Karl Willy Beer

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Karl Willy Beer , also Carl Willy Beer , (born May 5, 1909 in Brieg , Silesia , † October 15, 1979 ) was a German journalist .

Life

Beer studied German in Berlin and received his doctorate in philosophy in 1934 . Under Paul Scheffer he was editor of the Berliner Tageblatt and after its hiring on January 31, 1939 political editor of the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung , where, according to the imprint of February 1, 1939, he was considered an expert for "internal affairs". He also worked for the Nazi weekly newspaper Das Reich .

At the Tageblatt , Beer occasionally had trouble with the Nazi rulers, for example when he wrote in 1934 on the Nazis' actions against the Catholic Church that history would have "the last word" on this matter. On the instructions of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels , the entire edition was confiscated and Beer was temporarily banned from the house. Paul Scheffer defended Beer against Goebbels with the words: "You don't drive young horses into the tranny. That spoils them for life." For a comparatively critical contribution about the Hitler Youth , Beer is said to have been physically attacked by an angry Nazi functionary in the editorial office.

After his forced move to the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung , Beer made a name for himself as a rabid war reporter for the propaganda company with "true to the line" reports from the Eastern Front, in which he described people in the Soviet Union as "the most pitiful but also the most dangerous mass" and "Bolshevism" as a "monster" "denotes that set in motion a" crowd driven to the wildest defensive fury ". On October 18, 1942, Beer wrote in Goebbels' order in the Reich about the Battle of Stalingrad, claiming: "The Bolsheviks tried themselves in Stalingrad. But before the end of it, it became clear again, as never before what self-destruction they are capable of. The Soviet front wavers with Stalingrad. " The city will not "leave behind more than chaos". Because of his adapted behavior, the journalist is classified by historians as a "pure perseverance propagandist and National Socialist", who wrote anthemic articles about Adolf Hitler's alleged "private life" in 1939 and contributed to raising morale in the end of the war. So he praised "the old, eternal weapon of the insurmountable German fighters", which "ultimately decides every gigantic battle". After the war, Beer tried, like many others, to shift responsibility for his texts to superiors. The NS press chief Otto Dietrich had "completely rewritten" his articles.

In January 1945 the Beer family , who had been evacuated from Breslau , returned to Berlin. In 1946, under the pseudonym Matthias Menzel , he published the Nazi-critical diary entries Die Stadt ohne Tod , which in the Tagesspiegel of August 19, 1946 were criticized as "Persilschein literature" because Beer as a Nazi journalist "throughout the war" Reich articles from Goebbels made competition. Beer himself defended himself in his "diary" by claiming that he had repeatedly "smuggled" critical "nuances" into his texts for the DAZ : "Of those who make and write newspapers today, only a few know that the word is still a weapon of resistance, a last remaining weapon. I do not mean the radiant and open one, that is noticed by the governors and henchmen, but the incorruptible, the reinterpretation, the nuanced word that embarrassingly avoids the rulers' vocabulary, which is firmly established in all areas of life . The more that is forbidden, the more important the detour becomes. "

In the Federal Republic he held various influential positions in the press, also as a freelancer for the press and information office of the federal government. From 1953 to 1957 he was editor-in-chief of Deutsche Korrespondenz , from 1957 to 1963 for Der Tag and from 1956 to 1978 for Political Opinion . He was also a commentator for Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk (NWDR) and for Die Zeit .

Quote

The Germans: It's difficult to count yourself among them. Like many now, especially those who previously wore the brown uniform and shouted Hosanna, crawled, whimpered, flattered - that is without shame. The fear of atonement may be great - the war provided European examples of national attitudes for the Germans. (...) Of course, it was always to be feared that the overfeeding of pathos, the wear and tear of national values, the cheap abandonment of the best virtues of the people would have to break the German character. - Karl Willy Beer, 1946

Honors

Works

  • Matthias Menzel (d. I. Karl Willy Beer): The city without death , Berlin 1946

literature

  • Wilhelm Mogge: Newspaper man out of calling and passion. Karl Willy Beer (1909-1979). In: Yearbook of the Archives of the German Youth Movement, 12 (1980), pp. 147–154.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Otto Köhler: Weird Publicists: The Repressed Past of Media Makers , Stuttgart 1995, p. 95
  2. ↑ Nobuko Gerth: "Between Two Worlds" Hans Gerth: A Biography 1908–1978 , Wiesbaden 2002, unpag.
  3. ^ Norbert Frei / Johannes Schmitz: Journalism in the Third Reich , Munich 2011, from p. 115
  4. ↑ Peter Köpf: Writing in Any Direction: Goebbels Propagandisten in the West German Post-War Press , Berlin 1995, p. 158
  5. ^ Berliner Geschichtswerkstatt eV: Berlin before liberation: May 9, 1945 Peace? [1] accessed on May 15, 2020
  6. ^ Matthias Menzel (d. I. Karl Willy Beer): The city without death , Berlin 1946, p. 24 f.
  7. ↑ Christina von Hodenberg: Consensus and Crisis: A History of the West German Media Public , p. 161
  8. ^ Matthias Menzel (d. I. Karl Willy Beer): The city without death , Berlin 1946, p. 189 f.
personal data
SURNAME Beer, Karl Willy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Beer, Carl Willy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist
DATE OF BIRTH May 5, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Brieg , Silesia
DATE OF DEATH 15th October 1979