Kampfverlag

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The Kampfverlag (legal name: Kampfverlag GmbH) was a German publisher that existed from 1926 to 1930. The publishing house became particularly important as the journalistic mouthpiece of the “left” wing of the NSDAP around the brothers Gregor and Otto Strasser .

history

Kampfverlag started in 1925: At that time, the pharmacist Gregor Strasser, who had been running a drugstore in Landshut since 1920 and had been a member of the Bavarian state parliament or the Reichstag since 1924, decided in favor of his civil profession - which he had been doing for years had neglected his political engagement - to finally give up in favor of a job as a full-time politician. Together with his brother Otto and the Pomeranian Gauleiter Theodor Vahlen to call who had during the year found in 1925 after the Nazi Party, decided Strasser a Nazi publishing house to life, the expansion of the party to the areas outside of Bavaria , especially the North German space , should support journalistic. In contrast to the actual house publisher of the NSDAP, the Franz-Eher-Verlag , the new publisher was supposed to place a clearer emphasis on socialist positions and, in particular, address the urban workers.

The Strasser brothers took the first step on the way to their own publishing house with the publication of the National Socialist Letters since the autumn of 1925. The founding of the Kampf publishing house followed on March 1, 1926. The publishing house was located near Berlin . The name was influenced by the Nazi idea of ​​the conflict between the "movement" on the one hand and the existing state on the other for political power. In the period that followed, the publishing house bought a number of existing newspapers in quick succession and put them on the Strasser Line. In addition to the Strasser brothers, Hans Hinkel held a third share in the publishing house and temporarily acted as editor. According to Otto Strasser, the publishing house had eleven weekly newspapers in its range in 1926 and later three daily newspapers. A total of eight newspapers and magazines appeared in the publishing house. In addition, there were individual book publications as well as a myriad of brochures, leaflets, advertising slips and other comparable media for political advertising. The brothers brought the tendency of their publications to the formula of proclaiming the mouthpiece of a socialism that was “equally hostile to western capitalism and eastern Bolshevism ”.

The costs for founding the publishing house were covered by loans and guarantees that the founders took from political friends: For example, the industrialist Bruck contributed a loan of 4,000 marks to found the Kampfverlag. Among other things, the profits made by the sale of the Strasser drugstore served as a guarantee. Since the drugstore was acquired from the dowry of Strasser's wife Else, she de jure traded as a co-owner of the publishing house. After working for almost two years, Kampfverlag was in the green from 1928.

While Gregor Strasser took on the duties of the editor and - following his childhood dream of becoming a journalist - contributed numerous articles, Otto Strasser was the editor-in-chief of the Strasser newspapers. The other employees of the Kampfverlag newspapers included Hans Hinkel, Walther Darré and the draftsman Hans Herbert Schweitzer .

In addition to its journalistic activities, the publisher was also noticed in public by a large number of investigative and criminal proceedings that were initiated against him or the responsible editors and publishers: Gregor Strasser was repeatedly reported because of the articles he wrote or was responsible for Contained insults from leading politicians from other parties or from public officials (police presidents, ministers, etc.) or the republican form of government and its symbols, but always escaped convictions due to his parliamentary immunity as a member of the Reichstag . With the Reich amnesty of December 20, 1932, all of the relevant proceedings were finally abandoned.

Within the NSDAP, the journalistic activities of the Kampfverlag and in particular the extensive independence that the Strasser brothers developed from the Munich party leadership in this way led to various conflicts: On the one hand, there were tensions with Max Amann and the management of the Eher Verlag, who disliked the loss of their monopoly over the Nazi press and journalism. More important, however, was the fact that the publisher's activities deepened the break between Gregor Strasser and his former follower Joseph Goebbels , which began in 1925 and which expanded into an outspoken personal enmity until the early 1930s. Above all, Goebbels was angry that the Strasser brothers opposed his claim, as Gauleiter of Berlin, to control all Nazi publications published in Berlin and to compete for his house paper Der Attack .

In the background, the relative independence of the Kampfverlag led to ever new conflicts between the Strasser brothers and Hitler, which culminated in the spring of 1930: While Gregor Strasser was ready to follow Hitler's line and henceforth focused on his work as Reich Organization Leader, i.e. H. As head of the party apparatus of the NSDAP, Otto Strasser preferred to turn his back on the Hitler movement and to go his own way by founding the Combat Community of Revolutionary National Socialists and the Black Front . On July 4, 1930 he resigned from the party or was expelled from it, depending on the reading. Previously, on 21/22 May 1930 a purchase offer for the Kampfverlag for 120,000 Reichsmark rejected. Instead, Kampfverlag was wound up in the summer of 1930 and closed on October 1, 1930.

From the bankruptcy estate of the Kampfverlag Otto Strasser saved a newspaper in his new publishing house Der Nationale Sozialist , which he then published as a political weekly under the title Die Deutsche Revolution . In the summer of 1931, the Strasserverlag was renamed in reference to the name of the political group around Otto Strasser in Die Schwarze Front , which published a newspaper of the same name from September 6, 1931. Until his emigration in the spring of 1933, he used this sheet in particular as a platform for violent attacks on Hitler and the NSDAP in the domestic political struggle. After Strasser's escape from Germany in the spring of 1933, this organ, which he now published under the title The German Revolution from Prague , formed the cornerstone and main mouthpiece of his private war against the Nazi state from exile.

List of newspapers published by Kampfverlag

  • Berliner Arbeiterzeitung
  • Fist
  • The flame
  • The national socialist for the Ostmark
  • The national socialist for Central Germany
  • The national socialist for Northern Germany
  • The national socialist for West Germany
  • The national socialist for the Rhine and Ruhr
  • The national socialist for Saxony (later Saxon observer )

List of books and brochures published by Kampfverlag

literature

  • Udo Kissenkoetter : Gregor Straßer and the NSDAP (= series of the quarterly books for contemporary history. Vol. 37). Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1978, ISBN 3-421-01881-2

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rolv Heuer: More "Krull" than "Tell". In: Die Zeit , April 18, 1969 (issue 16/69).
  2. ↑ Gerhard J. Bellinger , Brigitte Regel-Bellinger : Schwabings Ainmillerstraße and its most important residents: A representative example of Munich's city history from 1888 to today. 2nd, reviewed edition, BoD , Norderstedt 2013, p. 354 in the Google book search.
  3. ^ Markus März: National Socialists in the NSDAP. Structures, ideology, journalism and biographies of the national-socialist Straßer-Kreis from AG Nordwest to Kampf-Verlag 1925–1930. Ares Verlag, Graz 2010, ISBN 3-902475-79-X , p. 368.