The new world
| The new world | |
|---|---|
| description | Illustrated entertainment paper for the people |
| publishing company | Hamburg; Wroclaw; Berlin: Auer, Leipzig: Goldhausen 1876-1881, Stuttgart: Dietz 1882-1885, Hamburg: Dietz 1886, Breslau: Geiser 1887 (Germany) |
| First edition | 1876 |
| attitude | 1919 |
| Frequency of publication | weekly |
| Editor-in-chief | Wilhelm Liebknecht , Bruno Geiser |
| ZDB | 548082-6 |
Die Neue Welt , "Illustrated entertainment paper for the people", was a social democratic entertainment magazine in Germany. It existed as an independent sheet from 1876 to 1891. After that, from 1892 to 1919 it was a weekly supplement for “Science, Education and Entertainment” in the Social Democratic party newspapers.
history
The party congress of the Social Democratic Workers' Party decided to found the paper in 1873. However, due to financial problems, the magazine was only published in 1876. An indirect forerunner were the ADAV's “Sozialpolitische Blätter” , which were published by Wilhelm Hasselmann between 1873 and 1875. After the unification party conference in Gotha , these were given up in favor of the New World.
Until 1878 the sheet was printed by the cooperative printer in Leipzig . When this was dissolved as a result of the Socialist Law , the New World appeared at Dietz in Stuttgart .
The New World was founded at a time when the socialist movement was gathering its strength and growing into the most important political opposition in the New German Empire. It was intended to inform readers about developments in nature and society and, by removing the floor from the bourgeois entertainment papers, which were also widespread in working-class circles, counteracting bourgeois tastes and one-sided imparting of knowledge. The new paper was intended to compete with the gazebo and comparable bourgeois magazines and keep the workers' readers away from them. Above all, it was about "carrying the party principles in circles where the political party organs and party writings do not penetrate." In particular, the party hoped to win the "women for the movement."
The newspaper mainly contained popular science articles from nature, technology, history, and cultural history; she published biographies of personalities in whose tradition the socialist movement saw itself, such as Heinrich Heine , François Noël Babeuf , Henri de Saint-Simon and others. The interests of the working class family were met in special articles, for example on raising children or housekeeping.
The ban on socialist publications in 1878 also hit the New World. Under the conditions of the Socialist Law, the magazine, under the direction of Bruno Geiser, became an apolitical educational paper with popular scientific and literary articles. This reformist attitude was sharply criticized by Friedrich Engels . In letters to Eduard Bernstein , he accused those responsible of being unable to exploit illegality to propagate socialist ideology in an appropriate manner.
Nevertheless, the magazine was an important publication organ for socialist-oriented authors, some of whom were able to publish here for the first time ( R. Lavant , E. Klaar , B. Schönlank , L. Lessen , O. Krille , J. Zerfass ). The daily guerrilla war between the socialists and the German authorities was described in sketches, reports on experiences and poems. In addition, there was criticism of the social and political conditions of the “ruling classes” in the German Empire .
After the fall of the Socialist Law, the paper remained on its moderate political line. Against this background, the party congress of 1896 sharply criticized E. Steiger's practice, the magazine by indiscriminately printing prose works by naturalistic writers such as W. Bölsche or Hans Land. This would make the New World "a playground for literary experiments" instead of a "popular entertainment organ." Criticism came from August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, among others. Franz Mehring wrote his contribution Art and Proletariat for the occasion . However, this did not change the basic orientation of the paper. A change in the direction of a more politically oriented paper also failed because the revisionist current in the party had gained in importance since the beginning of the 1890s.
The number of copies of the magazine rose to 500,000 and 550,000 copies (1910, 1911). So the NW was probably a widely read until 1919, but apart from the initial beginnings, not a socialist entertainment paper. The works of German writers told of the life and suffering of the little man ( E. Preczang , C. Müller-Jahnke , J. Zerfass, C. Viebig ), but not of the struggle of the modern proletariat; the leading poem - K. Henkell's 1892 What We Want , which calls on the poet, as an ally of the workers, to sing about the struggle of the workers in modern times, remained without echo. There was no room for critical-realistic works by German novelists that reflected the transition to imperialism , New Prussian militarism and the inhumanity of bourgeois society, for example by Theodor Fontane , Thomas and Heinrich Mann . After all, the paper exercised satirical and polemical criticism of the Prussian NCO and Sergeant, but without attacking the system as a whole.
However, by reprinting critical-realistic works by foreign authors, the paper contributed to familiarizing the working class readership with works by, for example, Alexander Lange Kielland , August Strindberg , Nikolai Gawrilowitsch Tschernyschewski , Émile Zola , Fyodor Michailowitsch Dostojewski . Various articles on the history or theory of literature also served to promote artistic engagement with key social events. In 1897 there was an article on socialist poetry in France, in 1901 an article on the life and work of Maxim Gorky . In 1903 the paper was devoted to social poetry in Germany and in 1907 to workers' poetry. There were also articles about Heinrich Heine , Ferdinand Freiligrath and other authors who are less well known today.
Thanks to authors such as Friedrich Stampfer , reformism prevailed in the magazine sooner and more clearly than in the Neue Zeit, for example . According to the newspaper defended the beginning of the First World War the burgfriedenspolitik the SPD and joined the fight against the Russian tsarist as "gendarme of Europe" a.
Employee
The editors-in-chief of the paper were Wilhelm Liebknecht (also significantly involved in the founding), Bruno Geiser, Curt Baake , Samuel Kokosky , Edgar Steiger , O. Kühl, Ludwig Lessen u. at the
Important authors of the magazine were Minna Kautsky , Rudolf Lavant, Alwin Gerisch , Ernst Klaar, Bruno Schönlank, Ludwig Lessen, Otto Krille and Julius Zerfaß.
Around 1900 the then well-known journalist Friedrich Schrader reported on cultural and political developments in the Ottoman Empire at that time.
Individual evidence
- ↑ To the New World and the supplement sheets of the Imperial Era
- ^ Angela Graf: Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Dietz, publisher of the Social Democrats. Biographical approach to political life. 1996 (there also further information on the history of the sheet)
- ↑ Karl Marx / Friedrich Engels: Works, Articles, Drafts. May 1875 to May 1883. in Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe , Division I, Vol. 25, pp. 576f.
- ↑ Kautsky Archive, IISG Amsterdam, Schrader letter to Kautsky, 1900, DXX-441
literature
- The new world. Illustrated entertainment paper for the people. Period of publication: No. 1, 1876 to No. 12 1887 and 1888 to No. 42 from December 31, 1919 (microfilm edition: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin; microfilm edition Bonn, Mikropress, 1967)
- New World, The . In: Lexicon of socialist German literature from the beginnings to 1945. Monographic-biographical presentations. VEB Verlag Language and Literature Halle (Saale) 1963. pp. 380–382
Web links
- The new world . Sunday supplements for 1900. Volksstimme: Daily newspaper of the Social Democratic Party in the administrative district of Magdeburg. Starting with No. 1 from January 7, 1900 to No. 51 on December 23, 1900. FES digital
- The new world. Supplements for the years 1901–1912 FES digital