Friedrich Hussong

Friedrich Hussong (born May 15, 1878 in Webenheim , † March 29, 1943 in Berlin ) was a German journalist and writer .

Life

When Friedrich Hussong was born in 1878, Webenheim (today a district of Blieskastel ) in the Rhine Palatinate was still part of the Kingdom of Bavaria . Hussong came from a family of farmers and miners. His father Jakob Hussong (1839–1901) was a teacher and community clerk, his mother died when he was 15 years old. He was an early supporter of Alfred Hugenberg and his Pan-German Association . His hometown Webenheim was assigned to the Saar area in 1920 , which was separated from the German Reich for fifteen years to compensate for the French war damage.

In 1898, Hussong passed the Abitur examination as an external student ("private student") at the Maximiliansgymnasium in Munich .

In 1900, the 22-year-old became editor of the national liberal Daily Rundschau in Berlin, of which he headed the interior department from 1910. On January 1, 1919, he moved to Alfred Hugenbergs Scherl- Verlag, to which he was already connected through work for Die Gartenlaube . At his new employer he worked as an editorial writer for the day and the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger .

On November 3, 1921, he returned as editor-in-chief of the Daily Rundschau , which he tried in vain to move to the German national camp. This episode ended with the purchase of the Daily Observations by Hugo Stinnes . From October 1922, Hussong was again active in the Hugenberg empire as editor-in - chief at Scherl-Verlag .

After the National Socialists came to power, he stayed with the Scherl-Verlag, but from 1934 onwards he was less active. He published z. B. anthologies with his editorials from the Weimar years, but in 1940 also a kind of pamphlet against England.

He was married to Edith Haver and had a son with her.

Friedrich Hussong died on March 29, 1943 in Berlin-Zehlendorf of a heart condition. He was buried in the Zehlendorf cemetery . The grave has not been preserved.

Hussong's role in the press of the Weimar Republic

Friedrich Hussong was quickly forgotten in post-war Germany. This is not surprising, because his anti-democratic agitation against the Weimar Republic discredited him as a role model compared to his democratic opponent Theodor Wolff from the Berliner Tageblatt . In literary terms, he could not hold a candle to his left antipodes Kurt Tucholsky and Carl von Ossietzky . Nevertheless, it is important to remember his journalistic work, because he prepared the ground for the Nazi press. In his well-known review of the newspaper city of Berlin, Peter de Mendelssohn described him as the “most brutal journalistic demagogue” that the “newspaper city of Berlin has ever experienced”. And further: "He developed a journalistic manner and technique that essentially anticipated the style that Joseph Goebbels later cultivated in the attack into heyday."

Voice of his master

Although Hussong was not listed in the imprint of the Scherl-Blätter nor in the relevant reference works (Jahrbuch der Tagespresse, Handbuch der Tagespresse), he played a central role in Alfred Hugenberg's press empire. The press archive of the influential conservative Reichslandbund contains over 500 newspaper clippings, primarily from the years of the Weimar Republic. His leading articles appeared mainly in Berlin's highest-circulation daily newspaper, the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger (BLA), as well as in Tag and Monday (Monday edition of the BLA). In addition, numerous leading articles can be found in the provincial newspapers of the Scherl Verlag, so that he must be considered one of the most widespread editorials of his time. His importance as an editorial writer is also made clear by a copy of a speech that he had given to young journalists and that appeared in the German press in March 1932 .

In this role he was noticed and taken seriously by well-known colleagues in the other political camps. While Theodor Wolff approached him rather cautiously, even though the liberal capital city papers were among his preferred targets, Kurt Tucholsky, under his pseudonym Ignaz Wrobel, gave him a resounding intellectual slap on the world stage on February 16, 1932 . Also, the forward had exposed ironically on 4 November 1929 because it was this apologists the German soldier managed to take time off during the whole World War Hussong.

A fitting characterization of Hussong's role was succeeded by Georg Honigmann , who published from a Marxist point of view in 1976 about the Hugenberg Group and described Hussong as “his master's voice”. Hussong gave the uncharismatic DNVP leader Alfred Hugenberg at least a printed eloquence. While his political attacks in the 1920s were primarily aimed at the parties of the so-called Weimar coalition and newspapers closely related to them, there were later sharp journalistic battles with the growing National Socialists, who stole the voters from the DNVP. This dispute culminated on September 29, 1932 in the special edition published by Scherl-Verlag under the title “ National Socialism and Us! Weg und Kampf des Scherl-Verlag ”. A direct comparison of this work with Hussong's editorials quickly reveals him as the author of this pamphlet. The main aim was to prove who held the copyright, to be the earliest and harshest critic of the Weimar Republic. This proxy war for the DNVP and the NSDAP was waged by Hussong in the BLA and Joseph Goebbels in the Berlin Nazi Gau newspaper The Attack .

Right-wing retired

With the co-ordination of the press in the Nazi state and the departure of his boss Hugenberg from the first Hitler cabinet , Hussong also lost his importance. When it became clear at the end of 1933 that Hitler succeeded in finally ousting his German national allies, Hussong claimed in a look back at the failed coup of 1923 to have recognized the "Führer" as a political genius. In fact, he had called him a "Wild West politician". A little later after Rudolf Hess and Ernst Röhm were appointed ministers, he formulated the fears of the bourgeoisie by warning against wanting to read right Germanism from the right party badge and claimed Hess himself as a key witness.

With this episode, Hussong's role as a daily political journalist ends. After that he appeared primarily in journalism, for example with a collection of his articles in which he praised the book burning as an “act of symbolic liberation” from the “demon of decomposition”.

When he died, there was a relatively large official response for him, although he had never belonged to a Nazi organization. His old newspapers as well as the Volkischer Beobachter and the radio reported on Hussong. At the funeral, the deputy Nazi press chief Helmut Sündermann spoke and laid a wreath for the Führer. In the German press the obituary was illustrated with the wreath instead of a portrait of the deceased.

Style flowers

In terms of content, Hussong's journalism was shaped by the struggle against the Peace Treaty of Versailles and the Weimar Republic with its democratic institutions. One of his most popular means as a journalistic explainer of the times had always been to put himself or his journalistic opponents in the right light or in the wrong by clever quoting. He meticulously followed the liberal, social democratic and independent left press and argued with a montage technique with which he tried to discredit the opponent through his own statements. The high point was a twelve-part series that appeared in 1931 in the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger under the title “Deutsche Passion” . It overshadowed everything that the Weimar Republic had experienced up to then in terms of malice and is said to have served Joseph Goebbels for training.

It is noticeable that Hussong has been able to deliver eloquent criticism for decades, but one looks in vain for one's own positive proposals for solutions to the supposed or actual problems. It is not a matter of course for an editorial writer of his time that he always signed his articles by name and did not hide behind the "newspaper as a personality" claimed by Emil Dovifat .

Tastings

As with other right-wing colleagues, Hussong's polemical repertoire included terms such as " November treason, contract of shame or stab in the back ". When the peace conditions became known in 1918, Hussong spoke of "genocidal conditions", "punishment of the nation" and "unbearable, planned strangulation". He insulted democratic politicians as “drooling from enemy boots”.

He made his aversion to the democratic rules of the game clear by writing about the “tangle and gears of parliamentary shifts”, hearing “parliamentary gangway rumors” everywhere or seeing “party-political profiteers” entangled in “parliamentary clique formation”.

How much Hussong was able to forget all civil decency is illustrated by sentences with which he commemorated a fundraising campaign by the “ International Women's League for Peace and Freedom ” for the 60th birthday of the French Nobel Prize laureate and pacifist Romain Rolland : “Political perversion. Lousy sentimentality. Instinctless muddiness and unnatural perversity of the simplest and most natural feelings. "

Hussong immediately knew how to correctly classify some political developments. The emergency ordinance of Reich Chancellor Heinrich Brüning from the summer of 1930, with which he de facto buried the Weimar Republic in accordance with the constitution, Hussong commented caustic under the heading "Dying Pig":

“This parliamentarianism is no longer even capable of catastrophe. He lacks everything for a retirement and a downfall with any aplomb . He slips and sinks softly, like the children's toy, the dying pig, when the blown air flows out with a funny sigh and ridiculously cobs. "

Book publications

• Mathias Erzberger's Paths and Changes, Berlin 1918.
• Sentenced to death. News from the Foreign Legionnaire Kirsch. Recounted to him, Berlin 1920.
• The Lülsbrucher Wirren, novel, 1921.
• The Russian egg. A selection, Berlin 1924.
• Millet Wenzel. A new selection, Berlin 1925.
• Kurfürstendamm. On the cultural history of the intermediate empire, Berlin 1934.
• The table of the century, Berlin 1937.
• Love fates of German people, Berlin 1939.
• England's political morality in self-testimonies, Berlin 1940.
• War trip home, in: Ein Saarpfälzisches Lesebuch, ed. by R. Schneider-Baumbauer, 1940, pp. 38-40.
• as HG. Comrade Petrenz. Selected sheets by Adolf Petrenz, Berlin 1918.

literature

• Georg Honigmann : Capital crimes or the case of Privy Councilor Hugenberg . Berlin (GDR) 1976.
• Kurt Koszyk: Journalism and Political Engagement. Life pictures of journalistic personalities ed. and introduced by Walter Hömberg, Arnulf Kutsch and Horst Pöttker. Münster 1999, Lit-Verlag. ISBN 3-8258-4276-2 .
• Peter de Mendelssohn : Berlin newspaper city. People and Powers in the History of the German Press . Frankfurt / M. 1982, for the first time 1958.
• Joachim Pöhls:  Hussong, Friedrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 10, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1974, ISBN 3-428-00191-5 , p. 90 f. ( Digitized version ).
• André Zwiers: Friedrich Hussong - The dark side of Weimar journalism , in: Ulrich P. Schäfer, Thomas Schiller, Georg Schütte (ed.): Journalism in theory and practice. Contributions to university journalism training, Konstanz 1999, UVK Medien, ISBN 3-89669-268-2 .
• André Zwiers: Conservative journalism in the Weimar Republic using the example of Friedrich Hussong . Unpublished diploma thesis, Institute for Journalism, University of Dortmund 1990.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Matriculation 1897/98, Maximiliansgymnasium Munich, archive
2. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 , p. 675.
3. ^ André Zwiers: Friedrich Hussong - The dark side of Weimar journalism , in: Ulrich P. Schäfer, Thomas Schiller, Georg Schütte (eds.): Journalism in theory and practice. Contributions to university journalism training, Konstanz 1999, UVK Medien, ISBN 3-89669-268-2 , p. 57f.
4. ↑ Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger , November 10, 1923, No. 506
5. ↑ Kurfürstendamm. On the cultural history of the intermediate empire , Berlin 1934
6. ↑ Daily Review , November 12, 1918, No. 580
7. ↑ Monday , April 20, 1925, No. 15
8. ↑ Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger , October 3, 1929, No. 476
9. ↑ Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger , March 30, 1930, No. 152
10. ↑ Monday , March 2, 1925, No. 9
11. ↑ Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger , October 30, 1932, No. 516
12. ^ Monday , January 18, 1926, No. 3
13. ↑ Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger , July 17, 1930, No. 332, vol. 48.