The other newspaper

This article covers the Hamburg weekly newspaper of the 1950s and 60s. For publications with similar names that appeared in the early 1990s, see DAZ (newspaper) and the other .

The Other Newspaper (AZ) was a left-wing socialist weekly newspaper in the Federal Republic of Germany, which appeared in Hamburg from 1955 to 1969. The circulation was between 18,000 and 80,000 copies sold. The editors-in-chief were Gerhard Gleißberg and Rudolf Gottschalk , two former senior editors of the social democratic forward . That is why the AZ was also referred to as the "counterpart to the forward".

History and self-image of the newspaper

The AZ was viewed by its makers as the third force between the frozen fronts of the Cold War , and the term New Left was also used in this context . The newspaper was to become the rallying point for the opposition from the left, against renazification, remilitarization, division of Germany, anti-Marxism, cultural mysticism and anti-enlightenment. The AZ authors included Viktor Agartz , Wolfgang Abendroth , Theo Pirker , Fritz Baade , Kurt Hiller and Leo Kofler .

The left-wing socialist opinion-forming of the AZ had an influential effect on the SPD membership. Thereupon the SPD party leadership started a defamation campaign through its journalism: The AZ was presented as a communist cover organization financed from East Berlin . This version was distributed in 2011 by Karsten Voigt in a speech at the autumn conference of the Federal Criminal Police Office : "The 'AZ' presented itself as an independent newspaper to the left of the SPD and was financed by the SED in ways that were not transparent at the time."

The ban on the KPD in August 1956 and the treason trial against Viktor Agartz (1957) in western Germany as well as the campaigns against Ernst Bloch and Wolfgang Harich in the GDR criminalized and weakened the political milieu that the AZ was to express. Well-known employees withdrew from the newspaper, the spectrum of opinion narrowed, and AZ actually came very close to the GDR. From 1960/61 the AZ relied on the German Peace Union . With the advent of the Extra-Parliamentary Opposition (APO) from 1967 onwards, the AZ had outlived itself politically; the last edition appeared on February 27, 1969.

literature

• Christoph Jünke : The forgotten departure. The left re-formation in 1954/55 and its failure in 1957/58 , in: ders., Forays through the red 20th century. Hamburg 2014, pp. 103–122.

Web links

• Christoph Jünke: “The newspaper with a difference. The Other Newspaper 1955 to 1969 " , in SoZ - Socialist Newspaper (May 31, 2005)
• Finding aids for “The Other Newspaper”, Institute for Contemporary History

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Christoph Jünke: “The newspaper with a difference. The Other Newspaper 1955 to 1969 " , in SoZ - Socialist Newspaper (May 31, 2005)
2. ↑ Jürgen Seifert : Left in the SPD (1945-1958) , in: Die Linke im Rechtsstaat , Volume 1, Berlin: Rotbuch-Verlag, 1976, pp. 236-266, here. P. 242.
3. ↑ Christoph Jünke: The forgotten departure. The left re-formation in 1954/55 and its failure in 1957/58 , in: ders., Forays through the red 20th century. Hamburg 2014, pp. 103–122, here p. 108 f.
4. ↑ Christoph Jünke: The forgotten departure. The left re-formation in 1954/55 and its failure in 1957/58 , in: ders., Forays through the red 20th century. Hamburg 2014, pp. 103–122, here p. 108.
5. ↑ Karsten Voigt: Freedom and Security. The development of their relationship from the 1970s to the present day - a retrospective from a political point of view , online version of the Federal Agency for Civic Education , Section IV.
6. ↑ Christoph Jünke: “The newspaper with a difference. The Other Newspaper 1955 to 1969 " , in SoZ - Socialist Newspaper (May 31, 2005)