Erich Everth

Erich Everth

Erich Everth (born July 3, 1878 in Berlin , † June 22, 1934 in Leipzig ) was a German art historian, journalist and the first full professor of newspaper studies in Germany. Along with Otto Groth and Emil Dovifat, he is one of the founders of newspaper science in Germany.

life and work

Early Berlin years

Everth was born in 1878 in the blossoming capital of the newly founded German Empire as the son of a businessman. He attended the Joachimsthal High School and decided to pursue a wide range of studies.

In 1906 Everth interrupted his studies to do a year of voluntary military service.

Education

In 1898 Everth enrolled at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität and studied philosophy and law. A few semesters later he switched to philosophy, art history and psychology. His most important teacher was Max Dessoir , who endeavored to re-establish a systematic art history.

Everth received his doctorate on May 6, 1909 at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Leipzig under August Schmarsow and Johannes Volkelt .

journalism

Everth then joined the Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeitung as editor , then switched to the Magdeburgische Zeitung as the Berlin representative .

After the outbreak of the First World War , Everth was a soldier in the east , but only found time to publish again as a consultant in the press office at the staff of the " Commander-in-Chief East ". Everth's study On the Soul of Soldiers in the Field appeared in the pamphlets for the monthly Die Tat , which the Jena-based Eugen-Diederichs-Verlag had published since 1915 . In retrospect, Gerhard Menz judged that "it is probably the only font among the 'heroic literature' of the time that portrayed the real psyche of the soldiers and was therefore sold in large numbers in the trenches." Hermann Hesse praised the book with a review and praised it Everth's fine psychological observation.

After the end of the war, Everth often changed his always exposed professional positions. In 1917 he was still editor-in-chief of the Leipziger Volkszeitung , in 1920 he joined the Berlin Telegraphen Union (TU), worked for the Vossische Zeitung and in 1923 took over the management of the non-political section of the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (DAZ), which is related to Gustav Stresemann . From 1924 Everth corresponded for the liberal Berliner Tageblatt from Vienna , one of the most politically interesting theaters in Europe after the collapse of the multi-ethnic state Austria-Hungary . He has written numerous articles on aesthetics, literary and art history. They confirm what the political position of the various editorial offices suggests. With an unusual intellectual mobility, the now 40-year-old publicist carried out a change of attitude from an unmistakably monarchical national origin to an advocate of democratic principles .

Educational science

Everth's broad spectrum can be aptly characterized as "educational science". In addition to his journalistic activities in the daily press, he publishes numerous essays and smaller occasional works, primarily with aesthetic, art-historical and art-historical content. They provide a multifaceted picture of his mainly cultural interests and his diverse knowledge. Everth is a prime example of an intellectual wanderer through the most varied of educational areas who neither lingers nor comes across scientific disciplinary boundaries. In addition to basic aesthetic figures, garden art and the question of “how to hang pictures”, he managed to express himself about the problems of urban planning and the state bureaucracy as well as the situation of Romania , Gothic sculpture and the Zionist painter Abel Pann to dedicate to the philosophy of life or the national standard school.

As early as 1923 he warned of the Hitler putsch that followed in November in an article entitled “National Socialist Targets” about the threat from Bavaria. In 1925, the “Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft” published by Max Dessoir published an extensive article entitled “The Art of Narration”. The text marked the end of a long study of the realistic narrators of the 19th century. Before that, a paper on Wilhelm Raabe was followed by a detailed monograph on Conrad Ferdinand Meyer .

Full professor of newspaper studies

On November 1, 1926, the 48-year-old art historian was appointed to the first newspaper studies chair at the Institute for Newspaper Studies at the University of Leipzig as the successor to the economist Karl Bücher . His main focus was on creating an epistemological and methodological foundation for newspaper science and thus recognition as an independent scientific discipline.

As his inaugural lecture Newspaper Studies and University on November 20, 1926 shows, Everth had no illusions about the status of science in its infancy. Everth soberly came to a critical assessment of the existing newspaper science methodology and its conceptual formation , referring to his journalistic experience as well as his scientific overview of the most varied of subjects:

“Anyone who really wants to think through the problems of the newspaper has to look around in a number of areas other than that of the press; without a strong need to look over the fence, he will not get far. "

With this perspective (which he also lived) Everth clearly set himself apart from his predecessor Karl Bücher, whom he accused of having too one-sidedly economically founded perspective. Everth limited the subject of newspaper studies to the newspaper , in a broader sense to the printed periodical press. This should not be examined in isolation from social, political, economic and cultural influences. Rather, it depends on a systematic cross-section of the various connecting threads, with the press being "more than just an ordinary commercial enterprise", it must be understood "as an at least partially intellectual process and a mental structure."

Through its "mediation function", the newspaper satisfies "as a social form in itself" in Everth's view in public life in addition to economic and social needs. This approach, which addresses psychological and sociological questions, is just as new in the context of newspaper studies, which were previously largely oriented towards the history of the press (or, as in the case of books, more towards economic history), as is the procedure he proposed: it first wants to work out the horizontal and vertical ownership structures of the German press and later the organization of newspaper companies using the methods of organizational sociology. Special attention was paid to the social function of the journalist mediating between the world and the individual. The training should provide him with knowledge of the newspaper industry, which will guide him to correctly understand and evaluate his work.

Everth attributed only secondary importance to the practical training function of newspaper customers. In the essay “The newspaper in the service of the public”, printed in 1928, he mentions “the scientific penetration of newspaper studies” as the primary task of his institute and the resulting training of young scientists for “further work on expanding the discipline”.

It was typical of the early days of newspaper science that each main representative developed his own terminology and methodology . Everth defines it as an “integration discipline” without its own method, for the comprehensive development of which methods from various sciences can be used.

Work ethic, loss of war

As a communication scientist, Everth also retained his aesthetic character. He worked according to Wölfflin's pattern in the most precise and detailed manner. The publication of the magazine "Das Wesen der Zeitung" served him to cross boundaries, as they often only became common in the humanities much later.

He completed his main work a few days before his death. In 1931 the first part was published under the title “The Public in Foreign Policy from Charles V to Napoleon”. This writing is still included and echoed in Jürgen Habermas ' “ Theory of Communicative Action ”. The second part contained the period following Napoleon. The manuscript got lost in the post-war turmoil in Leipzig , from which the family finally fled to Schleswig-Holstein on foot . Since then, the work has been considered lost and it remains to be seen whether, like other lost works, it will reappear in a Moscow archive one day.

Media theory

Everth used the knowledge gained through his interdisciplinary studies to pose new questions to press history. The investigation of the “public in foreign policy from Charles V to Napoleon” aims to shed light on “what role journalism played in foreign policy”. Everth therefore assigned the medium its own effective power that can create its own realities.

Everth proved to be a pioneer of the media-theoretical questions that have become central today when he emphasizes that “it is always only a matter of the importance that the journalistic element or journalism has gained in politics, and its development in connection with other historical factors. "

Everth's main work has already met with consistently positive reception from contemporary scholars, and it is still considered an important reference work on the history of the press and, not least, an excellent collection of material.

Fight against National Socialism

When a new government of National Socialists and National Conservatives came to power on January 30, 1933, the more than eighty National Socialist newspapers celebrated the event in capital letters. Enthusiasm can also be felt in the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger from the German national Hugenberg Group and in over a thousand German daily newspapers that received directives from Hugenberg.

In this concert of like-minded people there were few who started a different tune, and even fewer who knew how such concerts can end. One of these is Everth, "a man of the more uncomfortable kind, whose first priority is to protect the freedom of the press from the toggle of the National Socialist equalizers - a concern that should cost him his profession and honor and probably his vitality" (Arnulf Kutsch). The very withdrawn researching Everth now took a clear position and showed that in view of the events he did not remain in the ivory tower of science.

The "Free Word" Congress

At the last public event organized for the time being by liberal and left-democratic politicians in Berlin, just two weeks after the decree of the Reich President for the protection of the German people of February 4th restricted the basic rights of the Weimar Constitution , in particular the freedom of assembly and the freedom of the press, on On February 19, 1933 in the festival hall of the Kroll Opera, held the congress " The Free Word ", Everth made a fiery plea for the preservation of the freedom of the press. Together with Alfred Kantorowicz, he was of the opinion that “there are times when the free speech no longer has to be defended with words, but through action.” At the rally, at which “the call for freedom of thought sounded for the last time”, took over nine hundred rational-democratic and anti-national socialist minds took part, including Käthe Kollwitz , Max Brauer , Willi Münzenberg , Adolf Grimme , Theodor Lessing , Ferdinand Tönnies and Heinrich Mann . Albert Einstein wrote a call for participation in the congress on February 6th. Even before the end of the rally, “law enforcement officers” from the new rulers cleared the hall and declared the congress over. A few days later the German Reichstag was burning on the opposite side of the square ; On February 28, the Reich President's Reichstag Fire Ordinance suspended the fundamental rights of the Weimar Constitution.

Dismissal, sickness and the end

Political investigations were then launched against Everth. Only a short time later he received a letter from the Saxon Ministry for Popular Education, in which it was stated that Everth's attitude "was in no way compatible with the demands that must be made of a university professor in the new state." Everth took a compulsory leave of absence due to an alleged “un-German attitude”. Everth was particularly impressed by this justification. But he was the only newspaper scholar to have had the courage to criticize the emergency ordinances and the press policy of the National Socialists. The National Socialist Hans Amandus Münster received his previous chair . Everth's forced retirement took place on September 30, 1933, although the investigations had not revealed anything that should have led to such a procedure due to the still applicable civil service law . Nevertheless, in November 1933 he signed the German professors' confession of Adolf Hitler .

At the time of the forced retirement, Everth was already seriously ill with leukemia. Further resistance was therefore impossible for him. He died in Leipzig on June 22, 1934.

Honors

Since 2003, the Leipzig Media Foundation has been awarding a scholarship named after Everth, which was previously awarded within the Institute for Communication and Media Studies at the University of Leipzig .

swell

Fonts

• Men of Time , Faber, Magdeburg 1915 (first in the Magdeburgische Zeitung, 1915)
• Of the soul of the soldier in the field. Comments by a participant in the war , Diederichs, Jena 1915
• Inner Germany after the war , Diederichs, Jena 1916
• Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. Poetry and Personality , Sibyllen-Verlag, Dresden 1924
• The art of narration , in: Journal for Aesthetics and General Art History, Vol. IX, Enke, Stuttgart 1925
• Volkelt's basic aesthetic figures , Eduard Pfeiffer, Leipzig 1926
• Newspaper Studies and University. Inaugural lecture, held on November 20, 1926 , Gustav Fischer, Jena 1927
• The newspaper at the service of the public. A conceptual foundation , in: Archive for book trade and commercial graphics, 1928
• The study of newspaper studies at the University of Leipzig , A. Lorenz, Leipzig 1928 (2nd edition 1933)
• The public in foreign policy from Charles V to Napoleon . Gustav Fischer, Jena 1931

literature

• Stefanie Averbeck: Erich Everth: Theory of the public and interests . In: Großbothener lectures III. edition lumière, Bremen 2002
• Hans Bohrmann, Arnulf Kutsch: Press history and press theory. Erich Everth 1878-1934 . in: Publizistik 24 (1979), pp. 386-403
• Erik Koenen: A "lonely" scientist? Erich Everth and the Leipzig Institute for Newspaper Studies between 1926 and 1933. A contribution to the importance of the biographical for the history of newspaper studies . In: Medien & Zeit, 20th year 2005, issue 1, pp. 38–50
• Erik Koenen: Journalism conceived as a social form. On the 70th anniversary of Erich Everth's death . In: Journal University of Leipzig. Announcements and reports for relatives and friends of the university, year 2004, issue 4 (July), p. 28
• Ronald Lambrecht: Political dismissals in the Nazi era. Leipzig, Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2006, pp. 68–70. ISBN 3374023975
• Arnulf Kutsch: Of the uncomfortable kind . In: message 2/2002
• Sylvia Werther, Thomas Lietz, Erik Koenen: The end of the free speech. The National Socialist "seizure of power" in the Institute for Newspaper Studies . In: Journal University of Leipzig. Announcements and reports for family members and friends of the University of Leipzig, year 2003, issue 7 (December), pp. 37–38

Web links

• Literature by and about Erich Everth in the catalog of the German National Library
• Erich Everth in the professorial catalog of the University of Leipzig
• Biography in exilarchiv.de
• Everth scholarship from the Leipzig Media Foundation
• Essay on the media location Leipzig - with classification by Everth
• Erik Koenen: Erich Everth (1878-1934) . In: Institute for Saxon History and Folklore (Ed.): Saxon Biography .

This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on May 5, 2006 .