The Union

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Die Union ( own spelling: DIE UNION) was a regional daily newspaper of the GDR with the editorial headquarters in Dresden . It appeared from 1946 as a party newspaper of the Eastern CDU in Saxony and in the districts of Dresden , Karl-Marx-Stadt and Leipzig . With a circulation of 60,800 copies, it was the largest regional newspaper of this bloc party .

The paper held a special position in the media landscape of the GDR. The editors endeavored not to go along with the monotonous and one-sided reporting on the inside pages , which is common in most of the daily newspapers in the GDR . After the fall of the Wall , Die Union in Dresden was merged into the Dresdner Neuesten Nachrichten (DNN) at the end of 1991 , and the other two district editions were discontinued.

Dresden edition

First years

As early as August 1945, the then CDU state chairman Hugo Hickmann tried unsuccessfully at the Soviet military administration in Dresden to get permission for a CDU party newspaper in Saxony, and in autumn 1945 his deputy Friedrich Koring too . The CDU was classified as a potentially dangerous party by the Soviet Union at this time . At the end of 1945 there was also an open conflict between the occupying power and East CDU party leader Andreas Hermes because of his criticism of the implementation of the land reform . The CDU Saxony was then part of the national associations, which could be cause by the Soviet Union to take a public position against Hermes. As a “reward”, the SMAD in Berlin-Karlshorst finally issued the required license on December 19, 1945. At that time , three of the four Die Union counterparts from other countries were also licensed with the Thüringer Tageblatt and the newspapers Der Neue Weg and Der Demokratie . The Brandenburg CDU, on the other hand, had not taken a position against Hermes; the Märkische Union therefore only received the permit in 1948.

The Union was a party newspaper of the Eastern CDU , here at a party congress in Dresden , where the editorial office was also located.

The Union was published for the first time on January 5, 1946, the first editor-in-chief was Joseph Ragsch , publishing director Karl Wagner until 1952 . Initially, the publication of two issues a week, each with 20,000 copies of four pages each, was allowed and thus only a fraction of the amount of six times 500,000 copies per week that Hickmann and Koring had hoped for. The CDU organ was by far the smallest party newspaper in Saxony at that time. Even the Saxon Tageblatt of LDPD could already appear at the beginning of its existence three times a week, each with 50,000 copies. Die Union was popular because of its non-communist vocabulary and good editorials. The cultural section of the newspaper in particular was considered worth reading. However, it has been subject to strict prior censorship since the beginning of its existence, whereby the editorial staff in 1946/47, in contrast to later years, still had a comparatively large amount of leeway. On the one hand, only agency reports from the Moscow TASS or the Soviet news bureau SNB and from the end of 1946 the official announcements of the ADN were allowed to be used; on the other hand, there was sometimes arbitrary regulation by the press censors of the Soviet Army .

From April 1946 a total of 35,000 copies appeared twice a week, once four and once six pages. The Sächsische Zeitung, which was newly created during this time as the SED's state party newspaper , appeared six times a week with up to a million copies each. The Soviet Union rejected repeated requests for an increase in circulation for Die Union, justifying this with a shortage of raw materials. The paper limit, however, was an arbitrary state measure; there was no actual defect. In the run-up to the referendum in Saxony on June 30, 1946 , which approved the expropriation of " war and Nazi criminals " from large companies , the print run for propaganda was doubled for four weeks, but then reduced again to 35,000. In mid-1947 a halving of the paper quotas for the third quarter of the year was announced; the newspaper was shortly before the end. The quotas were later increased again. In May 1950, Die Union appeared twice a week with a print run of 40,000.

In the 1940s, the local editor Otto von Saß (1927–1984) was a driving force in the editorial team who criticized the ruling communist system . After the Second World War, the Dresden native volunteered for the newspaper Die Union, became head of the local editorial office and, as a court reporter, experienced how opposition members were dealt with in the Soviet Zone . In 1950, after sharp attacks in the SED organ Sächsische Zeitung, groups of the FDJ ambushed him in front of the editorial building, threatened the use of physical violence and publicly vilified him, he fled to the West. There he became one of the leading journalists and television commentators in the Federal Republic under the name Matthias Walden.

Turning time

On October 9, 1989, Die Union also published an article jointly written by the editors-in-chief of all Dresden newspapers, in which the clashes between the People's Police and demonstrators at the main train station in the first week of October were condemned as rowdy, subversive and unconstitutional actions. On the evening of the same day, when the results of the talks between the group of 20 and Lord Mayor Wolfgang Berghofer were announced , it was announced in the Kreuzkirche for the next day that the Union would provide a truthful description of the October events . The article written by Uta Dittmann , the editorial director of the cultural department, “It is possible to talk to one another” is considered the first realistic report by a GDR newspaper on the events during the demonstrations against SED policy. The first sentence read:

"The information about the events of the last days and nights in Dresden's city center, which our newspaper published yesterday, was one-sided and conveys the wrong picture."

The weekend edition from 14./15. October 1989 contained for the first time a page with authoritative letters to the editor, which were published with the names and addresses of the respective authors. Topics were liberal values, political wishes and economic visions. On 24./25. In February 1990 Die Union reported on a complete page of the transfer of members of the New Forum to the CDU, which it was accused of being one-sided.

After the fall of the Wall, the newspaper quickly broke away from its previous publisher, the GDR CDU. It was then taken over by the Süddeutsche Verlag and a cooperation with the editors of the Süddeutsche Zeitung came about . After the paper limit was abolished, the circulation temporarily reached around 100,000 copies despite new competing titles on the newspaper market.

Logo of the DNN

In the long term, however, the economic pressure on the paper was enormous due to the changed overall situation and the unequal starting position vis-à-vis the logistically and financially much stronger former SED newspaper publishers and the following western tabloids. At the end of 1991 there was another change of ownership. The Union discontinued its publication on December 1, 1991, one month before the end of its 46th year, with a circulation of 44,000 copies. It merged with the Dresdner Neuesten Nachrichten, which had previously emerged as a merger of the Sächsische Neuesten Nachrichten and the Sächsischer Tageblatt . The previous subscribers to the two papers received the new newspaper Dresdner Latest News / Die Union from December 2, 1991. The newspaper was later renamed Dresden Latest News , with the name DIE UNION in the subtitle with an intermittent interruption.

Edition Leipzig

The Leipzig edition, which had its headquarters in Halle (Saale) and was published as a local Leipzig newspaper with the cover section of the CDU daily Der Neue Weg , was a specialty. In 1990 it was transferred to the FAZ and existed under the Roof of the German newspaper publisher (DZV) as Die Union until January 31, 1992. Alongside the Leipziger Volkszeitung , it was the only local newspaper in the trade fair city that remained after the fall of the Wall. The attempt by the DZV to subsequently supply the readership of the newspaper Die Union with the national daily newspaper NEUE ZEIT failed.

List of former editors

literature

  • Andreas Richter: The democratization of the press - the UNION example. In: We step out of our roles. The citizens' movement 1989/90 in Dresden. Dresdner Hefte, issue 59, Dresden 1999.
  • Marius Zippe: The methods of the SMAD in steering the press towards the CDU newspapers "Neue Zeit" and "Die Union" from 1945-1947. Master's thesis, Technical University of Dresden, Dresden 2000.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Marius Zippe: 54 years ago: “The Union” on the back burner. In: Dresdner Latest News , October 25, 1999.
  2. ^ Marius Zippe: The "cat and mouse game" with the censorship office. In: Dresdner Latest News , November 1, 1999.
  3. ^ Marius Zippe: Paper contingent as a question of survival. In: Dresdner Latest News , November 8, 1999.
  4. ↑ books.google.de
  5. ↑ Uta Dittmann: It is possible to talk to each other. In: Die Union, October 10, 1989.