wolff, whose political ambitions also outweighed journalistic ambitions, and Otto Nuschke had a lasting impact on further development. By 1920 at the latest, no Mosse newspaper can be described as journalistically impartial. In particular, the Berliner Volks-Zeitung developed into a fighting paper and mouthpiece for the DDP. Almost every article now contained comments in which the radical democratic programs of the DDP and its private market principles were unilaterally promoted. Although Nuschke and Wolff retained the style of a tabloid newspaper , they specifically selected the topics according to their points of view or missed events a political component.

Not only left, right or conservatives were fought. The editors of the Berliner Volks-Zeitung also targeted democratically elected cabinets in which the DDP was not represented . The methods went far beyond verbal attacks. The founding of the Republican Party of Germany (RPD) met with such resolute opposition from Wolff that, among other things, it prompted the dismissal of Carl von Ossietzky , who worked as a foreign policy assistant and editor at the Berliner Volks-Zeitung from 1920 to 1924 and was a founding member of the RPD was. Kurt Tucholsky , who worked as editor-in-chief at Ulk, had a similar experience. In a disparaging retrospect, he described Theodor Wolff as a condescending, “somewhat stupid man” with “allegedly so liberal” but one-sided principles.

The politicization of the Berliner Volks-Zeitung led to a continuous decline in circulation. The tone of instruction in particular met with less and less acceptance from many readers. Various DDP MPs used the sheet as a political forum. For example, Hugo Preuss , who was against federal structures and for a centralized state , published regular “Appeals to the German People” in the Berliner Volks-Zeitung . More and more Nuschke, but especially the hardliner Wolff, turned a blind eye to the true conditions in the Weimar Republic and the needs and problems of its readership. This culminated in constant DDP advertising supplements and propagated programs of “social capitalism” in which workers and entrepreneurs should mutually recognize “duty, right, performance 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.

The party-related one-sidedness of the editorial team met with increasing criticism from Hans Lachmann-Mosse, who foresaw a decrease in circulation with a readership that was increasingly diverging politically. In addition, there was a public image - especially among workers - that the DDP was a "party of high capital". By 1928 the circulation of the Berliner Volks-Zeitung had fallen to 70,000. The Ullstein Verlag , which up until the end of the Weimar Republic maintained an emphatically neutral news style in all of its publications, benefited most from this . Readers from the Mosse company ran in droves, but above all advertisers, especially the Berliner Morgenpost , which was able to develop into the highest circulation newspaper in the Weimar Republic by 1929 with an exorbitant circulation of 614,680 copies. Until recently, the editors at Ullstein Verlag practiced impartial journalism.

With the decrease in circulation of the Mosse newspapers, the per- thousand contact price in the advertising business fell . The group had to record immense drops in sales in all of its publications. In the spring of 1928, the publisher's house bank indicated an impending insolvency . Lachmann-Mosse tried by all means to turn things around, but met with little understanding from Wolff and Nuschke with cost-cutting measures and requests for changes in content. At this point in time, orderly insolvency proceedings could have saved at least parts of the group; with the start of the global economic crisis in 1929 , this was no longer possible. In December 1930, long-time chief legal advisor and authorized signatory Martin Carbe left the publishing house. He switched to Ullstein Verlag, which was an incredible event in the entire press landscape. In fact , the Mosse management postponed bankruptcy until autumn 1932.

Although the Berliner Tageblatt recorded the highest losses, Lachmann-Mosse was the first to take countermeasures at the Berliner Volks-Zeitung . The number of pages and inserts was reduced, and color prints were no longer required. This was followed by cuts in fees and dismissals for political editors. In 1930, in consultation between Hans Lachmann-Mosse and Theodor Wolff, there was a bang: Otto Nuschke's dismissal. The background to this was the merger of the DDP with the Volksnationalen Reichsvereinigung (VNR) to form the German State Party . In contrast to Wolff, Nuschke had no fear of contact with the VNR, which was closely associated with the conservative-anti-Semitic Young German Order . Nuschke became Reich Managing Director of the German State Party and editor-in-chief of the newly founded party newspaper Deutscher Aufstieg . After 1945 he took over the party leadership of the Eastern CDU and became Deputy Prime Minister of the GDR .

For Lachmann-Mosse, Nuschke's dismissal did not represent a liberation. Theodor Wolff himself took over the editorial management of the Berliner Volks-Zeitung for a short time , appointed Kurt Caro as editor-in-chief in mid-1930 and continued his political line. In principle, the sixty-year-old Theodor Wolff could not be terminated. Although he repeatedly threatened to resign from office, in reality he was fighting to keep his power. Wolff's rumors of resignation caused great unrest not only within the workforce; he even made them a public topic in newspaper articles, so that the publisher's difficulties remained no secret in political Berlin. This was followed by the economic collapse of the Mosse group in autumn 1932 .

On September 13, 1932 bankruptcy proceedings had to be opened. Over 3,000 jobs were at stake. The auditor Walter Haupt was appointed as the insolvency administrator . He tried to continue the company in rescue companies , but also offered parts of the publisher for sale, with which he wanted to restore the ability to act and liquidity . His efforts were unsuccessful. No potential buyer saw opportunities to continue the publishing house economically.

time of the nationalsocialism

After several incidents, Wolff received his dismissal from Lachmann-Mosse on March 3, 1933 and left Germany five days later. Hans Lachmann-Mosse fled to Paris on April 1, 1933, and from there initiated the conversion of the group into a foundation on April 15, 1933. On the same day, Rudolf Mosse OHG stopped all payments. On July 12, 1933, the foundation also stopped making payments. During this phase, the National Socialists came to power and brought the press into line. Joseph Goebbels stated that he did not want to break up the publishing house because of the many jobs. In autumn 1933, Max Winkler was appointed as the new insolvency administrator, and in 1934 he transferred all of the former Mosse newspapers to the Berliner Druck- und Zeitungsbetriebe AG , which was specially founded as a collecting company .

Although the circulation of the Berliner Volks-Zeitung was increased, among other things by a cheap subscription insurance and a relaunch , no Mosse-Zeitung could generate more profits. As part of the four-year plan and the associated rationalization measures, the Berliner Volks-Zeitung came to Deutsche Verlag in 1937 . Here the paper developed with many pictures and short reports into one of the most widely read capital city newspapers in street sales, which from 1940 found many buyers mainly at the gates of large armaments factories. The circulation of the evening edition alone rose to 251,995 copies per day by 1943, most of which were quickly sold out by the workers on the night shifts.

Due to the measures for “total warfare” , the Reich Press Chamber imposed paper-saving restrictions in early 1943, such as “changes in the frequency and volume of newspapers, the temporary shutdown of newspapers and the amalgamation of daily newspapers of the German publishing house”. In this episode, the Berliner Volks-Zeitung appeared from March 1943 only as an evening edition. The Berliner Morgenpost took over the subscribers for the closed morning edition . The last edition appeared on September 30, 1944. It was officially stated that the newspaper would not be discontinued but would be merged with the Berliner Morgenpost .

literature

  • Jürgen Frölich : The Berlin "Volks-Zeitung" 1853 to 1867. Prussian left-wing liberalism between "reaction" and "revolution from above." in: Europäische Hochschulschriften , Series 3, History and its auxiliary sciences, Volume 422. Lang Verlag, 1990, ISBN 3-631-42579-1 .
  • 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.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Björn Biester, Carsten Wurm: Archive for the history of the book industry. Volume 70.Walter de Gruyter, 2015, p. 146.
  2. ↑ Karsten Schilling: The Destroyed Legacy: Portrait of Berlin Newspapers of the Weimar Republic. Diss. Norderstedt, 2011, pp. 239-249 f.
  3. ^ Richard Kohnen: Press Policy of the German Confederation: Methods of State Press Policy after the Revolution of 1848. Kohnen-Vogell, 1995, p. 132 f.
  4. ^ Hans-Ulrich Wehler: German history of society. Volume 3: From the German double revolution to the beginning of the First World War. 1849-1914. CH Beck, 1995, p. 438.
  5. ^ Franz Brümmer: Lexicon of German poets and prose writers from the beginning of the 19th century to the present. Volume 7. Leipzig, 1913, p. 215.
  6. ^ Thomas cave: Franz Mehring. His way to Marxism . Berlin 1958, p. 245.
  7. ^ Franz Mehring. In: Project literary criticism Germany at the University of Marburg. ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / cgi-host.uni-marburg.de
  8. ^ Ernst Heilborn (Ed.): The literary echo . Monthly for lovers of literature. F. Fontane and Company, 1915, p. 259.
  9. ^ Elisabeth Kraus: The Mosse family: German-Jewish bourgeoisie in the 19th and 20th centuries. CH Beck, 1999. p. 184.
  10. ↑ Institute for Comparative Media and Communication Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences
  11. ^ Elisabeth Kraus: also, p. 184.
  12. ↑ Karsten Schilling, likewise. P. 209 f.
  13. ↑ Karsten Schilling: also, p. 240.
  14. ^ Jürgen Wilke: Press instructions in the twentieth century: First World War, Third Reich, GDR. Böhlau Verlag, 2007, p. 28.
  15. ^ Lemo biography Otto Nuschke
  16. ^ Elisabeth Kraus: also, p. 181 and p. 473.
  17. ^ Gotthart Schwarz: Theodor Wolff and the "Berliner Tageblatt": a liberal voice in German politics, 1906-1933. Mohr Verlag, 1968, p. 99 f.
  18. ↑ Margret Boveri: We all lie. Walter Olten, 1965. p. 38.
  19. ^ Friedhelm Greis, Ian King: Tucholsky and the media: Documentation of the 2005 conference: "We live in a strange newspaper". Röhrig Universitätsverlag, 2006. pp. 21–27.
  20. ↑ Michael Hepp: Kurt Tucholsky. Rowohlt Verlag, 2015. p. 134.
  21. ↑ Detlef Lehnert, Klaus Megerle: Pluralism as a constitutional and social model: On political culture in the Weimar Republic. Springer-Verlag, 2013, pp. 36–37.
  22. ↑ Werner Stephan: Rise and Decline of Left Liberalism 1918-1933. The history of the German Democratic Party. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973. P. 94 f.
  23. ^ German Democratic Party (DDP) / German State Party 1918–1933 ( German Historical Museum )
  24. ↑ Konstanze Wegner: Left liberalism in Wilhelmine Germany and in the Weimar Republic. A literature review. In: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 4, 1978. p. 120.
  25. ↑ Institute for Comparative Media and Communication Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences
  26. ↑ Karsten Schilling: also, pp. 197–205.
  27. ^ Karl Schottenloher, Johannes Binkowski: Flyer and newspaper: From 1848 to the present. Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1985, p. 116 f.
  28. ↑ Werner Faulstich : The culture of the 30s and 40s. Fink Wilhelm Verlag, 2009, p. 155.
  29. ↑ Kraus, also, p. 366 f.
  30. ^ Norbert Frei, Johannes Schmitz: Journalism in the Third Reich. CH Beck, 2011. p. 41.
  31. ^ Margret Boveri: also, p. 36.
  32. ^ Lemo biography Otto Nuschke
  33. ^ Wolfram Köhler: The chief editor Theodor Wolff. Droste, 1978, p. 154.
  34. ^ Elisabeth Kraus: also, p. 513
  35. ↑ Winfried B. Lerg: Max Winkler, the financial technician of the synchronization. Zeitungsverlag and Zeitschriftenverlag, 1961, pp. 610–612.
  36. ↑ Margret Boveri: We all lie - A capital newspaper under Hitler. Olten Verlag, 1965, p. 92 f.
  37. ^ Kraus, also, p. 501.
  38. ^ David Oels: Archives for the history of the book industry. Volume 70.De Gruyter, 2015, p. 142.
  39. ↑ David Oels: also, p. 146
  40. ↑ David Oels: also, p. 146
  41. ^ Günther Schulz (ed.): Business with words and opinions. Media entrepreneur since the 18th century. Oldenbourg-Verlag, 1999. pp. 88 f.