Georg Foertsch

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Georg Foertsch (born July 6, 1872 in Görlitz , † April 2, 1932 in Berlin ) was a German editor , publicist and publishing director. He became known as the editor-in-chief and chairman of the supervisory board of the Neue Preußische Kreuz-Zeitung .

Live and act

Georg Foertsch joined the imperial army after graduating from school. He later worked as a major in the Imperial Navy until 1908 as a press attaché. Since 1913 he had a job in Berlin as an employee of the "Neue Preußische (Kreuz-) Zeitung". When the previous editor-in-chief Theodor Müller-Fürer died on March 18, 1913 , Foertsch took over the editor-in-chief and chaired the supervisory board of the Kreuzzeitung . The head office was in Berlin, Königsgrätzer Straße 15. He succeeded in rehabilitating the newspaper , which had got into trouble since the criminal editor-in-chief Hammerstein's scandal in 1896. He established good contacts with the government, especially with the Reich Treasury , where he received both protection and internal information from many areas of society. Foertsch attached great importance to reliable research work and solid networks of his journalists. In the following years he specialized the paper primarily on foreign policy issues. The "Neue Preußische (Kreuz-) Zeitung" thus increasingly established itself as the house newspaper of the imperial court. One of his best foreign correspondents was the historian and Russia expert Theodor Schiemann , who had increasingly made a name for himself as an expert on Eastern Europe and even temporarily acted as the foreign policy advisor to Kaiser Wilhelm II for the Eastern European region. In order to further stabilize the newspaper's financial situation, Georg Foertsch founded the subsidiary “Kreuzzeitungs Immobilien AG” and had all of the publisher's properties managed by this new company.

With the outbreak of the First World War and the mobilization associated with it, Georg Foertsch became an employee of Section IIIb in the Great General Staff in Berlin. The head of this military intelligence service of the highest command was Walter Nicolai . Since at the time of the first armed conflict it became drastically clear what importance the formation of public opinion represented, the Chief of the General Staff Helmuth von Moltke (the younger) had demanded that public opinion on the military events should not be left to the general press, but as a special task b by the section III, later Division III b , edit. Since Foertsch was an officer and already had experience in the field of military press work through his work in the Reichsmarineamt, he was employed here as an employee in the war press office . His tasks consisted of working with civilian press representatives to motivate the German population with regard to current warfare, press censorship, the provision and dissemination of military news for general reporting, and the organization of war psychological campaigns aimed at the population in neutral and occupied territories. However, since the “ Central Office for Foreign Service ” formed in October 1914 at the Foreign Office also dealt with similar objectives , there were repeated conflicts of competence between the two institutions. These were only clarified in principle in 1916 by a decision by Reich Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg , in which Georg Foertsch's work area was made responsible for the military and the Foreign Office's intelligence office for political matters. From this point on, the targeted news and press work ran in a more orderly manner.

After the war ended, Georg Foertsch was very close to the German National People's Party (DNVP) founded on November 24, 1918 , which primarily pursued the goal of restoring the monarchy. During these months he tried hard to readjust the positions of the Neue Preußische (Kreuz-) Zeitung . In this political turmoil, he attached great importance to the fact that his newspaper was not perceived by the public as a medium with too much party affiliation. But her character was monarchist-conservative. It still had a large readership and appeared twice a day, except on Mondays. He still saw it as an important position that the daily newspaper offered its readers well and neatly edited news, with an increasing focus on foreign policy reporting. This was an important feature of this sheet. Unlike many other newspaper publishers, the longstanding network of journalists and foreign correspondents working for the newspaper had only changed insignificantly as a result of the events of the war and the developments that followed. But difficulties were also inevitable. In a cabinet meeting of the Bauer government on November 11, 1919, it was decided that Foertsch and his newspaper should be sued for an article allegedly insulting the Reich government. The Reich Minister for Justice and Vice Chancellor Eugen Schiffer filed the criminal complaint . Thereupon the criminal chamber of the regional court Berlin I sentenced Foertsch on May 12, 1920 to a fine of 300 marks. The newspaper also participated very intensively in the smear campaigns against the Minister of State and Reich Finance Minister Matthias Erzberger in 1920 and 1921.

Due to the violent inflationary developments in 1922/1923, the newspaper got into significant financial difficulties. With prices rising almost daily, a large part of the readership could no longer afford to purchase "their" newspaper. The Kreuzzeitung AG continuously lost its financial reserves as well as all real estate plus its own editorial offices that it owned in Germany and abroad. During this time, Foertsch made special efforts to acquire private sponsors in order not to become dependent on the aggressive Hugenberg group . This included above all members of the men's club . In order to further expand his own trading network, Foertsch himself joined the German Men's Club in 1924 . This enabled him to keep the Kreuzzeitung AG running . A special feature compared to many other newspaper publishers was that despite the severe price turbulence, he managed to pay his wages and fees on time, which had a strong impact on the internal stability of the staff and the correspondents who worked for him. From 1924, together with the writer Otto Bleck , he published a special supplement to the “Neue Preußische (Kreuz) Zeitung” under the heading “Deutsche Wacht” at irregular intervals until 1926.

In September 1926 Georg Foertsch founded together with the member of the "German Gentlemen's Club" and publisher of the " German daily newspaper " Helmut Rauschenbusch an interest group that should enable them to work more cheaply in the production area. Because the financial pressure of the market and the fluctuating price developments weighed heavily on the media companies that published around 4,700 newspapers in Germany during this time. Both founded the "Berliner Zentral Druckerei GmbH" and from January 1927 this printing company was already producing all press products for both publishing houses. On March 1, 1929, the newspaper was renamed "Neue Preußische Kreuzzeitung" and from then on appeared daily, but only with one issue per day. But the publishing house could not withstand the pressure of the global economic crisis in 1929 and the company was threatened with bankruptcy at the end of the year . To prevent a takeover by the Hugenberg Group, Foertsch agreed with Rauschenbusch to continue the traditional Kreuzzeitung as a 100 percent subsidiary of the "Deutsche Tageszeitung AG" under the umbrella of the "Deutsche Tageszeitung Druckerei und Verlags AG". This enabled him to maintain a certain independence of the Kreuzzeitung .

Georg Foertsch never belonged to a party, but as a staunch monarchist rejected a dictatorship as well as a republican social order. After a normal shift on April 1, 1932, he died suddenly and unexpectedly on the night of April 2 at the age of 60 in Berlin.

literature

• Biographical information about Georg Foertsch, files of the Reich Chancellery; in: Federal Archives .
• Dagmar Bussiek: With God for King and Fatherland! The Neue Preußische Zeitung (Kreuzzeitung) 1848 - 1892. LIT Verlag, Münster 2002.
• Kurt Koszyk, Karl Hugo Pruys: Dictionary for journalism. Walter de Gruyter, 1970.
• Meinhold Roehler, Burghard Treude: New Prussian Cross Newspaper. Berlin (1848-1939) . In: Heinz-Dietrich Fischer (Ed.): German newspapers from the 17th to the 20th century . Munich, Pullach 1962.
• Burkhard Treude: Conservative Press and National Socialism. Content analysis of the "Neue Preußische (Kreuz-) Zeitung" at the end of the Weimar Republic. Studienverlag Brockmeyer, 1975.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kurt Koszyk, Karl Hugo Pruys: Dictionary for journalism. Walter de Gruyter, 1970. p. 205.
2. ^ Obituary Georg Foertsch. In: Deutsche Presse: Journal for the entire interests of the newspaper industry. Volume 22, 1932, p. 166.
3. ↑ Files of the Reich Chancellery. Weimar Republic. 1919 - 1933. Bundesarchiv: http://www.bundesarchiv.de/aktenreichskanzlei/1919-1933/001/adr/adrag/kap1_6/para2_103.html (as stated here, Foertsch was not a member of the DNVP, cf.KRZ from 15. June 1929 and obituary)
4. ↑ Until 1911 the renowned daily newspaper was called "Neue Preußische Zeitung". Since it had the Iron Cross in its name on the front page, it was briefly called "Kreuzzeitung". Among its readers and sponsors was u. a. Kaiser Wilhelm II.
5. ↑ Ute Döser: The Bolshevik Russia in the German legal press, 1918–1925: a study on the journalistic struggle in the Weimar Republic. E. Reuter, 1961. pp. 28 f. as well as the Federal Archives.
6. ^ Eppenhaus, Groß, Pöhlmann, Stachelbeck, "Secret Service and Propaganda in the First World War", De Gruyter Verlag Oldenburg, 2019; Compare also: Colonel W. Nicolai: Geheime Mächte - International espionage and their fight in World War II and today , Verlag KFKöhler, Leipzig 1923, p. 51ff.
7. ↑ W.Vogel, the organization of the official press and propaganda work of the German Reich in 1941; See also: Max Schwarte (ed.): Intelligence and Enlightenment by Colonel Nicolai , p. 486ff. in: The world struggle for honor and justice , Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1921.
8. ^ Georg Honigmann : Capital crime . Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1976, p. 177 ff.
9. ^ Deutscher Schriftenverlag Berlin, 1924–1926.
10. ↑ Larry Eugene Jones , Wolfram Pyta : I am the last Prussian. The political life of the conservative politician Kuno Graf von Westarp. Böhlau Verlag, 2006. p. 29.
11. ↑ Hans Bohrmann, Otfried Jarren, Gabriele Melischek, Josef Seethaler: Elections and Political Mediation through the Mass Media: Theoretical-Methodical Implications of Long-Term Analyzes. Springer-Verlag 2013. p. 125 ff.
12. ↑ Werner Liebe: The German National People's Party 1918–1924. Droste-Verlag, 1956. P. 43 ff.