Free World (magazine)

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FREE WORLD

description German magazine
publishing company Berliner Verlag (GDR)
First edition 1954
attitude 1991
Frequency of publication weekly, since 1978 fortnightly
Sold edition approx. 350,000 copies
ISSN (print) 0427-5217

FREIE WELT was a German magazine and was published by the Berlin publishing house . She was regarded as the GDR's foreign illustrator . She primarily reported on politics, economy, culture, science, sport and everyday life in the Soviet Union, the GDR and the other socialist countries, supplemented by reports from young nation-states that were close to socialism.

The magazine had a permanent international office in Moscow, and correspondents provided information from Prague, Budapest and Warsaw. It was published by the Society for German-Soviet Friendship and, like other press organs in the GDR, was subordinate to the agitation department of the Central Committee of the SED .

FREIE WELT were shaped by reports on the country and its people, portraits and memoirs of personalities of the time and contemporary history, excerpts from new publications of contemporary literature, multi-part documentations on the anniversaries of important historical events (e.g. the October Revolution in 1917 or the liberation from fascism in 1945 ), courses led by experts (e.g. memory training, yoga or Esperanto) as well as exclusive reports on Soviet space travel. The presentation of various peoples of the Soviet Union in the past and present (e.g. Chukchi , Adygej or Tuviner ) sparked a great response from the readers . Unconventional travel reports, popular comics ("Hase und Wolf") and humor pages with international cartoons completed the profile of the magazine.

After the German edition of the Soviet digest " Sputnik " was banned in autumn 1988 , the SED leadership ordered the magazine to be discontinued - "because of a lack of paper", in reality because there was too much transparency and perestroika . This process remained largely hidden from the public because FREIE WELT was able to continue to appear after protests - including from Moscow.

The magazine was founded in 1954, its predecessor was the "Neue Gesellschaft", it appeared weekly with an average circulation of 350,000 copies, and since 1978 with an expanded number of copies. In 1990 the entire Berlin publishing house was taken over by Maxwell Communications and Gruner and Jahr . From summer 1990 until it was discontinued in March 1991, FREIE WELT was a travel journal.

The DEFA film Liebe Nina ... (1990) by Thomas Kuschel portrays the photo reporter Nina R., who works for FREIE WELT, the daughter of TiP director Vera Oelschlegel , who died in violent clashes between demonstrators and police on October 7, 1989 in the GDR is injured.

In 1973 the magazine was awarded the “ Labor Banner ” and in 1984 the “ Star of Friendship between Nations ” in gold.

Editors-in-chief

Period Surname
1954-1957 Friedrich Heilmann
1957-1967 Karl-Heinz Wegner
1967-1971 Sepp Horlamus
1971-1987 Joachim Umann
1987-1990 Barbara Schablinski
1990 Günther Wolfram

literature

  • The end of a magazine. "Free World" stops showing . In: Neue Zeit , March 16, 1991, p. 7.
  • Günter Simon: From the notes of an editor-in-chief 1981-1989 , Verlag Tribüne, Berlin 1990.
  • Christa Wolf: The way to Tabou , Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 1994, pp. 53–54.
  • Andreas Herbst (eds.), Winfried Ranke, Jürgen Winkler: This is how the GDR worked. Volume 1: Lexicon of organizations and institutions, departmental union management , League for Friendship between Nations (= rororo-Handbuch. Vol. 6348). Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-499-16348-9 , p. 341.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Anke Fiedler: Media control in the GDR (Zeithistorische Studien, Vol. 52) . Böhlau Verlag, 2014, ISBN 978-3-412-21055-7 .
  2. ↑ Gunter Holzweißig: Hardly any free space, but breakdowns. Magazines under the auspices of the party and the state. In: Simone Barck, Martina Langermann, Siegfried Lokatis (eds.): Between “Mosaic” and “Unity”, magazines in the GDR. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 1999, p. 535 ff .
  3. ↑ Gerd König: Fiasco of a Brotherhood: Memories of the last GDR ambassador in Moscow . Edition ost, Berlin 2011, p. 221 .
  4. ^ Günter Simon: Table Times. From the notes of an editor-in-chief 1981 to 1989. Tribüne, Berlin 1990, p. 111, 132 .
  5. ^ Dietrich Löffler: Public magazines and their readers. For example: weekly mail, free world, for you, Sibylle . In: Simone Barck, Martina Langermann, Siegfried Lokatis (eds.): Between “Mosaic” and “Unity”, magazines in the GDR . Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 1999, p. 48 ff .
  6. ↑ Tom Mustroph: Republic birthday and the consequences (new Germany). Retrieved November 5, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Dear Nina. DEFA Foundation, accessed on July 24, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Neues Deutschland , December 6, 1973, p. 5
  9. ↑ Neues Deutschland , March 6, 1984, p. 2