The forum

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The forum

description German literary magazine
publishing company _
  • Munich: Forum (1st year 1914 / 15-2nd year 1915);
  • Potsdam: Gustav Kiepenheuer (3rd year 1918/19 - 4th year 1919/20);
  • Berlin: Gustav Kiepenheuer (5th year 1920/21, numbers 1–2)
First edition 1914
attitude 1929
Frequency of publication per month
editor Wilhelm Herzog

The Forum was a literary magazine that appeared monthly in Munich from April 1914 to 1929 and was edited by Wilhelm Herzog .

history

Herzog was friends with Heinrich Mann , who contributed a monologue by Flaubert from the essay A Friendship, Gustave Flaubert and George Sand to the first issue . The magazine was published by a specially founded publishing house and brought out numerous first publications. The authors included Frank Wedekind , Kurt Eisner and Romain Rolland . The much-noticed platform of literary activism took a stand against the war even before the First World War and was banned by the press department of the Bavarian War Ministry in September 1915 . After the war, Herzog continued the forum until 1929. In March 1915, the press department dealt more closely with the content of the monthly magazine "Das Forum". It initially determined:

"Since the beginning of the war, the forum has been enjoying itself in promoting a completely out of date Europeanism and an unpatriotic, pessimistic view of the world and life, the dissemination and reinforcement of which in the unfortunately very uncomfortable" over-eyed "German society seems undesirable."

In personal discussions with the editor of the magazine, Wilhelm Herzog, the censors tried to change the content. Another letter from the press department called on Herzog to refrain in future from propagating an “outdated aesthetics and Europeanism that would have a harmful effect on national defense”. It was emphatically indicated to Herzog to become aware of his patriotic responsibility and, as a consequence, no longer to publish in the "Forum" that tendency "which could work against the manly, trusting and self-confident mood and attitude of our people". In June of the same year, the department assigned Herzog and his forum to "the leading spirits of the current pacifist circles which are beginning to be very active in advertising".

The responsible speaker characterized the supporters of pacifist ideas with the words:

“These gentlemen cannot find words enough to criticize the power and unity of action that pervades our entire nation and to replace it with that soft aesthetic with its vague, effeminate, international goals, to which the aesthetic turn of some foreign writer means more than the Germans' will to win. "

The press department also initially adhered to the principle of benevolent cooperation with the press towards Herzog and the forum.

In repeated written and verbal warnings, the censors tried again and again to find a satisfactory solution. Since the efforts were obviously fruitless, Herzog received a warning. The thought of a ban on appearances was considered in the ministry; At this point in time, however, it could not be realized because the censorship "lacked a sufficiently formal reason", as the files said. Keeping the truce was one of the most important guidelines for censorship during the war. In July 1915, Herzog submitted an article to the censors that contained no pacifist tendencies. However, the censors did not allow the article to be published because, in the opinion of the authorities, the content represented a threat to sectarian peace. In the detailed justification for the decision, it was pointed out again that the factually correct or incorrect content of an article was not censored, but that the decision of the report was based solely on the point of view of the possible effects on the public. The censorship department had thus tried once again to explain to Herzog the motivation for the censorship activity. The maintenance of a unanimous popular mood was a military necessity of the first order. In the eyes of the military censorship, the spread of pacifist tendencies was just as much a threat to the unified popular mood as the conflict between the various denominations.

In August 1915, the chief censorship office of the war press office suggested strict monitoring of all magazines that were read by foreign countries due to their content and used for counter-propaganda against the Reich.

Since a large number of copies of the forum were sent abroad, this suggestion from Berlin also referred to the forum. On September 4, 1915, the press department once again informed the publisher, Herzog, of the major concerns that still existed about the content of the magazine and its distribution. On September 11, 1915, the files said:

“Nonetheless, Herzog sticks to his way of downgrading and maliciously criticizing the patriotic sentiment and related publications by tendentiously compiling pacifist voices from home and abroad, quotations, etc. In addition, attempts are made again and again to push the alleged guilt or main blame for the war on the German government or the ruling circles, especially in Germany. "

Blanks

The initial concession towards the forum and its editor soon came to an end. In the course of time, the press department was forced to make larger and larger deletions.

Herzog had the passages deleted by the censorship removed from the printing set, which showed the attentive reader where the censor had intervened.

Censor italics

When the press department did not want to allow the article by an Austrian social democrat to be published, Herzog asked the department to introduce amendments to the deleted sections. The report came at Herzog's request and had the changes proposed by the censorship in italics.

Such a clarification of the authorship was also not acceptable to the censors and they had the corresponding sheets removed from the magazine.

As a precaution, the censorship agency had ordered the printer of the magazine to present the magazine to the War Office again before delivery. In view of the fact that Herzog had also tried to “cleverly thwart the censor's benevolent intentions”, the presentation banned the entire article and came to the conclusion:

“Despite careful scrutiny, it turned out that Herzog, with the tendency and ingenious manner in which the articles were compiled, finally also through the conspicuous emphasis on the deletions, brought about editions of his magazine that in their effect came close to the state of treason. It has been shown that preventive censorship is not enough to suppress this ingenious literary work of a small group of patriotic aesthetes and political utopians, who seem all the more dangerous because they know how to give the impression that large layers of the educated and " understand “politicians in Germany and Austria. AIPr. must therefore give up further attempts to influence the publicly harmful attitude of the magazine and come close to the already ... envisaged application to stop the appearance of the forum during the war on the basis of Art 4 No. 2 of the state of war. "

On September 11, 1915, the War Ministry's press department banned the “Forum” for the duration of the war. The justification was to damage the military and general patriotic interests.

protest

In the same month, Herzog protested against the decision of the ministry and declared, as part of the self-image of his magazine, that the forum wanted to be " a tribune for all good Europeans in the sense of Nietzsche ". The censorship now forbids a magazine that does not want to serve anything other than humanity, even in times of war. While the annexionist demands of pan-German circles opposed a community of Germany with the other "civilized states", the forum tries to maintain the moral community with the other civilized peoples solely for the benefit of Germany. The pacifists are the "avant-garde of those who claim the right of the German spirit and advocate that the deeds should be the result of this spirit".

Although Herzog soon realized that he would hardly be able to revise the setting of the forum, he initially continued the dispute with the Bavarian censorship agency through his lawyer. Herzog informed the press department that he had addressed a petition to the Reich Chancellor against the forum's setting and that he would also lodge a complaint in the state parliament.

expenditure

  • The forum
  • Editor Wilhelm Herzog
  • Editor Wilhelm Herzog
  • Place and publisher Munich: Forum (1st year 1914 / 15-2nd year 1915);
  • Potsdam: Gustav Kiepenheuer (3rd year 1918/19 - 4th year 1919/20);
  • Berlin: Gustav Kiepenheuer (5th year 1920/21, numbers 1–2);
  • Forum (5th year 1920/21, no. 3/6–8.1924);
  • Potsdam, Berlin: Forum (9.1928 / 29)
vintage Calendar years notebook expenditure Issuing months Paper format Octave format or its half
1. 1914/15 H. 1-12 April March 8 °
2. 1915 H. 1-5 April-Aug 8 °
3. 1918/19 H. 1-12 Oct-Sept 8 °
4th 1919/20 H. 1-12 Oct-Sept 8 °
5. 1920/21 H. 1-12 Oct-Sept 8 °
6th 1921/22 H. 1-12 Oct-Sept 8 °
7th 1922/23 H. 1-12 Oct-July 4 °
8th. 1924 H. 1 / 5–10 / 12 Feb.-Nov 4 °
9. 1928/29 H. 1-5 / 6 Oct-Feb-March 8 °

literature

  • Claudia Müller-Stratmann: Wilhelm Herzog and "Das Forum": Literary Politics between 1910 and 1915. A contribution to the journalism of Expressionism. Peter Lang, Bern 1997.
  • Thomas Dietzel, Hans-Otto Hügel: German literary magazines 1880-1945: A repertory. de Gruyter

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Elke Emrich: Power and Spirit in the Work of Heinrich Mann: An Overcoming of Nietzsche from the Spirit of Voltaire. ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  2. ^ Carla Müller-Feyen: Committed journalism: Wilhelm Herzog and DAS FORUM (1914–1929), current events and contemporaries in the mirror of a non-conformist magazine. Peter Lang, Bern 1996.
  3. ↑ KA Mkr. 13865 sheet 169 of July 28, 1915.
  4. ^ The same request from the Pan-German publisher Julius Friedrich Lehmann had immediately rejected the report. See p. 130.
  5. ↑ Wilhelm Herzog: People I met. Bern 1959, p. 56.
  6. ^ Doris Fischer: The Munich censorship office during the First World War. Alfons Falkner von Sonnenburg as press officer in the Bavarian War Ministry from 1914 to 1918/1919. Phil. Diss., Munich 1973.
  7. ↑ Dietzel, Hügel, p. 432 ( limited preview in the Google book search).