The armored bear

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The armored bear
logo
description Front newspaper
language German
publishing company Deutscher Verlag or Ullstein Verlag ( German Empire )
First edition April 22, 1945 (Issue 1)
attitude April 29, 1945 (Issue 8)

The Panzerbär was a front-page newspaper of the Berlin German publishing house (formerly Ullstein Verlag ). This was issued in the last days of the Second World War during the Battle of Berlin and was the last newspaper that appeared in Greater Berlin during the National Socialist era . First it was printed in the former Ullsteinhaus in Tempelhof, where the Wehrmacht had set up an artillery observation post and around 3000 people from the neighborhood were housed in an air raid shelter. After the approach of the Red Army in the Battle of Berlin, work in the entire Deutsche Verlag on the Tempelhof site was stopped on April 24th by order of the manager Max Wiessner and the editorial team of the Panzerbär moved to the ruins of the Press building in Kochstrasse, which also served as a bunker and fire control center.

In its first edition, Der Panzerbär names the “ PK 'Panzerbär' b. Commander d. Vert.-Ber. Berlin ", then simply referred to as" Dienststelle Fp.-Nr. 67 700 ”, with which the propaganda train set up at the end of 1944 z. b. V. Großberlin was meant. The title was: The Panzer Bear - FIGHT BLADE FOR THE DEFENSE OF GROSS-BERLIN . Erich Kuby denies that the former chief editor (editor -in- chief) of the 12-Uhr-Blatt and Gestapo spy Wilhelm Fanderl played a leading role in the Panzerbär , as has been asserted variously in the specialist literature : “Fanderl was no further than five minutes to twelve What is certain is that the Panzerbär was printed on a disused rotary press, which was first brought from Kochstrasse to Tempelhof and until then had been used by the 12 o'clock page . The press historian Peter de Mendelssohn deduced from this that Fanderl “was behind the cipher office Fp.-Nr. 67 700 hid ”and was the publisher of the Panzerbär .

Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and his State Secretary Werner Naumann are also not mentioned as editors in Panzerbär , unlike occasionally quoted . However, in its April 27 issue, the Panzerbär printed a radio address by Naumann in full on the front page (“Berlin is fighting for the Reich and Europe”).

Title page of the second issue of Panzerbär from April 23, 1945

The first of a total of eight issues (all issues without consecutive numbers) appeared on April 22, 1945, one day before the newspapers The Attack and the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung , and two days before the Völkische Beobachter ceased publication. From then on, this newspaper was published daily in small format and with a volume of four pages until April 29, 1945. The content was exhausted in perseverance slogans such as the assertion that Berlin had “food supplies for twelve weeks in completely sufficient quantities” (issue of April 23, 1945) and the pathetic promise that Hitler personally would “bear all the burdens of the hard-fought front city”: “He stands on the hottest battlefield known in history ”(April 28, 1945). Apparently the paper also served as a notice due to the lack of delivery, as the journalist Marta Hillers recalled: “At the bakery, a copy of Goebbels' Panzer Bear was stuck on the wall next to the shop window ”.

April 23rd edition

The last edition of April 29, 1945 was apparently no longer distributed, but remained "in large piles in the print shop and on the street". Under the headline “Heroic struggle - new forces of intervention brought in by day and night” it said on the front page that the “battle for the city center” had broken out. An editorial ( The Longer Breath ) read: “We have nothing more to lose. We have lost everything and by surrendering we would surrender ourselves, our future, wife and child. ”On page 3 there was a polemic against the word“ hopefully ”. Whoever uses it is “not a hopeful, but a hesitant person”, and whoever is hesitant will not get anywhere. The four pages also contained two photos (Hitler Youth with a bazooka, Red Cross sisters serving food to soldiers) and propaganda reports on:

  • Combat operations from various districts (Friedrichshain, Charlottenburg, southwest);
  • Perseverance Articles No choice but to persevere and be ashamed of women? ;
  • Women in the main battle line (HKL);
  • Fifteen T-34s destroyed at Friedrich-Karl-Platz ;
  • HJ battle group on Heerstrasse ;
  • Eyewitness report reporter in the field of ruins ;
  • SS volunteer organizations fight in Berlin (French, Norwegians, Danes, Flemings, Dutch).

Web links

Commons : Panzerbär  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Peter Mendelssohn: Newspaper City Berlin. People and Powers in the History of the German Press , Berlin 1959, p. 416 f.
  2. ↑ Klaus Matussek / Doris Obschernitzki: Destroyed, defeated, liberated: the fight for Berlin until the surrender in 1945 , Berlin 1985, p. 120.
  3. ↑ Heinz-Werner Eckhardt: The Frontzeitungen des Deutschen Heeres 1939-1945 , Vienna 1975, p. 98.
  4. ↑ Walther Georg Oschilewski: Newspapers in Berlin: in the mirror of the centuries , Berlin 1975, p. 223.
  5. ↑ Erich Kuby: Die Russen in Berlin , Rastatt 1988, p. 266.
  6. ^ Peter de Mendelssohn: Berlin newspaper city. People and Powers in the History of the German Press , 2nd revised. u. exp. Ed., Frankfurt am Main / Berlin / Vienna 1982 (first 1959), p. 484.
  7. ↑ Bjoern Weigel: Staging and Destroying. Culture and media in Berlin, in: Michael Wildt / Christoph Kreutzmüller (eds.): Berlin 1933-1945. City and Society under National Socialism Munich 2013, p. 259.
  8. ↑ http://www.dorsten-unterm-hakenkreuz.de/2012/05/28/alt-nazis-unterwanderten-1953-die-nrw-fdp-um-ns-gedankengut-wieder-salonfahig-zu-machen-englische -police-arrested-the-Gauleiter-Kreis-with-Werner-Naumann-an-der-Spitze /
  9. ↑ Walther Georg Oschilewski: Newspapers in Berlin: in the mirror of the centuries , Berlin 1975, p. 223.
  10. ↑ Mario Frank: Death in the Führerbunker: Hitler's Last Days , Berlin 2005, p. 167.
  11. ^ Peter de Mendelssohn: Berlin newspaper city. People and Powers in the History of the German Press , 2nd revised. u. exp. Ed., Frankfurt am Main / Berlin / Vienna 1982 (first 1959), p. 15.
  12. ↑ Bjoern Weigel: Staging and Destroying. Culture and media in Berlin, in: Michael Wildt / Christoph Kreutzmüller (eds.): Berlin 1933-1945. City and Society under National Socialism Munich 2013, p. 259.