The German way

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Der Deutsche Weg was a Catholic exile newspaper that was published weekly in Oldenzaal ( Netherlands ) during the Nazi era from 1934 to 1940 and then briefly in Paris . Its founders, the Jesuit Friedrich Muckermann and Josef Steinhage , wanted to use it to show the anti-Christian nature of National Socialism . Despite numerous opposition and problems, it was possible to keep the newspaper alive until the German campaign in the west .

history

Foundation phase

A front page from 1934

Muckermann was Richard Kralik's successor and editor of the literary magazine The Grail and the weekly Catholic Church Gazette correspondence from 1923 , and he also ran a press agency for Catholic newspapers which, according to him, supplied 400 newspapers a day. As a partner or publisher, Muckermann also provided content for radio, records and films.

His position that National Socialism was fundamentally anti-Christian and must be fought was opposed by other views of leading church representatives, according to which one should wait for the development; if the Nazi regime can hold out at all, moderation can be expected. Muckermann decided to go into exile, this probably happened at the last moment, he had previously been able to avoid a Gestapo appointment.

Initially, Muckermann continued to work in the Netherlands from his Oldenzaal correspondence office. His Catholic News , which had been converted to private reference , appeared under constantly changing cover names until the Gestapo put pressure on its recipients so that they had to be discontinued. After a new publication, only an illegal import was conceivable, but this required a legal financial basis. Thereupon Muckermann came to an agreement with Josef Steinhage, the publisher of the Deutsche Post , a church paper that addressed Catholics living in the Netherlands, both to discontinue its practically bankrupt paper and not to revive the Catholic news , but rather the subscribers of both papers (at the Deutsche Post about 1000) with a new newspaper, the weekly Deutsche Weg . The title goes back to an earlier sheet of the same name by the politician Joseph Joos .

Muckermann became editor, while Steinhage took care of the technical matters. The German Way has been published on Sundays in Oldenzaal since August 12, 1934. The newspaper did not prove to be cost-effective and had to be subsidized by other publications that were still published in Münster under the actual management of Muckermann . When the Deutsche Weg had achieved cost coverage, the Gestapo in Germany put pressure on the recipients of the publications from Münster, so that practically no more payments were made and the Deutsche Weg now, conversely, supported these publications until they were banned. Muckermann was often forced to improve the financial situation through a series of lectures.

In addition to the intended effect on Germany and the acquisition of exiles as readers, the newspaper also had Germans working in the Dutch border area in view, a goal that the social democratic exile newspaper Freie Presse , which was discontinued at the beginning of 1934, had also pursued. Included in this plan were the mostly German pastors who were supposed to ensure that Germans abroad carried Muckermann's messages on.

Establishment and difficulties

The German Way did not see itself as a political weekly, but tried to derive its rejection of National Socialism solely from the Christian religion and the culture that emerged from it. The background to this was that otherwise massive intervention by the Dutch government, which often got to do with the German legation, was to be feared. But criticism was not spared, be it about the persecution of the church and priests in the German Reich, through statements on the political situation there, through the publication of orders of the Nazi regime that were supposed to expose its essence, as well as through the comparison of German and foreign ones Agency reports.

Muckermann soon felt the pressure exerted from Germany personally. If he had already been banned from speaking by the Dutch government, the newspaper was now also forbidden from employing Reich Germans in leading positions. Thereupon the Oldenzaal pastor Franz HJ Stokman was officially installed as editor-in-chief, while in reality Muckermann continued to pull the strings. According to Muckermann, Stokman handled his role skillfully, which was to forcefully represent the newspaper before the Dutch authorities, while not interfering inside the newspaper. Steinhage remained the organizational director.

Since the Dutch government could no longer simply ban the newspaper under German pressure, since it was now officially a paper edited by a resident, an attempt was made from Germany to proceed against the German way in another way . After the invasion of Czechoslovakia , the educated puppet government in The Hague was called to try to buy the paper or at least to get it under National Socialist control. The Jesuit order came under pressure because of Muckermann's person in Germany, which is why he was initially taken out of the line of fire by being appointed professor to Rome in 1936 and making him head of the Lettres de Rome . However, with the knowledge of the Order, he continued to work on his publications and was partly accompanied by his editorial team. The National Socialists did not miss this and allowed him to be spied on. In Rome, the intelligence officer of the Abwehr Gabriel Ascher managed to accompany him undetected, another informant, Hermann Engelfried, who was in the editorial office, was exposed by himself. In November 1937 Muckermann left Rome again because the number of Gestapo officers increased so much that his work there was made impossible. Steinhage's wife and children were later to be arrested at the start of the campaign in the West by a former helper who had done smuggling services for the newspaper.

The border smuggling took place in various ways, such as merchant shipping, traveling salesmen, and border commuters and residents. There should also have been support from some post office workers. The paper was distributed from the Rheinlinie, Münster, where Muckermann still had a lot of contacts, and Luxemburg , the latter country had offered itself as a less suspicious place. The similarly oriented Der Deutsche in Polen helped to use the German-Polish border as a transshipment station as part of a cooperation. Overall, the distribution of the Deutscher Weg went through many stations, but whoever was discovered to be a recipient of the newspaper despite all the precautions had to face charges of "decomposition of the Reich and the people". Up until Muckermann's time in Rome, Albert Maring and Nanda Herbermann acted regularly as conveyors of information between Oldenzaal and Münster. This type of information transfer subsequently became rarer, also because the meetings became more and more dangerous.

Authors, Relationship with the Dutch Catholic Press and Distribution

Most of the reports for the German Way and, until 1937, for the Grail came from Muckermann's pen, who was supported organizationally by his staff. Pedro Sinzig was also frequently represented in the paper under a pseudonym. Father Biezer from Great Britain also wrote under a pseudonym, and the Dutch Hein Hoeben and Henricus Andreas Poels were other collaborators . These authors wrote unpaid for the newspaper, only costs were incurred for production and distribution, free copies and the livelihood of the Steinhage family. The 5,000 subscribers were often unable to fully cover the costs. Help here often came from Dutch Catholics, such as the first large donation from the Archbishop of Utrecht , Johannes Jensen . The newspaper appeared most of the time with eight pages, from September 17, 1939 only four pages. The reason given for this reduction was the uncertain financial situation given the outbreak of war. The Deutsche Weg was delivered to 42 countries, but the majority of the edition was probably sold in Western Europe, Switzerland and Austria , where it was available at station kiosks and where most of the exiles lived. A publisher named after the newspaper acted as the publisher. After German employees were no longer officially allowed to work in management positions, this was called Neederlandia-Uitgeverij .

Problems caused the increasing expansion of the National Socialist sphere of influence, which cost subscribers. Muckermann was only able to move freely in Austria with the help of Kurt Schuschnigg . Although he succeeded in gaining 100 new subscribers a week there, sympathy for fascism and fear prevented a larger expansion, and those interested often couldn't even buy the newspaper under the counter. Austria was an even simpler case than Italy , where there was hardly any commitment to the paper. Even if the situation in France , Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands was less critical, the statement in Deutscher Weg that it could be purchased at all station kiosks there was more likely than the wish to understand that such a situation was only possible through inquiries would arise. Distribution through agencies remained the exception. Jewish agencies, according to Muckermann, had also not included the newspaper in their distribution, sometimes out of fear, sometimes for business reasons. Some of the foreign offices, whose representatives came and went, only lasted for a short time, and there were also closings of open country accounts. Overall, the German Way had little to oppose to its powerful opponent, National Socialist Germany and its helpers abroad. The fact that the target group of the newspaper abroad mostly viewed National Socialism as a German problem also had a negative effect.

The relationship with the Dutch Catholic press, of which De Maasbode and De Tijd were the most important representatives , was ambivalent. First of all, Muckermann had to do some persuasive work there for his positions; Even if these newspapers slowly embarked on the line of the German Way , they often left it again, as there were sympathizers for National Socialism in their readership. This led to corresponding articles that were sometimes directed against the German Way . The country's neutral policy, which was maintained with great difficulty, had an impact here, as, according to Muckermann, in the case of Tijd, economic interests in Germany.

The German way was not against the actual aim of quarrels with other exile publications uninvolved. It was not only committed to the fight against fascism, but also against communism . Muckermann could not help pointing out that other publications were allegedly influenced by Jews . The Pariser Tageblatt , which he considered to be an average tabloid , had an even stronger Jewish influence than the Neue Vorwärts . Nevertheless, the latter, with whom there was a good relationship despite fewer contacts, was in his eyes a well-informed medium. The geographical and ideological development can also be followed using the subtitles. At first, it started with “Organ for the German-speaking Catholics of Holland”, which was changed after the first expansion into “A sheet for German-speaking Catholics”. The subtitle was to change several times afterwards, another variant was shortly after the outbreak of war on September 3, 1939, “Catholic weekly newspaper against National Socialist and Bolshevik world renewal”.

The German campaign in the west ended the existence of the newspaper, which continued to exist in Paris for a short time. Muckermann later fled to Switzerland, while Steinhage went into hiding in the Netherlands, where he survived the war. His wife and children (two of whom were sent to the Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen concentration camps ) also survived the war.

literature

  • Hanno Hardt, Elke Hilscher, Winfried B. Lerg (eds.): Press in Exile . Saur, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-598-02530-0 , pp. 204-214.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hanno Hardt, Elke Hilscher, Winfried B. Lerg (eds.): Press in Exile . Saur, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-598-02530-0 , pp. 204-205.
  2. ^ Hanno Hardt, Elke Hilscher, Winfried B. Lerg (eds.): Press in Exile . Saur, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-598-02530-0 , p. 205.
  3. ^ Hanno Hardt, Elke Hilscher, Winfried B. Lerg (eds.): Press in Exile . Saur, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-598-02530-0 , pp. 205-206.
  4. ^ Hanno Hardt, Elke Hilscher, Winfried B. Lerg (eds.): Press in Exile . Saur, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-598-02530-0 , p. 206.
  5. ^ Hanno Hardt, Elke Hilscher, Winfried B. Lerg (eds.): Press in Exile . Saur, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-598-02530-0 , p. 206 u. History of the Free Press ( English / Dutch ) at the International Institute for Social History
  6. ^ Hanno Hardt, Elke Hilscher, Winfried B. Lerg (eds.): Press in Exile . Saur, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-598-02530-0 , p. 207.
  7. ^ Hanno Hardt, Elke Hilscher, Winfried B. Lerg (eds.): Press in Exile . Saur, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-598-02530-0 , pp. 207-208.
  8. ^ Hanno Hardt, Elke Hilscher, Winfried B. Lerg (eds.): Press in Exile . Saur, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-598-02530-0 , p. 208.
  9. ^ Hanno Hardt, Elke Hilscher, Winfried B. Lerg (eds.): Press in Exile . Saur, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-598-02530-0 , pp. 208-209.
  10. ^ Hanno Hardt, Elke Hilscher, Winfried B. Lerg (eds.): Press in Exile . Saur, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-598-02530-0 , p. 209.
  11. ^ Hanno Hardt, Elke Hilscher, Winfried B. Lerg (eds.): Press in Exile . Saur, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-598-02530-0 , pp. 209-210.
  12. ^ Hanno Hardt, Elke Hilscher, Winfried B. Lerg (eds.): Press in Exile . Saur, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-598-02530-0 , p. 214.
  13. ^ Hanno Hardt, Elke Hilscher, Winfried B. Lerg (eds.): Press in Exile . Saur, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-598-02530-0 , p. 210.
  14. ^ Hanno Hardt, Elke Hilscher, Winfried B. Lerg (eds.): Press in Exile . Saur, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-598-02530-0 , pp. 211-212.
  15. ^ Hanno Hardt, Elke Hilscher, Winfried B. Lerg (eds.): Press in Exile . Saur, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-598-02530-0 , pp. 210-211.
  16. ^ Hanno Hardt, Elke Hilscher, Winfried B. Lerg (eds.): Press in Exile . Saur, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-598-02530-0 , pp. 212-213.
  17. ↑ De Telegraaf: Posthume hulde voor dokter Huf , July 24, 1984, p. 4.