Company newspaper

In the GDR, company newspapers usually appeared in companies and institutions with more than 1,000 employees.

The 667 company newspapers in the GDR functioned as a political management tool for the SED's company party organizations . Most of them can be assigned to industry , construction , mining and trade , 42 to the Deutsche Reichsbahn , and another 45 to transport and communications . In the printing works , the company newspapers were mostly produced in half-Rhenish format on the machines that the organs of the SED district leaderships printed in the evenings .

Typical titles were: Our Nuclear Power Plant , Initiator , Machine Builder and Effective , Planzeiger or Our Peace Work , Spotlight and Start .

At the end of the 1980s, the circulation of the company and university newspapers, which mostly appeared weekly or fortnightly, was just under 2.2 million copies. Some of the once 20 newspapers that operated as organs of the university and college party leadership of the SED have survived - sometimes under a different name, such as the Dresden University Journal. Today they have a not insignificant information and service function both as the rector's body and as the company newspaper.

Company newspapers in the library holdings

• WF-Sender , company newspaper for the working people in the VEB factory for television electronics Berlin, 1949–1990, ZLB
• Karussell , organ of the SED operational organization of VEB Großdrehmaschinenbau “7. October “ Berlin-Weißensee, 1954–1968, ZLB
• Start , organ of the management of the party organization of the SED Interflug , 1990, ZLB
• The Lautawerker , organ of the SED operational organization of the VEB Chemiewerk Lauta , 1959–1990, SLB , literature from and about the company newspaper in the catalog of the German National Library