Ernst Roselius

Ernst Roselius (born July 2, 1904 in Bremen , † March 3, 1941 in Bad Rothenfelde ) was a German communication scientist and author . In 1935 he wrote the first practice-oriented German textbook for budding communication scientists.

family

He was born the son of Luise Grote, a daughter of the Hanoverian coffee importer Ernst Grote , and Friedrich Roselius .

His father and his uncle Ludwig Roselius , who was married to another Grote daughter, had taken over the coffee import trading company Roselius & Co. from their father two years before he was born . The company became world famous in 1906 when his uncle invented a process for making decaffeinated coffee and patented it. The resulting product also became the Kaffee HAG brand ( Kaffee Handels-Aktiengesellschaft ).

Ernst Roselius was artistically gifted and wanted to be a painter. However, according to his wife Cäcilie, he was not suited to commercial tasks and activities. In line with family tradition, however, it was also planned for him to join the company and take on management responsibility there.

Education and scientific work

cancellation

From the summer semester of 1924, at the age of 19, he began studying law and political science at the Hamburg University and continued it at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. Then, however, he switched to the economics department and studied from the winter semester 1925/26 at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel, and the following year at the Albert Ludwigs University in Freiburg. After the winter semester of 1926/27, the 22-year-old broke off his studies. His efforts to approach the entrepreneurial approach of his family in these ways, he had to regard as a failure.

Reorientation

In 1927 his father Friedrich Roselius took him on business trips to South America in order to familiarize him with the essential basics of the business of a coffee importer.

During a stay in the United States , Ernst Roselius apparently received the necessary impetus for his further training, from which the family business in Bremen should also benefit.

He worked there for the large advertising agency Young & Rubicam and gained practical experience, which he put on a broader basis through corresponding follow-up activities in Switzerland and Italy. In doing so, he established important contacts that later helped him to include current US publications in his research and research.

New study

In the summer semester of 1933, now at the age of 28, Ernst Roselius started studying again. In the meantime he had orientated himself and opted for the German Institute for Newspaper Studies in Berlin with Emil Dovifat . At that time, Dovifat represented the opening up of newspaper customers to broader journalism and, for example, dealt with the psychology of the process of opinion formation based on studies in the USA and the advertising technology that takes this into account. Their results were applied to oral forms of presentation, to print products, but also to radio and film.

In the winter semester 1933/34 Roselius moved to the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich to at Karl d'Ester on the message sheet quality problems to a doctorate . But it did not stop at this topic; instead, he examined in his dissertation The American College Newspaper - Educating the Community Spirit .

Ernst Roselius worked under editor Paul Orth on the first edition of the student union magazine Münchner Merkur , which was published in June 1934 by the student council of Zentralwissenschaftliche Vereinigung München, which was newly founded in 1933/34, and wrote the article Our Symbol, which is politically questionable from today's perspective .

In the winter semester of 1934/35 he headed the so-called journalistic working group within the student council. There he gave a lecture on journalistic reporting, conducting interviews, journalistic criticism and journalistic style, but also made it clear that his own understanding of process-oriented communication differed significantly from the then predominant approaches in newspaper studies.

He later edited these lectures for publication. They appeared in October 1935 under the title Journalistisches Praktikum in the newspaper and life series published by Karl d'Ester as its 26th volume. In the book Roselius deals with the structure of news and opinion as well as their delimitation and separation from one another, the journalistic style, the formulation of headlines, the features section and the interview .

The six-chapter book has a special feature: it lacks a chapter on press law . Chapter 4, which may have been intended for this, is omitted from the count. As a result, the work lacks any content-related reference to National Socialism (see also: Editor's Law ).

This work fell for the first hands-German textbook for newspaper science students since the 1902 published precursor Handbook of Journalism of Richard Wrede lacked the practical orientation. Instead, Wrede wanted to write a theoretical textbook on press and journalism studies, the aim of which was to help journalism achieve the status of a science.

For his dissertation, Roselius created a random sample using a quota method and developed a survey , which he addressed to 150 periodicals from schools and universities, along with an explanatory cover letter and return postage . The response exceeded his expectations, so that he was able to incorporate well-founded results into his work.

dissertation

On June 12, 1935, he submitted his completed dissertation to the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Munich. The reviewers were Karl d'Ester and Aloys Fischer , who certified the work with the rating “valde laudabilis” (“very good”) and also granted a brilliant result to his Rigorosum (“strict examination”) on June 28, 1935.

Roselius' dissertation was published in June 1936 as the third volume of the essence and effects of journalism series published by Karl d'Ester and the Leipzig newspaper scientist Hans Amandus Münster (1901–1963) under the popular-sounding title American youth writes newspapers .

In Journalism Quarterly , the most important US journalistic magazine of the time, Roselius' work was praised as outstanding by Eric W. Allen, Professor of Journalism at the University of Oregon . It aptly describes the characteristics of public opinion and correctly analyzes public thinking in the USA. He therefore recommended that it be translated into English. Allen had visited Germany and the Munich Institute for Newspaper Studies in the summer of 1936 and got to know Roselius.

In contrast, the German reception of the dissertation by Karl Bömer in the journal Zeitungswissenschaft was rather irrelevant. Roselius responded with a reply. The journalistic internship discussed by Roselius was not even discussed in the journal.

With his dissertation, Roselius was exactly at the height of the research in communication science, which was strongly promoted in the USA in the 1930s, which dealt with the processes of opinion-forming and propaganda as well as their effects. In Germany, the topic was also on the agenda due to Nazi propaganda , but it should be discussed less publicly because the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (RMVP) did not want to look into the cards in detail. Nonetheless, Joseph Goebbels repeatedly stressed the value of propaganda very publicly.

Habilitation

On this basis, Roselius prepared his habilitation on Public Opinion and Propaganda - Theory and Technology of Mass Control in the United States of America . At the same time he worked as a speaker at the Institute for Newspaper Studies at Munich University. He was the first German communication scientist who tried to combine communication research that was beginning in the USA with the social science approaches of German newspaper studies. Sociology , social psychology and communication science were consequently the emerging or growing disciplines with which he had to deal and whose criteria he had to think about. He was referring to the stereotype teachings of Walter Lippmann and the basic social psychological considerations of Hugo Münsterberg .

Roselius' research was caught in a field of tension. Processes of opinion formation in a society on the one hand and the mediating function of a newspaper or a medium between different interests and groups on the other hand and the resulting demands on the journalistic profession were not only interdisciplinary , but also fundamentally pluralistic . But this did not correspond to the interest that newspaper science should and was allowed to develop in the Third Reich .

From his surveys of students about their motives for media reception, he determined the function of the newspaper: "To put people in relation to the environment by experiencing the present and acquiring knowledge that enables them to take a stand".

In mid-June 1936, Karl d'Ester wrote to the dean of the Philosophical Faculty that he wanted Roselius to head the international department of the Munich institute.

In May 1938, Roselius applied for admission to the Reich Chamber of Literature . The application was rejected on the grounds that he was neither a full-time writer nor the importance of his literary work so great that it would justify membership. Nevertheless, he is in no way restricted in the exercise of his writing activity.

In the autumn of 1938 Ernst Roselius moved back to Bremen with his wife Cäcilie to take over the advertising department of Kaffee HAG at the request of his uncle Ludwig Roselius .

In May 1939 he finished his treatise on the history of typography . He also continued to work on his habilitation thesis and presumably completed it in the summer of 1939. It can be found in Emil Dovifat's estate , edited and annotated by him, although it is unclear which function Dovifat should assume in the assessment of the habilitation thesis, be it as a doctoral supervisor or an external reviewer.

But then, at the age of 35, Roselius was unexpectedly drafted into the Wehrmacht and came to Poland, which was occupied after the German invasion . From the beginning of 1940 he wrote there as a freelancer for the Litzmannstädter Zeitung , which before the war had been a newspaper for the German minority population in Litzmannstadt , which was shaped by the textile industry as a free press .

At the beginning of July 1940, Roselius applied for membership in the NSDAP . It can be assumed that he took this step with a view to his habilitation, because the party was concerned with the political preliminary examination and assessment of an applicant before the opening of a habilitation process.

The deployment in the Wehrmacht should only represent an interlude. Karl d'Ester According to Walther Heide , president of the German Newspaper Association Scientific and at the same time the Head RMVP belonging to foreign press offices have planned in Berlin, a leading position for Roselius.

During a home holiday, Roselius had to undergo an operation on his gall in Bad Rothenfelde . As a result of this operation, he died at the age of only 37.

Works

• A trip to the sunny country of Brazil. Presented by Norddeutscher Lloyd, Bremen , Angelsachsen-Verlag , Bremen 1927.
• The king travels. Diary of Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria’s trip to South America, December 1927 to April 1928 . Drei Masken Verlag, Munich 1929.
• Emil Dovifat and Karl d'Ester (eds.): Journalistic internship . Self-published by ZVM, Munich 1935.
• Our symbol . In: Münchner Merkur , 1st year (1934), No. 1, p. 10.
• The American College Newspaper - Community Spirit Education . Phil. Diss. University of Munich June 14, 1935.
• German traffic advertising in America . In: The ad. Magazine for all advertising. Volume 12 (1936), February 2, 1936, Storch-Verlag, Reutlingen / Stuttgart 1936.
• American youth write newspapers. Means of Community Spirit Education in the United States . Universitätsverlag Robert Noske, Leipzig 1936 (corresponds to the title Phil. Diss.)
• Journalism at American universities . In: Zeitungswissenschaft , 12th year (1937), No. 4, pp. 251-254.
• Printing under the influence of technology . VDI-Verlag, Berlin 1939.
• Public opinion and propaganda. Theory and Technique of Mass Control in the United States of America . Habilitation thesis. 1939.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Roselius, Ernst . In: Bremische Biographie 1912–1962 , Historical Society Bremen and State Archive Bremen (ed.), Wilhelm Lührs , Fritz Peters , Karl Heinz Schwebel (arrangement), Hauschild Verlag , Bremen 1969, p. 419–420
2. ↑ Fritz Peters ( Memento of the original from April 21, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . From: radiobremen.de, accessed April 30, 2017  
3. ↑ Stefanie Averbeck / Arnulf Kusch: View of America in the Third Reich. A historical reference to Ernst Roselius (1904–1941) and his communication science perspective . In: Markus Behmer (Ed.): German Journalism in Exile. 1933–1945: People - Positions - Perspectives. Festschrift for Ursula E. Koch , Lit 2006, ISBN 978-3825846152 , p. 294
4. ^ Curriculum vitae , typed by Ernst Roselius, dated June 1, 1935. In: Archive of the University of Munich, Philosophical Faculty: Ernst Roselius doctoral file
5. ↑ Stefanie Averbeck / Arnulf Kusch: View of America in the Third Reich. A historical reference to Ernst Roselius (1904–1941) and his communication science perspective . In: Markus Behmer (Ed.): German Journalism in Exile. 1933–1945: People - Positions - Perspectives. Festschrift for Ursula E. Koch , Lit 2006, ISBN 978-3825846152 , p. 290
6. ↑ Stefanie Averbeck / Arnulf Kusch: View of America in the Third Reich. A historical reference to Ernst Roselius (1904–1941) and his communication science perspective . In: Markus Behmer (Ed.): German Journalism in Exile. 1933–1945: People - Positions - Perspectives. Festschrift for Ursula E. Koch , Lit 2006, ISBN 978-3825846152 , p. 290
7. ^ Ernst Roselius: Journalism at American Universities . In: Münchner Merkur , 1st year (1934), No. 2, p. 5
8. ^ From the Institute for Newspaper Studies : “The senior course dealt with the psychology of publicity under the direction of the director [Emil Dovifat]. The psychology of the opinion process and advertising technology were examined in detailed studies. The results obtained were applied to all forms of publicity advertising, especially speech, writing, posters, leaflets, newspapers, films, radio, etc. The work promoted the institute's new direction of work, including newspapers and other major publicity advertising media. ”In: Deutsche Presse , 23rd vol. (1933), No. 6, pp. 69–70
9. ^ Emil Dovifat : The American Journalism. With a presentation of the journalistic vocational training . Berlin / Leipzig 1927
10. ^ Karl Bömer : The German Press in 1932 . Columbia 1932
11. ↑ Ernst Roselius: Our symbol . In: Münchner Merkur , 1st year (1934), No. 1, p. 10
12. ↑ Stefanie Averbeck / Arnulf Kusch: View of America in the Third Reich. A historical reference to Ernst Roselius (1904–1941) and his communication science perspective . In: Markus Behmer (Ed.): German Journalism in Exile. 1933–1945: People - Positions - Perspectives. Festschrift for Ursula E. Koch , Lit 2006, ISBN 978-3825846152 , p. 294
13. ^ Karl d'Ester resp. Aloys Fischer : opinion on the dissertation by Ernst Roselius of 14 June 1935 and the Protocol on the exam rigorosum of Mr. Ernst Roselius of 28 June 1935 . In: Doctoral File Ernst Roselius. Munich University Archives, Philosophical Faculty
14. ↑ Stefanie Averbeck / Arnulf Kusch: View of America in the Third Reich. A historical reference to Ernst Roselius (1904–1941) and his communication science perspective . In: Markus Behmer (Ed.): German Journalism in Exile. 1933–1945: People - Positions - Perspectives. Festschrift for Ursula E. Koch , Lit 2006, ISBN 978-3825846152 , p. 295
15. ^ Ernst Roselius: Journalism at American universities . In: Zeitungswissenschaft , 12th year (1937), No. 4, pp. 251-254
16. ↑ Karl Bömer . In: Zeitungswissenschaft , 12th vol. (1937), No. 1, pp. 57–58
17. ↑ Excerpt from speech: Joseph Goebbels on propaganda - “Party comrades, a good government without propaganda can just as little exist as good propaganda without a good government. Both have to complement each other ... “Video clip, 1:22 min. On: youtube.de, accessed on April 30, 2017
18. ↑ Speech excerpt: Joseph Goebbels on Propaganda - “That is the secret of propaganda: to soak those whom the propaganda tries to capture with the ideas of the propaganda without his even noticing it. Of course the propaganda has an intention, but the intention will be so cleverly and virtuously concealed that the person who is supposed to be fulfilled by this intention will not even notice it. ”Video clip, 0:27 min. On: youtube.de, accessed on April 30, 2017
19. ↑ Stefanie Averbeck / Arnulf Kusch: View of America in the Third Reich. A historical reference to Ernst Roselius (1904–1941) and his communication science perspective . In: Markus Behmer (Ed.): German Journalism in Exile. 1933–1945: People - Positions - Perspectives. Festschrift for Ursula E. Koch , Lit 2006, ISBN 978-3825846152 , p. 297
20. ↑ Stefanie Averbeck / Arnulf Kusch: View of America in the Third Reich. A historical reference to Ernst Roselius (1904–1941) and his communication science perspective . In: Markus Behmer (Ed.): German Journalism in Exile. 1933–1945: People - Positions - Perspectives. Festschrift for Ursula E. Koch , Lit 2006, ISBN 978-3825846152 , p. 305
21. ↑ Ernst Roselius: The print under the influence of technology . VDI-Verlag, Berlin 1939 (= treatises and reports of the Deutsches Museum), Vol. 11.3.
22. ^ Secret State Archives Berlin, Rep. 92, box no.31
23. ↑ Personal file Ernst Roselius . In: Bundesarchiv Berlin, Berlin Document Center