Gerhart way

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Gerhart Weise (born June 15, 1913 in Dresden ; † probably before October 10, 1945 ) was a German journalist and employee of Joseph Goebbels in the field of foreign propaganda.

Life

Gerhart Weise was the son of the teacher Bruno Weise (* 1883) and his wife Margarethe (* 1891, nee Hoffmann). His father did military service in the First World War ; he was found missing in 1917 and pronounced dead in 1918. Gerhart's mother accepted a job as a district nurse in Meissen . In 1927, Weise was accepted into the traditional St. Afra grammar school. In October 1929 he tried to get to Hamburg as a fare dodger and from there to the USA as a stowaway. His profile was in Hamburg before him; he was arrested there and sent back. Then he was expelled from the St. Afra-Gymnasium and went to the Realgymnasium Meißen. On May 1, 1930, he was accepted into the NS student union; in January 1932 he resigned from this under pressure from his mother.

From April 24, 1933 to June 25, 1934, Weise completed a traineeship with the daily newspaper Dresdner Anzeiger . He then wrote for the daily newspapers Das 12 Uhr Blatt , Die HJ and The attack as well as for the weekly newspaper Das Reich in addition to articles on “ degenerate art ” as well as film reviews in the sense of National Socialism and served briefly in the Wehrmacht . From April 16, 1940, he was posted to Uk , as he was " indispensable on the home front " for Goebbels in the interests of foreign propaganda . In the secret propaganda office Schwarz van Berk under Goebbels his task consisted in the disinformation of Allied opponents of the war by launching Nazi-friendly material in the foreign press, which could then be cited in the Reich as critical voices from abroad. Weise met his future wife Eva Müller (daughter of Velbert's senior director, Dr. Julius Müller) in the Propaganda Ministry . There she was the antechamber of Department VII Abroad A, which was under the ministerial director Heinrich Hunke . The two married on August 30, 1941; Best man was Karl-Georg Baron von Stackelberg .

On October 14, 1941 Goebbels noted in his diary: “Weise writes a brochure about the British air war . It is calculated primarily for neutral foreign countries and will not fail to have an effect. ”Furthermore, Weise worked for the Reichsfilmdramaturgie and for the UFA . He was a ghostwriter for the bestseller of the submarine captain Werner Hartmann Feind in the crosshairs. U-boat hunting in the Atlantic , the U-boat propaganda that Goebbels greatly appreciated. Weise was also co-author of the last Nazi propaganda film Life goes on .

For the death by suicide of his friend, the cartoonist Erich Ohser alias EO Plauen, Weise bears joint responsibility, as he confirmed and wrote in a memo dated 7 March 1944 the credibility of the denunciations of the neighbor of EO Plauen, Captain Bruno Schultz , they would be "true to the facts". The death sentence against Ohser would have been a matter of form.

Weise himself was picked up four months after the end of the war, on September 21, 1945, by agents of the Soviet secret police GPU and has since disappeared. Wise's wife tried in vain to persuade the mayor appointed by the Red Army and her husband's former colleague, Ernst Lemmer , to intervene in the military administration. According to research by Weise's daughter, the historian and literary scholar Eva Züchner, her father died before October 10, 1945, presumably of diphtheria .

literature

Footnotes

  1. ↑ a b c Eva Züchner: The missing journalist
  2. ^ Eva Züchner: The missing journalist. A German story . Berlin 2010, p. 100.
  3. ^ Eva Züchner: The missing journalist. A German story . Berlin 2010, p. 138.
  4. ^ Eva Züchner: The missing journalist. A German story . Berlin 2010, p. 227.
  5. ^ Sibylle Mulot : Eva Züchner: “The missing journalist. A German story ”. In: Spiegel Online , March 31, 2010 (review)
  6. ^ Wigbert Benz : A completely apolitical Nazi. In: Ossietzky 9/2010 (Review of Eva Züchner: The disappeared journalist. A German story. Berlin 2010)
  7. ↑ Erhard Schütz : Propaganda is a must: Eva Züchner portrays her father, the journalist Gerhart Weise. In: Tagesspiegel , July 4, 2010 (Review of Eva Züchner: The disappeared journalist. A German story. Berlin 2010).
personal data
SURNAME Wise, Gerhart
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist and employee of Joseph Goebbels'
DATE OF BIRTH June 15, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH before October 10, 1945