Edmund Goldschagg

Edmund Goldschagg (born October 11, 1886 in Freiburg im Breisgau , † February 7, 1971 in Munich ) was a German journalist and publisher. As editor of the Social Democratic Press Service and the Munich Post during the Weimar period, he was banned from working as a journalist during the National Socialist era . In 1943/44, his family hid Else Rosenfeld , a Jew, who was threatened with deportation and death . After the Second World War he was together with Franz Josef Schöningh ,August Schwingenstein and Werner Friedmann, one of the founders and licensees of the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ). From its first edition on October 6, 1945 until 1951, he was editor-in-chief of the SZ and remained its co-editor until his death.

Life

The son of typesetter Rudolf Goldschagg and his wife Elise Goldschagg, née Wirth, first attended elementary school, then secondary school in Freiburg, before the family moved to Karlsruhe in 1899 , because his father took over the printing of the newly founded social democratic party newspaper Der Volksfreund and he did even switched to a high school in Karlsruhe. Since the family moved to Mulhouse in Alsace in 1904 - the father took over a printing company there in which the SPD party organ was to be printed - Goldschagg completed his Abitur in 1906 at a grammar school there. Goldschagg then studied history, economics and languages at the universities in Munich , Berlin and Heidelberg . But he left the University of Heidelberg in autumn 1913 without a degree and became a journalist. In December 1913 he joined the SPD , at that time still called "Social Democratic Association for the 12th Baden constituency of Heidelberg" in his region, and received membership number 698.

Volunteer and first social democratic officer in the First World War

In January 1914, Goldschagg volunteered for the social democratic newspaper Volksstimme in Chemnitz , which Gustav Noske was editor-in-chief. First and foremost, the editor Ernst Heilmann (he was murdered in Buchenwald concentration camp in 1940) was responsible for Goldschagg's education. Since Heilmann stood up for his volunteer at Noske, Goldschagg came to the social democratic press office in Chemnitz after only six months. His journalistic activity was interrupted by the First World War , for which he was drafted into a Saxon army corps as a sergeant in October 1914. As early as October 16, 1914, he suffered a serious wound on an infantry patrol in the Vosges, so that he spent the winter of 1914/15 in the hospital and in the spring of 1915 returned to his unit on the Western Front in France as a deputy officer. Goldschagg was promoted to lieutenant on December 16, 1915; He was the first social democratic officer in the army of the empire. During this promotion he had benefited from the fact that the SPD had combined its further approval of war credits in the Reichstag, among other things, with the demand for Sergeant Goldschagg to be promoted to lieutenant. On September 3, 1916, he was taken prisoner by the French, from which he was released in December 1919.

News editor for the SPD press until 1933

In 1920 Goldschagg followed his former editor-in-chief and mentor Ernst Heilmann to Berlin, where he worked on the socialist correspondence established by Heilmann for at home and abroad . He then worked from 1922 to 1927 for the resulting official Social Democratic press service. In 1924 he married Lotte Willmann in Berlin.

From 1927 to 1933 Goldschagg was the chief editor for Reich and foreign policy at the " Munich Post ", which a week before its liquidation by the National Socialists on March 3, 1933, had the headline: "We will not be intimidated!"

In National Socialism

In the course of the smashing of the Munich Post Office in March 1933, several editors of the now banned newspaper were arrested. Goldschagg's apartment was searched by the political police ; he himself could go into hiding. But in January 1934 he was placed in protective custody for four weeks because he had written critical letters from his wife Lotte from Freiburg, in which, among other things, he put in the margin of a newspaper section which the thesis of the "marriage (as) the root of Germanism" represented, ironically putting the names "Hitler" and "Röhm" with exclamation marks.

After his release, since he was no longer allowed to work as a journalist until 1945, he worked as a typesetter and proofreader in his brother's small Freiburg book printer and lived with his wife Lotte and son Rolf in Freiburg. In April 1940, at the age of 54, he was drafted into the Wehrmacht as a lieutenant in a construction company and assigned to the Württemberg community of Höfen an der Enz as a local commander, but released after just two months because of his political past. Until the end of the war he worked in the economic and food office in Freiburg-Land, where he was responsible for distributing ration cards .

During this time the Goldschagg family hid the Jew Else Rosenfeld for a year from May 1943 , who had worked as a social worker in the Jewish community in Munich from 1938 to 1942 and, in contrast to her husband Siegfried Rosenfeld , who was a Social Democratic member of the Prussian state parliament until 1933 was no longer able to leave the country. She lived with the Goldschagg family until April 1944, before - supported by the family - she managed to flee to Switzerland. During their one-year stay, the parents told their 13-year-old son Rolf and friends that Ms. Rosenfeld was present, saying that she was an older friend who no longer worked and wanted to leave her city of Berlin because of the bombing. In her autobiography, written under the maiden name Rahel Behrend, Else Rosenfeld describes how important this support for the Goldschagg family was for their own survival. She also tells of her life together with the family, which she only calls by her first names “Lotte” (Mrs. Goldschagg) and “Rolf” (the then 13-year-old son) and Edmund Goldschagg by his nickname “Wackes”.

License holder, editor-in-chief and co-publisher of the Süddeutsche Zeitung

Edmund Goldschagg family grave, Obermenzing cemetery, Munich.

After the Second World War, Goldschagg, together with August Schwingenstein and Franz Josef Schöningh, received the license to publish the Süddeutsche Zeitung from the American military government on October 6, 1945 . Goldschagg initially responded hesitantly to the Americans' request, because he had bad memories of his time in Munich and the destruction of his newspaper by the National Socialists, but then declared that he was ready to be available for a possible license award. In the corresponding questionnaire, he described his ideas about the "task of the German press in the future" as follows:

“The main task of the German press is to educate the German people to adopt a democratic worldview, to turn away from any power politics both internally and externally; to an understanding among the peoples in a peaceful way, so above all to fight the militaristic spirit, as it is deeply rooted in the German people and was brought up particularly well by National Socialism. "

The decision of the head of the Press Control Section for Munich and Upper Bavaria, Joseph Dunner , was decisive for the licensing . According to his recollections, Schöningh was initially intended for the position of editor-in-chief of the Süddeutsche Zeitung , but then Edmund Goldschagg was chosen because "we" - according to Dunner - "as editor-in-chief would rather choose someone who might think less differentiated than Schöningh , but had clearer political ideas ”. He worked as editor-in-chief until 1951, but remained co-editor of the Süddeutsche Zeitung and partner of Süddeutsche Verlags GmbH until the end . His biographer Hans Dollinger describes Goldschagg's leading article as very convinced of the democratic model of the US occupation power. His first leading article in No. 1 of the Süddeutsche Zeitung of October 6, 1945, "Abkehr - Einkehr", was typical, in which he described it as "lucky" that Bavaria and its state capital, Munich, were in the care of the occupying power the largest democracy in the world ”.

In addition to his representative functions at the Süddeutsche Zeitung and Süddeutscher Verlag , he participated in numerous committees for the renewal of cultural life, for example as a board member of the Munich German-American Club . On his 70th birthday, in 1956, he was the first journalist in Bavaria to be awarded the Federal Cross of Merit. Edmund Goldschagg died on February 7, 1971 in Munich after a long illness.

literature

• Hans Dollinger: Edmund Goldschagg 1886–1971. The life of the journalist, social democrat and co-founder of the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" . Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich 1986.
• Edmund Goldschagg , Internationales Biographisches Archiv 16/1971 of April 12, 1971, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)

Web links

• Literature by and about Edmund Goldschagg in the catalog of the German National Library
• Edmund Goldschagg , Internationales Biographisches Archiv 16/1971 of April 12, 1971, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hans Dollinger: Edmund Goldschagg 1886–1971. The life of the journalist, social democrat and co-founder of the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” . Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich 1986, pp. 25-29.
2. ^ Hans Dollinger: Edmund Goldschagg 1886–1971 , p. 46.
3. ↑ Hans Dollinger: Edmund Goldschagg 1886–1971 , p. 63 ff.
4. ↑ Hans Dollinger: Edmund Goldschagg 1886–1971 , pp. 67–73.
5. ↑ Knud von Harbou : Ways and astray. Franz Josef Schöningh, the co-founder of the Süddeutsche Zeitung. A biography. Allitera, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-86906-482-6 , p. 196; on this in detail Hans Dollinger: Edmund Goldschagg 1886–1971 , pp. 105–128.
6. ↑ Hans Dollinger: Edmund Goldschagg 1886–1971 , p. 146 f.
7. ↑ Hans Dollinger: Edmund Goldschagg 1886–1971 , p. 146 ff.
8. ↑ Hans Dollinger: Edmund Goldschagg 1886–1971 , pp. 165–175.
9. ↑ Else Behrend-Rosenfeld: I was not alone. Life of a Jew in Germany 1933–1944 . Beck, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-406-32902-0 , pp. 234-251 (first edition under the title: Rahel Behrend: Ostracized and persecuted. Experiences of a Jewish woman in Nazi Germany 1933-1944 . Zurich 1945).
10. ↑ Hans Dollinger: Edmund Goldschagg 1886–1971 , p. 9 ff. And P. 197 ff.
11. ^ Hans Dollinger: Edmund Goldschagg 1886–1971 , p. 201.
12. ^ Hans Dollinger: Edmund Goldschagg 1886–1971 , p. 195.
13. ↑ Joseph Dunner: Given for the record. My life as a German and a Jew . Munich 1971, p. 95. Quoted from Hans Dollinger: Edmund Goldschagg 1886–1971 , p. 197.
14. ↑ Hans Dollinger: Edmund Goldschagg 1886–1971 , p. 220.
15. ^ Hans Dollinger: Edmund Goldschagg 1886–1971 , p. 291.
16. ^ Hans Dollinger: Edmund Goldschagg 1886–1971 , p. 308.