Kurt Neven DuMont

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kurt Neven DuMont (born April 15, 1902 in Cologne , † July 6, 1967 in Munich ) was a German newspaper publisher .

Parentage and education

On his father's side, Kurt Neven DuMont comes from the family of Maastricht resident Mathieu Neven (1796–1878), who immigrated from Liège in the eighteenth century and initially enjoyed great prosperity in tobacco production. The youngest son of the publisher and commercial councilor Alfred Neven DuMont (1868–1940) and his wife Alice (1877–1964) studied after attending the Realgymnasium Köln-Lindenthal at the Universities of Cologne and Munich and finished his academic career with a doctorate in Dr . rer. pole. in Munich. The subject of Kurt Neven DuMont's dissertation was the German reparation payments after the First World War .

Professional background

Neven DuMont joined the management of his parents' publishing company and large printing company M. DuMont Schauberg on January 1, 1927, after completing a long period of training at a major Berlin publishing house. In 1933, along with his cousin August Neven DuMont , the long-time senior boss, he became the owner of the family business in equal parts, which in addition to the Kölnische Zeitung (since 1805), the Kölnische Illustrierte Zeitung (since 1926) and Sunday Morning (since 1932) also ran the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger (since 1876) published.

Journalism under National Socialism

The publishing biographer Manfred Pohl sees Kurt Neven DuMont's attitude towards National Socialism as three phases of development - from the critical to the undecided to the adapted spirit. In 1933 in particular, the publisher had to assert itself against takeover attempts by Westdeutscher Beobachter - the Rhenish offshoot of the NSDAP organ Völkischer Beobachter - who ran a campaign against the established rival newspapers in Cologne with dumping prices, calls for boycotts on advertising customers and attempts to intimidate subscribers . Kurt Neven DuMont succeeded in securing the existence of his publishing house until the end of the war, not least because his internationally renowned Cologne newspaper was under the direct supervision of the Reich Propaganda Ministry and, as a journalistic fig leaf, gave the appearance of a free press in the Third Reich should be sustained. Kurt Neven DuMont joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1937.

Early line loyalty

Weeks before the seizure of power - and thus much earlier than others - the publisher switched to the National Socialist line. In the New Year's edition of January 1, 1933, the Kölnische Illustrierte Zeitung printed a euphoric article about the fascist education of young people in Italy, the Kölnische Zeitung headlined on the same day: “It depends on Hitler!” And predicted: “The year 1933 is Hitler's Decide whether he wants to stand at the gates of politics as an adored leader and perhaps also as a martyr of a religious community, or whether he is ready to take on the responsibility of throwing the positive forces of his movement into the scales of practical politics. In the interests of national consolidation, one would hope that Hitler will find the second way. "

In its November 11, 1933 edition, the Kölnische Illustrierte Zeitung intervened directly in the Reichstag election , a mock election with a NSDAP unified list, coupled with a referendum by suggestively redesigning the title page as a ballot paper. In the background of the image montage, masses of people can be seen raising their hands in the Hitler salute. The publisher also adopted the National Socialists' ideas on "degenerate art" at an early stage by showing a bicycle deliberately overloaded with SS symbols by the artist on the title page of the magazine on July 1, 1933 and pointing to the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur in Cologne referred, who with a current exhibition wants to “fight such bad taste”. The front page of June 13, 1940 showed "victorious German soldiers" and a photo of a captured African colonial soldier. The caption read: “With this scrap of humanity, the French wanted to conquer German cultural land in 1940 too.” On the tenth anniversary of the seizure of power in 1943, the Kölnische Illustrierte Zeitung honored Adolf Hitler with his portrait on the title page as “Creator of the Greater German Reich”.

Takeover of the Kölnische Volkszeitung

In 1941, the Reich Ministry of Propaganda banned the Kölnische Volkszeitung , which is close to the center , a Catholic newspaper that had been published by the Christian publishing house J. Bachem for 80 years. It was a direct competitor to DuMont's Kölnischer Zeitung. Its editor, Reinhold Heinen , spent four years in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp because of his conservative, state-critical activities . Kurt Neven DuMont took over the subscriber base of the Kölnische Volkszeitung at a price of 23 Reichsmarks per customer. At the same time, the volume of his contribution to the Adolf Hitler donation of the German economy , i.e. for the party fund of the NSDAP, increased from 500 Reichsmarks (1940) to 6500 Reichsmarks each in 1941 and 1942.

Thanks to good connections to the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW), the publisher M. DuMont Schauberg also benefited from the Wehrmachtsfürsorge: The Kölnische Zeitung was obtained from the propaganda department of the OKW and sent to German soldiers at the front. In the summer of 1944, Neven DuMont received the War Merit Cross 1st Class with Swords from the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda , which honored special merits under the influence of enemy weapons or in military warfare.

Kurt Neven DuMont kept a number of journalists critical of the regime such as August Dresbach , Fritz Hauenstein and Gert H. Theunissen in the editorial office of the Kölnische Zeitung and employed an employee of Jewish descent as a secretary until the last years of the war.

End of war

After the end of the Second World War , DuMont's papers, like all newspapers that had published during the Nazi regime, were banned. Even later, the Kölnische Zeitung did not receive a license from the British occupying power. After the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in 1949, only the previous local Cologne edition, the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger , was revived by DuMont-Verlag . For reasons of tradition, this has been subtitled the Kölnische Zeitung since 1962 .

The publisher is also said to have used political prisoners to repair war damage on the publishing house premises. In 1947, the city of Cologne had to issue a reminder for payment of the arrears wages for such work. The publisher rejected statements that Kurt Neven DuMont and his wife had benefited privately and commercially from the Aryanization of Jewish assets: The purchase of the land and real estate in question in a prime location in Cologne between 1938 and 1941 was carried out at market value and was not directly related with the emigration or deportation of the former Jewish owners.

After the M. DuMont Schauberg company announced in February 2006 that it would gain an independent, renowned historian for a differentiated processing of this part of the publishing history, Manfred Pohl was entrusted with this task in May 2006 . In March 2009 he published his research results under the title M. DuMont Schauberg. The struggle for the independence of the newspaper publisher under the Nazi dictatorship.

New beginning after the Second World War

Immediately after the end of the war, various Cologne newspapers received the press license required for a new publication. In addition to the communist Volksstimme and the social democratically oriented newspaper Rheinische Zeitung (license holder: Hans Böckler and others), the CDU-affiliated Kölnische Rundschau (license holder: Reinhold Heinen and others) came onto the market as the successor to the Kölnische Volkszeitung. Kurt Neven DuMont alone was refused permission by the military government because he was considered politically charged. Only after the compulsory licensing of daily newspapers was discontinued with the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany, Neven DuMont was able to publish the first edition of the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger after the Second World War on October 29, 1949.

Succession

In September 1953, Kurt Neven DuMont's son, Alfred Neven DuMont , joined the M. DuMont-Schauberg publishing house and from 1955 was initially the journalistic director of the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger. In 1960 he switched to the editor and together with Ernst Brücher , a son-in-law of Kurt Neven DuMont, and Dieter Schütte , the son-in-law of August Neven DuMont, became personally liable partner of M. DuMont-Schauberg.

Kurt Neven DuMont was married to Gabriele DuMont, b. von Lenbach, daughter of the painter Franz von Lenbach and had four children. Neven DuMont died on July 6, 1967 at the age of 65 in the Munich University Hospital. His grave is in the Holzhausen cemetery on Lake Starnberg . His son Alfred Neven DuMont was his successor as sole editor of the press products published by the publisher.

Since 1976 the West German Academy for Communication has awarded a Dr. Kurt Neven DuMont Medal “for special services to advertising”.

Offices and memberships

  • Member of the steel helmet
  • Member of the SA
  • Member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP)
  • Member of the dpa supervisory board in Hamburg
  • Member of the board of the Rheinisch-Westfälischer Zeitungsverleger association
  • Member of the Presidium of the Federal Association of German Newspaper Publishers
  • Chairman of the radio and television committee of the television commission of the Federal Association of German Newspaper Publishers
  • Founding member and first president of the Rheinisch-Westfälische Werbefachschule

literature

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Manfred Pohl: M. DuMont Schauberg. The struggle for the independence of the newspaper publisher under the Nazi dictatorship. Campus, Frankfurt 2009, ISBN 978-3-593-38919-6 , p. 91
  2. ↑ such as Die Woche or the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung
  3. ↑ Kölnische Illustrierte Zeitung , Edition 1, 1933, pp. 17-19: “According to Mussolini's sure faith, the other European nations will sooner or later have to convert to these principles if they and the old continent in the glorious position of a bearer of culture want to preserve humanity; the West only has the choice of either going under or confessing to fascism. "(Author: Philipp Hiltebrandt)
  4. ↑ In October 2006 the magazine Der Spiegel stated : "Claims that the parents of Alfred Neven DuMont and his publisher M. Dumont Schauberg benefited from 'Aryanizations' and the 'expropriations of their Jewish neighbors' have not proven to be reliable."
  5. ^ Inscription on family grave in Cologne's Melaten cemetery. March 9, 2014, accessed December 10, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Neven DuMont, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German publisher
DATE OF BIRTH April 15, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH July 6, 1967
Place of death Munich