The Blue Book

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The Blue Book

description German cultural magazine
Area of ​​Expertise Theater, art, politics, business
language German
publishing company Oesterheld & Co. Verlag, Berlin (up to 3rd year); Verlag “Die Weltbühne” (4th year, issues 1–7); Verlag “Das Blaue Heft”, Berlin (up to 11th year), Bergis Verlag, Vienna [u. a.] (up to 13th year) (Germany)
Headquarters Berlin (changing from 1932)
First edition (udT Free German Stage ) August 31, 1919
attitude January 1, 1934
founder Max Epstein
Frequency of publication initially weekly, then monthly, finally bi-monthly
Sold edition 6,000 copies
(Lieselotte Maas: Handbook of the German Exile Press 1933-1945 )
Editor-in-chief Max Epstein (as Free German Stage together with Emil Lind ); from 12th year changing
editor Max Epstein (as Free German Stage together with Emil Lind); from 12th year Walter Maria Ullmann
ZDB 012925519

The Blue Booklet was a cultural magazine that was still called Freie deutsche Bühne from 1919 to 1921 . It established itself from 1921 under the new name. After a short pause in publication with a change of ownership, the magazine came back on the market shortly before Hitler's Reich Chancellor , was banned by the National Socialists and took on the role of a magazine in exile .

history

Free German stage

In 1919 Max Epstein founded a weekly theater magazine in a blue, reinforced cover (with black title and content imprint) and DIN A-5 format (also indicated with " eighth bow " or "8 °") , which is published every Saturday Free German stage . He was able to win Emil Lind and both ran the magazine for two seasons , that is, the first year began on August 31, 1919 and ended with issue 52 on August 22, 1920; accordingly, the second class extended from August 29, 1920 to September 18, 1921. After that, Lind left. The publishing house "Free German Stage" was also given up.

Epstein's blue notebook

After Lind's departure, Epstein renamed the magazine the Blue Booklet due to its visual appearance . The first issue under the new title was published on October 1, 1921 by Oesterheld & Co. Verlag, Berlin. The single issue cost 2 marks ( paper marks ), the quarterly purchase 22 marks and the annual 75 marks. An increase to 2.50 marks for the single issue and 25 or 100 marks for the longer subscription took place within the year. Subscription orders could be made "through any bookstore, post office or directly from the publisher". The volume of the issues that appeared weekly in the third year varied between 24, 28 and 32 pages, which were counted for each year, so they did not start again with page 1 in each issue. The 4th and 5th year only show monthly issues, the size of which is slightly higher than that of the weekly issues. The first seven issues of the 4th volume in 1922/23 were published by the publishing house “Die Weltbühne” before the publishing house “Das Blaue Heft” was set up in Berlin's Friedrichstraße . The galloping inflation of 1923 also caused the magazine price to skyrocket. In the 6th year, the year count and the publication of the now 50 Pfennig ( Reichspfennig ) issues were changed. Issue 1 was published on October 1, 1924, the last issue was a double issue (23/24) that concluded the year in September 1925. The following year was only valid for the rest of 1925 and therefore only consists of six issues. From now on, the years were no longer cross-year, but adjusted to the calendar year, and there was a new edition on the 1st and 15th of each month. The unit price had stabilized at 1 mark and the quarterly price at 5 marks. The page number that was carried forward to be of booklet to booklet, was 32 to 40. The head office was moved to Genthiner road 1928th The 11th year (1929) broke off after issue 5 of March 2, 1929.

Ullmann's blue booklet

The Blue Booklet June 1, 1933

In the summer of 1932 Walter Maria Ullmann bought the fallow sheet and incorporated it into his Bergis Verlag, which he had also bought. The publishing house was in Vienna. Since issue 13 (12.1932 / 33) was printed in Paris, Paris appears as the location from then on. At times, Stuttgart and Basel were also specified, from where employees reported on theater productions. The bi-monthly publication interval (on the 1st and 15th) was retained, as was the cross-issue pagination . The vintage was changed back to the season. The magazine was 32 pages long and the purchase price was 60 pfennigs.

It was inevitable that the Nazis banned the magazine, which continued the founder's intention, in early April 1933. Ullmann found a financier in the intellectual Renaud de Jouvenel and from autumn 1933 was able to publish a parallel French-language edition ( Le Cahier bleu ) with different content.

content

Free German stage

It was Lind who set the programmatic direction that was under the impression of the just ended First World War with its material battles. In the foreword to the first issue it says: “This war was the test of the example: technology. […] If the arm muscle was against the spirit, the brain against the soul, it was a deluge from which remnants of culture were saved. These remains are the ground for new growth. […] A cornerstone of culture is art, so a feeling for art must be preached […] as a means against a new danger. Just as we became slaves to technology because we forgot that all work was only there to help people and not to rise above people, so politics is now threatened with slavery. [...] Not enough detailed work can be done. The weekly publication is for those preschoolers who are chained to acquire them and an incentive for science and art. [...] This is the sense in which this weekly should act. Art in the broadest sense is their realm, the theater the largest province in it. ”The main part of the theater reviews was disputed by Arthur Eloesser , who increasingly - but this is how the magazine understood himself - advanced to become an essayist .

Epstein's blue notebook

The renaming was accompanied by a reorientation in terms of content, which was actually already laid out in the Free German Stage , but was not expressed by the title. The Blue Book was dedicated to the areas of economy, politics and culture. However, these subject areas did not appear until later in the title addition (subtitle), initially the previous main title slipped into the subtitle.

In addition to Eloesser (who moved to Weltbühne in the fall of 1924 because of a refused pay increase ), Kurt Pinthus wrote theater and film-related articles and Egon Friedell , among others, articles on cultural philosophy and literary studies, while Roland Schacht focused on viewing art and film theory and wrote controversial opinions under the pseudonym "Balthasar “Put forward. In the spring of 1924, the latter took over editorial responsibility for a magazine on behalf of Epstein. In addition to the original contributions, excerpts of the works were also printed. The high degree of politicization of the publication was expressed in the fourth volume on October 22, 1921, when an appeal was made to the artist community to initiate events or donate works of art and use the proceeds to benefit the “twenty million starving in Russia”. Many artists signed it, including Käthe Kollwitz , George Grosz , Tilla Durieux , Paul Zech , Martin Buber , Lu Märten , Erwin Piscator , Wieland Herzfelde , Maximilian Harden , Heinrich Vogeler , Hans Baluschek and Alfons Paquet . There were purely economic articles as well as links between this area and art. For example, a month later, Epstein extensively researched theater ticket prices .

Ullmann's blue booklet

Ullmann's new beginning on August 1, 1932, featured an excerpt from Heinrich Mann's Public Life on page 3 under the title The Next War and thus immediately took a socio-political position. The solid warning of the impending loss of civilization, however, was contrasted by an obscure article by the President of the Vienna Parapsychological Institute under the heading Does occultism have cultural value? took the view that the paranormal was above physics and psychology because it was more complex.

For a publication that can be classified as “ left-wing ”, it is noteworthy that Hitler's takeover was not understood as the epochal turning point that one would expect from the authors from today's perspective. One reason for this is the politically turbulent phase at the end of the Weimar Republic , to which one had to a certain extent become used. Furthermore, Das Blaue Heft was not a mouthpiece born out of protest or persecution, but an established periodical. January 31, 1933 was not discussed and on March 1, Rudolf Leonhard used the phrase “the National Socialists in the current government” as if this were a matter of course. Book reviews and performance reviews were printed in the usual form long after the date of the transfer of power, without addressing the endangerment of the artists. The process of understanding the effects of the ideology that supported the state lasted until the first May issue. From this point on, Das Blaue Heft was the avowed information forum for emigrants , especially the market for opinions for writers who had fled Germany. The employees included: Julius Barasch, Max Barth , Günter Dallmann , Alfred Kantorowicz , Egon Erwin Kisch , Rudolf Leonhard, Hans Adalbert von Maltzahn and Maximilian Scheer .

The Blue Booklet had become the first exile magazine by chance and in it the contributors let their emotions run free, sometimes accusing the KPD of having failed, sometimes the SPD ; here the intellectuals were deplored, there they were assigned complicity; Sometimes the goal was to recapture one's homeland, and sometimes to assimilate to the new living environment. Editor Ullmann did not intervene, gave no editorial line, and did not form a united stance. The great openness had its advantage, because the Blue Book soon overtook the Neue Weltbühne because of its “ sectarian narrowness”. In autumn 1933 a common direction did emerge: the essays appealed in tenor to the cohesion of all anti-fascists and conjured up a constructive resistance. With Ullmann's flight from Paris before a police investigation of his financial transactions in early 1934, the completely unexpected end for Das Blaue Heft was sealed, but given the now broad spectrum of the exile press, the loss was bearable.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas Dietzel, Hans-Otto Hügel: German literary magazines 1880-1945. A repertory . Ed .: German Literature Archive Marbach am Neckar. tape 2 : 765 - 1646. German-Austrian. Literaturanzeiger - war newspaper. KG Saur Verlag, Munich / New York / London / Paris 1988, ISBN 3-598-10647-5 , 1031.
  2. ↑ Information from the booklets.
  3. ↑ a b c d e Lieselotte Maas: Handbook of the German Exile Press 1933–1945 . Ed .: Eberhard Lämmert. tape 4 . The newspapers of the German exile in Europe from 1933 to 1939 in individual presentations. Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich / Vienna 1990, ISBN 3-446-13260-0 , Das Blaue Heft, p. 46-50 .
  4. ^ Rita Bake: How will it go on ... Newspaper articles and notes from 1933 and 1934: collected and written down by Elisabeth Flügge . State center for political education, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-929728-58-3 , foreign policy. View of other countries on Germany, p. 66 ( hamburg.de [PDF; 1.7 MB ; accessed on September 21, 2018]).
  5. ^ Lieselotte Maas: Handbook of the German Exile Press 1933–1945 . Ed .: Eberhard Lämmert (=  special publications of the German Library . Volume 1 / Bibliography A – K). Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich / Vienna 1976, ISBN 3-446-12059-9 , Das Blaue Heft, p. 121 f .
  6. ^ Emil Lind: Foreword . In: Die deutsche Bühne , 1.1919 / 20, issue 1, pp. 1–2.
  7. ↑ a b Andreas Terwey: Arthur Eloesser (1870-1928). Criticism as a way of life. (PDF; 724 kB) In: kobv.de. January 18, 2016, p. 122 f , accessed on September 21, 2018 .
  8. ↑ To all artists and intellectuals . In: Das Blaue Heft , 3.1921 / 22, no. 4, p. 114.
  9. ^ Max Epstein: The prices of the theater tickets . In: Das Blaue Heft , 3.1921 / 22, no. 8, pp. 220–224.
  10. ↑ Heinrich Mann: The next war . In: Das Blaue Heft , 12.1932 / 33, no. 1, p. 3.
  11. ^ Karl Camillo Schneider: Does occultism have cultural value? In: Das Blaue Heft , 12.1932 / 33, no. 1, pp. 25–28.
  12. ^ Rudolf Leonhard: Progress and no end . In: Das Blaue Heft , 12.1932 / 33, H. 15, pp. 451–455.