Max Beer (journalist)

Max Beer (born June 8, 1886 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; died October 27, 1965 in New York City ) was a journalist , writer, German diplomat with the League of Nations in Geneva and a member of the United Nations in New York.

Life

Max Beer received his doctorate in 1910 at the Psychological Institute of the University of Würzburg under Karl Marbe with the dissertation The dependence of reading time on psychological and linguistic factors . He obtained a law degree from the Sorbonne in Paris . He then worked as a correspondent for German newspapers in Paris until 1914. From 1914 to 1920 he worked as a publicist for the Central Powers in Bern , and during the war he wrote propaganda material and obtained information for the press department of the German legation. From 1920 to 1926 Beer was a correspondent for " Wolffs Telegraphisches Bureau " and the "Kölnische Zeitung" at the League of Nations in Geneva.

From 1927 to 1931 Max Beer worked as an official with the rank of German consul in the information department of the League of Nations . During this time he also had contact with Gustav Stresemann. From 1931 to 1933 he worked as a League of Nations correspondent for the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung .

In 1933 he was dismissed as a Jew and continued working in Geneva as a correspondent for the National-Zeitung (Basel), L'Europe nouvelle (Paris) and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (New York).

In 1939 he moved to Paris and began working for the Ministry of Information. Shortly after the start of the Second World War, he wrote an article in the Paris exile magazine “Die Zukunft”, in which he called on German exile to be restrained in the debate about war goals. In 1940 he fled via Spain and Portugal to the USA, where he worked as a lecturer and as an employee of the magazines France-Amérique and Aufbau , and took on American citizenship.

In his book La guerre n'a pas eu lieu (German: “The war did not take place”), published in 1941 by a French publisher in exile in New York, Beer analyzed the reasons for France's rapid defeat. He also named the feeling of security promoted by the Maginot Line as the reason for the nation's lack of preparation. In 1943 Beer had changed his view of the role of German exile compared to his position in 1939; as a member of the “Free French Committee” he publicly campaigned with other Jews who had been exiled to support the struggle for the liberation of France. As a former employee of the League of Nations Secretariat, he took part in the discussion about reorganizing Europe after the war.

After the war, Beer worked for a few years in the information department of the United Nations; from 1950 he was the UN correspondent for several agencies, newspapers and magazines in New York, and he also continued to work on the “construction”.

Max Beer was married, his wife died a few months before his death. Beer left a son, Ferdinand Beer. A plaque installed in the United Nations press club in 1966 commemorates Beer.

League of Nations and United Nations

Max Beer accompanied the work and the failure of the League of Nations from beginning to end, at times as an employee and at times as a journalist. He also experienced the first twenty years of the United Nations either as a staff member or as a correspondent. This closeness to the organizations resulted in several books and numerous articles on the League of Nations, and later also on the United Nations and other organizations. With regard to the League of Nations in particular, Beer was considered one of the outstanding critics of this organization and international politics, mainly because of his wealth of knowledge.

Because of his decades of experience, Beer was considered the living link between the League of Nations and the United Nations among colleagues and employees of the United Nations. Beer occasionally also criticized the organizations, which did not affect his reputation. More than 100 employees of the United Nations and the press attended a celebratory dinner on the occasion of his 50th anniversary in his career, speeches were given by Víctor Andrés Belaúnde as President of the General Assembly, the UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld , and Nahum Goldmann , the President of the World Jewish Congress. Among the well-wishers who sent telegraphic greetings were Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and other statesmen.

After it was founded, Max Beer worked for the United Nations in the information department for several years. From 1950 until shortly before his death in 1965 he was the UN correspondent for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung at the United Nations. In addition, he was first Vice President and then President of the United Nations Correspondents Association .

Since 1956 Beer wrote in the communications of the German Society for the United Nations as “Dr. Max Beer, Special Rapporteur of the German Society for the United Nations, New York ”. In the first two volumes of the United Nations magazine, which emerged from the communications and has been published since 1962, Beer wrote in a prominent place, regularly on the first page. In the first two issues in 1963 he had to move to page 2 in favor of two federal ministers, and in addition, in the first issue in 1963 a report by another New York journalist on the role of the United Nations in the Congo conflict appeared. Then Beer ended the collaboration.

Anti-Semitism and commitment to human rights

Max Beer was not only a victim of anti-Semitism because he lost his job in 1933 and because he was forced to emigrate, he also lost relatives during the Holocaust. After the war, in addition to his full-time work as a journalist, he worked for the World Jewish Congress.

When he found out in 1958 that a diplomat from the German Consulate General in New York had called him a “dirty Jew” to another journalist, Beer protested by telegram to Federal President Theodor Heuss and Georg von Broich-Oppert , the Foreign Office's head of personnel, whom he was calling when he was an observer at the United Nations. When there was no answer after five days, Beer returned the Federal Cross of Merit that had been awarded to him the previous year. The Foreign Office dispatched a member of the legal department, Hermann Meyer-Lindenberg , to New York to investigate the allegations. The accused diplomat was recalled and dismissed within a few weeks.

After 1950, Max Beer was a representative of the International League for the Rights of Man at the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations and other UN organizations. As a representative of this organization, he turned against anti-Semitism in the world, including at conferences of the United Nations and its sub-organizations. In 1961, the International League for the Rights of Man, represented by Max Beer, and other human rights organizations in a subcommittee of the UN Human Rights Commission sharply criticized anti-Semitic riots in the Soviet Union.

Honors

• 1957: Cross of Merit First Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany , returned in September 1958

Fonts (selection)

• The dependence of reading time on psychological and linguistic factors , dissertation, University of Würzburg 1910. In: Zeitschrift für Psychologie (= Journal for Psychology and Physiology of Sensory Organs . I. Department) , Volume 56, 1910, pp. 264–298, ISSN  0233- 2353
• Boches ...! Three stories from France , Langen, Munich 1915
• The European war negotiations. The relevant documents, compiled chronologically and analogously, translated and explained (secondary title "The Rainbow Book. White-Red-Blue-Yellow-Orange-Blue and Gray Book") , Wyss, Bern 1915, online , accessed on January 25th 2014.
• L'entente annexionniste. La paix du "droit" , Ferd. Wyss, Bern 1917, online , accessed January 25, 2014.
• Die Reise nach Geneva , S. Fischer, Berlin 1932 (English: The league on Trial: A journey to Geneva , Allen & Unwin, London 1933)
• The foreign policy of the Third Reich , Polygraphischer Verlag, Zurich 1934
• La guerre n'a pas eu lieu , Edition de la Maison Français, New York, NY 1941
• The United Nations through the ages (= UN texts 1) , Bonn liaison and information center of the German Society for the United Nations, Bad Godesberg 1956, 31 pp.

literature

• Beer, Max , in: Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945 . Munich: Saur, 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , p. 24
• Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Hrsg.): Biographical manual of the German-speaking emigration after 1933. Volume 1: Politics, economy, public life . Munich: Saur, 1980, p. 45

Web links

• Literature by and about Max Beer in the catalog of the German National Library
• Publications by and about Max Beer (journalist) in the Helveticat catalog of the Swiss National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} without author: Max Beer in the online version of the edition files of the Reich Chancellery. Weimar Republic
2. ↑ Max Beer: The dependence of reading time on psychological and linguistic factors , dissertation, University of Würzburg 1910. In: Zeitschrift für Psychologie (= Journal for Psychology and Physiology of Sensory Organs. I. Department) , Volume 56, 1910, pp. 264-298 , ISSN  0233-2353
3. ↑ ^{a b} without author: Dr. Max Beer, dean of UN correspondents, dead; worked for JTA . In: Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Daily News Bulletin , Volume 32, Number 206, October 28, 1965, Page 4, ISSN  1538-4918 , jta.org , accessed January 24, 2014.
4. ↑ Martin Korol: Dada, Preexile and "Die Freie Zeitung". Ernst Bloch, Homo ludens and dancers, Hugo Ball, restlessly in search of home and their wives, companions and opponents in Switzerland 1916–1919 , self-published, Bremen - Tartu - Sofia 2001, pp. 265–267, 271, uni- bremen.de (PDF; 12.5 MB) accessed on January 25, 2014.
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Hermann Wichers : Max Beer. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . 2004-60-10 , accessed January 23, 2014 .
6. ↑ without author: 1. Dr. Max Beer ; 2. Dr. Beer's entry into the League of Nations Secretariat. Satisfaction in Geneva. ; 3. The Saar area for the appointment of Dr. Beers . In: Kölnische Zeitung , July 27, 1927
7. ↑ ^{a b} Frédéric Stephan: The concepts of Europe in the German and French resistance to National Socialism 1933/40 to 1945 . Dissertation, University of Stuttgart 2003, pp. 147–148, uni-stuttgart.de , accessed on January 25, 2014.
8. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Frédéric Stephan: The concepts of Europe in the German and French resistance to National Socialism 1933/40 to 1945 . Dissertation, University of Stuttgart 2003, p. 414, uni-stuttgart.de , accessed on January 25, 2014.
9. ↑ Max Beer: On the aim of the war . In: Die Zukunft , Volume 2, Number 45, November 10, 1939, p. 2, quoted from Frédéric Stephan: The concept of Europe in the German and French resistance to National Socialism 1933/40 to 1945 . Dissertation, University of Stuttgart 2003, pp. 147–148, uni-stuttgart.de , accessed on January 25, 2014.
10. ↑ ^{a b c} without author: German Embassy in Washington Suspends Official for Anti-jewish Slur . In: Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Daily News Bulletin , Volume 25, Number 186, Oct. 2, 1958, Page 3, ISSN  1538-4918 , Online , accessed Jan. 24, 2014.
11. ↑ Melissa A. Deininger: After the Revolution: Terror, Literature, and the Nation in Modern France , Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 2009, p. 270, Online (PDF) 1.2 MB, accessed on January 25 2014.
12. ↑ without author: French Jewish Leaders Form Committee to Raise Funds in US for Fighting French . In: Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Daily News Bulletin , Volume 10, Number 85, April 12, 1943, Page 4, ISSN  1538-4918 , online , accessed January 24, 2014.
13. ↑ Frédéric Stephan: The concept of Europe in the German and French resistance to National Socialism 1933/40 to 1945 . Dissertation, University of Stuttgart 2003, pp. 269–270, uni-stuttgart.de , accessed on January 25, 2014.
14. ↑ ^{a b c d} without author: Obituary for Max Beer . In: United Nations , Volume 13, Issue 6, 1965, p. 212, dgvn.de ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 13.4 MB) accessed on January 24, 2014. 
15. ↑ without author: memorial plaque for Max Beer . In: United Nations , Volume 14, Issue 4, 1966, p. 132, dgvn.de ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 13.4 MB) accessed on January 24, 2014. 
16. ^ Max Beer: Can We Save the Bill of Human Rights? Opportunity for a new start . In: Commentary , Volume 15, January 1, 1953, pp. 289–299, here p. 289.
17. ^ Robert Balmain Mowat: The Reform of the League of Nations . In: The Contemporary Review , Volume 146, July 1, 1934, pp. 545–555, here pp. 547–548.
18. ↑ without author: Dr. Max Beer honored by leading UN members for journalistic work . In: Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Daily News Bulletin , Volume 26, Number 194, Oct. 7, 1959, Page 4, ISSN  1538-4918 , online , accessed Jan. 24, 2014.
19. ↑ Thomas Maissen : The history of the NZZ 1780-2005 , Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich 2005, p. 299, ISBN 3-03823-134-7 , ub.uni-heidelberg.de (PDF; 1.2 MB), accessed on January 25, 2014.
20. ↑ Kay Rainey Gray: United Nations Notebook. The Relationship of Dag Hammarskjöld with the Press . In: Development Dialogue , Number 1, 1987, pp. 33–58, here p. 42, dhf.uu.se  ( page can no longer be accessed , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 920 kB) accessed on January 24, 2014.  
21. ↑ George Wronkow : The end of the Katanga secession. Collapse of a propaganda campaign against the truth . In: United Nations , Volume 11, Issue 1, 1963, pp. 22–24, dgvn.de ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 14.2 MB) accessed on January 24, 2014.  
22. ↑ Volker Weyel: 50 Years of the United Nations Journal. A trade journal is taking shape . In: United Nations , Volume 60, Issue 6, 2012, pp. 263–269, dgvn.de ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 3.2 MB) accessed on January 23, 2014. 
23. ↑ without author: German Consulate Official Fired for Calling Journalist “dirty Jew” . In: Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Daily News Bulletin , Volume 25, Number 194, October 14, 1958, Page 2, ISSN  1538-4918 , online , accessed January 24, 2014.
24. ↑ ^{a b} The witness . In: Der Spiegel . No.  44 , 1958, pp. 17-20 ( online ).
25. ↑ United Nations (Ed.): 1952 United Nations Yearbook . United Nations, New York 1952, pp. 140, 142.
26. ↑ Without author: UN Adopts Resolution Condemning Manifestations of Anti-semitism . In: Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Daily News Bulletin , Volume 27, Number 20, Jan. 29, 1960, Page 1, ISSN  1538-4918 , online , accessed Jan. 24, 2014.
27. ^ Without author: Soviet Defends Itself at UN Against Charges of Curbing Jewish Rights . In: Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Daily News Bulletin , Volume 28, Number 19, Jan. 27, 1961, Page 1, ISSN  1538-4918 , online , accessed Jan. 24, 2014.
28. ↑ without author: Office of the Federal President. Announcement of awards of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. February 20, 1959 . In: Bundesgesetzblatt , Volume 10, Number 38, February 25, 1958, Page 1.