German watch
Not to be confused with the magazine of the same name published by Wilhelm Marr - founder of the " Anti-Semite League " - from around 1879.
The German guard (Subtitle: Dutch-Indian fortnightly magazine for trade and colonial policy, economics and law ) was an initial monthly colonial magazine. Its publisher was the East Asian merchant Emil Helfferich in the Dutch East Indies (today's Indonesia) at the beginning of the 20th century. The magazine was the organ of the German Confederation, which he founded on January 27, 1915 (on the birthday of the German Emperor) in Weltevreden- Batavia , a reservoir for the 3,000 Germans in the region.
Deutsche Wacht was later expanded and published as a bi-monthly publication, with Helfferich authoring most of the articles himself.
One of the magazine's freelancers was the sinologist Erwin von Zach (1872–1942), whose contributions (translations, criticisms, polemics and reviews) made Deutsche Wacht internationally known among sinologists.
The magazine was discontinued in 1940.
Reason
- " Batavia, January 1915.
- Far from home, in the middle of the war, our paper comes into being. Serious, like the time we have chosen for the publication of a German magazine in the Dutch East Indies, is also the task that awaits our paper.
- We Germans who live in this country have hitherto considered a German organ for the Dutch East Indies superfluous because we considered the Dutch newspapers to be ours. We not only lived with, but with the Dutch, their worries were our worries and their successes made us proud. "
Then reference is made to the good relationship between the Germans and the Dutch, which was destroyed by the war:
- " Even the Dutch did not see us as strangers. Many Germans serve the queen loyally and in honor! And many a good German soldier fell in battle for his new fatherland. In this close fraternization between the Germans and the Dutch is now the rough touch of war drove in. "
In order to escape the war propaganda of the powers hostile to Germany, an organ must be founded that also represents the German point of view:
- " What the Dutch press writes today are not our thoughts and what it wants and hopes for about the course of events in Europe contradicts our hopes and wishes. Most of the Dutch press in the Dutch East Indies is no longer neutral, but anti -deutsch and the Germans living here are powerless against it.
- Nothing is therefore more understandable than the demand for a German paper! Not that we fight against public opinion and want to change its mind in favor of the Germans! The modest size of our magazine and the fact that it is not published in Dutch show that we do not want to impose our opinion on the general public. But towards ourselves and towards the few who have not yet lost faith in the German people, we are obliged not to accept everything and not to let everything sit on us that is currently being written about the Germans. "
At the end the author points out that the first number appears on the birthday of the German emperor:
- " The German watch is a gift that the Germans. N. India offer their emperor on his birthday. May it continue to be beneficial for the German cause! "