New time

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The New Era at the CDU special party conference in 1989

Die Neue Zeit was a German daily newspaper that appeared from 1945 to 1994. The first edition was published on July 22, 1945 as a daily newspaper of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany , licensed by the Soviet military administration in Germany , with a circulation of 200,000 copies and with great journalistic success. The delivery was initially handled by sales at Druckhaus Tempelhof from Deutscher Verlag formerly Ullstein. For example, in the period from August 1st to 4th, 1945 for the sold edition of Neue Zeit , which amounted to 103,340 copies per day with a print run of 105,000 copies, a credit was issued by the German publishing house in favor of the CDU's own Union Verlag GmbH. created. The newspaper was printed in the Berliner Verlagsanstalt GmbH. The newspaper for the New Era was supplied by the publisher of the newspaper “T Tages Rundschau”, which was directly subordinate to the occupation authorities. The newspaper Neue Zeit was later in the GDR until November 11, 1989, the central organ of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU in the GDR, also called East CDU ).

From foundation to conformity

Neue Zeit was founded on July 22, 1945 in the four-sector city of Berlin . Until 1948 it belonged to Union-Verlag GmbH, which was entered in the commercial register as a newspaper publisher. The management consisted of Hermann Katzenberger , (* 1891, † 1958) the former political director of the center newspaper Germania and four authorized signatories until 1947 . After the founding of the Christian Democratic Union, privy councilor Katzenberger was in charge of the CDU's own newspaper project. He worked out the first concept under the name of the newspaper Neue Zeit on June 21, 1945, which was incorporated into another concept from July 3, 1945. The later first editor-in-chief Emil Dovifat (* 1890; † 1969) was involved in developing this concept . The publication was close to the newly founded CDU, but was also a forum for democratic opinion-forming. Nevertheless, she saw herself as a contributor to “Christian socialism”.

censorship

The editions of Neue Zeit were initially subject to prior censorship . All contributions had to be approved in advance by the Soviet occupation authorities of Berlin, in whose sector the publishing and editorial building was located. Even when the previous censorship was formally lifted in 1947, the newspaper was subject to the control of those in power. In addition to influencing the editorial team, the allocation of paper and printing capacity was an important means of pressure. Western news agencies were no longer allowed to be used at an early stage. The later central organ Neue Zeit was the largest circulation daily newspaper within the CDU daily press, which was given a total of around 180,000. A guaranteed circulation number from 1981 mentions a total of 86,100 copies for the Neue Zeit (A Republic and B Berlin edition).

In its first edition, Neue Zeit promised “the necessary information, but especially the indispensable factual basis for judgment” on which readers could form their own opinions. In the leading article, editor-in-chief Emil Dovifat called on the readers to “criticize” and “suggest”, but with the request “to accept that affirmative attitude that must guide and pervade us in big politics and in everyday life.” Dovifat referred to it the founding appeal of the CDU, which was enclosed with the first edition of Neue Zeit , and formulated not least with a view to the post-war situation: "It will be the spiritual basis of our newspaper, on which it will work, recognizing the powers of the occupation authorities. “As a newspaper scholar, he was aware that it had to be the task of the editors and the publishing house to“ gather a real community of readers, a community of readers around this paper in the spirit of the union of Christian and democratic forces ”so that the new newspaper project could succeed. Emil Dovifat became the first editor-in-chief for Neue Zeit on July 10, 1945 . In October 1945, the occupation authorities forced his release. He was officially accused of publications in the Third Reich. Shortly afterwards, his successor as editor-in-chief, Rudolf Pechel , was confronted with particularly brazen interference by Soviet censorship. On December 21, 1945, the newspaper was forced to print on the front page an article formulated by SMAD about the removal of Andreas Hermes from the CDU board. This untruthful article was printed as an editorial article without any reference to the author. Even if Kaiser succeeded in later getting a reply from the censors, Pechel saw no basis for further work. He moved to the West and handed over the function as editor-in-chief to his previous deputy Wilhelm Gries . Otto Nuschke , co-founder of the CDU in Berlin in 1945 and successor to publishing director Hermann Katzenberger and license holder after the departure of editor-in-chief Wilhelm Gries on December 20, 1947, led in the interests of UNION-Verlag and the Neue Zeit editorial team on December 25, 1947 with the “ Lords of the Russian occupation forces Maj. Mishin, Captain Kratin & Captain Saslavski [a] review of the reorganization in the newspaper ”. Kratin was SMAD liaison officer to the Eastern CDU and the latter main censor after the end of the previous censorship of Neue Zeit .

Editors-in-chief

Over the decades, other editors-in-chief were appointed or appointed by the Eastern CDU:

In the editorial hierarchy, the deputy editors-in-chief were in second place, but they were able to exert a not inconsiderable influence on the specific content of the newspaper thanks to their partially simultaneous function as chief of staff and member of the editorial board:

As part of the further, massive transformation of the Eastern CDU into a bloc party , the New Age was also brought into line . On December 19, 1947, editor-in-chief Wilhelm Gries (at the same time as Jakob Kaiser and Ernst Lemmer were dismissed as chairmen of the Eastern CDU) was dismissed by the Soviet military administration . Gries fled to West Berlin and there became editor-in-chief of the newspaper Der Tag , which was published by Kaiser. Andreas Morgenstern takes the view in the Germany Archive that after the founding of the GDR, the paper sank into an "announcement organ of the Eastern CDU".

Editorial line 1989/1990

The editorial line changed after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In January 1990, editor-in-chief Koppe was quoted as saying about the previously existing restrictions on reporting by the GDR press office: “ ... the SED's media policy (was) simply 'put through'. Violations were punished severely. Deviants were banned from writing or working, had to practice self-criticism, or were demoted and transferred to prison. "

From the central organ of the Christian-Democratic Union of Germany , an independent daily newspaper developed, which from February 8, 1990 replaced the party reference still existing in the subtitle with Zeitung für Deutschland - Christian, Democratic, Social . On the one hand, the new direction of the daily newspaper and its editorial team was set out with the retained newspaper name, but with changed subtitles, and on the other hand, the free sale on the newspaper market in the entire urban area of ​​Berlin and throughout Germany from this date onwards was taken into account. As of February 1990, the editors were no longer appointed by the party due to a letter from the CDU to the Neue Zeit editor-in-chief. Since the beginning of 1972, an “appointment certificate” with the CDU emblem and the party name as well as the signature of the party chairman has been issued for every “editor of the central organ of the CDU 'Neue Zeit'” after his appointment in order to consolidate the bond with the publisher. In the late GDR, the editorial line of Neue Zeit was based on key sentences of the new CDU chairman Lothar de Maizière at the special party congress at the end of 1989: “We will have to learn, and we want to learn to different currents and wings, not only in our party tolerate, but rather bring them into a fruitful discussion for the politics of the Union. ”In this sense, the former CDU central organ became a chronicler and commentator on political events beyond the GDR.

After the turn

After the fall of the Berlin Wall , Neue Zeit was sold to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung publisher on June 1, 1990 with the aim of creating the leading quality newspaper for East Germany. The former FAZ correspondent in the GDR, Monika Zimmermann, was introduced as the new editor-in-chief on September 3, 1990 and remained in this position until the end of the paper in 1994. One of the managing directors of the newly founded FAZ subsidiary DZV Deutscher Zeitungsverlag GmbH , which for example published Neue Zeit , was Herbert Hartmann from 1991 to 1994. In 1991 the Neue Zeit publishing house took over the subscription list of the former FDGB newspaper Tribüne and thus achieved a circulation of 125,000 copies. In February 1992 the newspapers “ Der Neue Weg ” and “ Thüringer Tageblatt ” , which appeared in Halle and Weimar, were taken over.

Changed design

On September 3, 1993, Neue Zeit appeared with a new newspaper header. Until then, the lettering "Neue Zeit", designed in 1945 by the Berlin graphic artist Heinz Schwabe , was used continuously for the face of the CDU newspaper. As the first German newspaper and probably the first national newspaper in the world, Neue Zeit was printed on blue paper on the initiative of DZV managing director Hartmann. The paper wanted to visually clarify the unique position in terms of content in the new federal states . Every day Neue Zeit published a segment about the new German states. No other newspaper in all of Germany had received more prestigious journalism awards than Neue Zeit in the years after reunification .

Discontinued in 1994

The paper appeared for the last time on July 5, 1994. The newspaper had to stop its publication for economic reasons. Most recently, the circulation was barely 30,000 newspapers a day, which meant that the requirements of a national daily newspaper could no longer be met. Neue Zeit subscribers received a letter from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung's sales department, in which the losses were stated as “well over 100 million marks within the last four years [due to the] sharp drop in circulation [and] missing advertisements”. “The hopes of the FAZ publishing group to maintain Neue Zeit as the East German voice and to reposition it as an independent daily newspaper on the German newspaper market” were not fulfilled.

A processing of the GDR past with the infiltration by at least a dozen unofficial employees of the state security did not take place.

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ JB Gradl: Beginning under the Soviet star. The CDU 1945-1948 in the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany . Cologne 1981, ISBN 3-8046-8584-6 , pp. 25ff; Massive cuts in the number of copies soon followed as a political punishment.
  2. ↑ Due to the accounting by Deutscher Verlag Vertrieb, an amount of over 35,000 Reichsmarks was paid out in cash on August 7, 1945, i.e. each copy was remunerated at 8.5 Pfg.
  3. ↑ According to the imprint of NZ from August 22, 1945, the print shop was in Berlin-Mitte SW 68, Schützenstrasse 18-25, while the publishing house and editorial office were located in Zimmerstrasse 79/80 until the 1970s.
  4. ↑ The invoice in Russian and German from December 1, 1945 shows that Guard Major Terenin, as the “head of the publishing house”, made a total of 54 tons available to the newspaper “Daily Rundschau” for the printing of “Neue Zeit” in November and the paper price was RM 330 per tonne; In addition, there were freight, transport and loading costs of RM 45, - so that the "head of the publishing house's finance department" Lieutenant Sutschkow confirmed the receipt of RM 20,250, - with the stamp "Amount received" and his signature.
  5. ^ Address book of the German book trade. 1948 One hundred and fifth year . Publishing house of the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels zu Leipzig. 1st section p. 290 f.
  6. ^ JB Gradl: Beginning under the Soviet star. The CDU 1945-1948 in the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany . Cologne 1981, p. 26
  7. ^ Peter Strunk: Press Control and Propaganda Policy of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD) . Inaugural dissertation, Free University of Berlin, Department of History, 1989, p. 139
  8. ↑ a b Andreas Morgenstern: "Central Germany": a battle expression? The change in terms in the GDR daily newspaper Neue Zeit . In: Germany Archive . May 25, 2018.
  9. ↑ Peter Strunk: Press Control and Propaganda Policy of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD) Inaugural dissertation to obtain the title of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History of the Free University of Berlin, 1989, p. 202 with reference to an editorial notice in Neue Zeit from 20 December 1947, p. 1, and Wilhelm Gries “Under Soviet Censorship”, p. 160.
  10. ↑ Peter Strunk: Censorship and censors. Media control and propaganda politics under Soviet occupation in Germany . Berlin 1996, ISBN 978-3-05-002850-7 , pp. 122 .
  11. ↑ dtv lexicon on history and politics in the 20th century, Vol. 1, Munich, Cologne (1974), keyword: Christian Democratic Union (East), pp. 142f. ISBN 3-423-03126-3
  12. ↑ Sebastian Stude: The CDU in the late GDR, overview of all daily newspapers of the CDU with distribution area GDR districts and number of copies . In: Research and discussion group GDR history "Hefte zur gdr-geschichte" 114 , Berlin 2009, p. 7.
  13. ↑ a b leading article "Our newspaper NEUE ZEIT" with the abbreviation "D."
  14. ↑ See biography in database
  15. ↑ Müller-Enbergs, Wielgohs / Hoffmann: Who was who in the GDR? A biographical lexicon. Keyword Nuschke. ISBN 3-8289-0552-8 , pp. 631 f.
  16. ↑ On December 28th, 1947 Otto Nuschke filled out the publisher's form "Receipt and Certificate of Use" with this information and the addition that the "above men and women" had accepted his invitation and thus costs him the "amount of RM 1100, - “, The reimbursement of which he acknowledged with his abbreviation on December 31 of the same year.
  17. ↑ Biography information from the manual "Who was who in the GDR?":
  18. ↑ Biography digitized
  19. ^ Müller-Enbergs / Wielgohs / Hoffmann WHO WAS WHO IN THE GDR. A biographical lexicon. Keyword calf p. 406f.
  20. ↑ Biography digitized
  21. ↑ Biography digitized
  22. ^ Eberle biography digitized
  23. ^ Members of the main board of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany . Ed .: Secretariat of the Main Board of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (1987), p. 13.
  24. ^ Members of the main board of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany . Ed .: Secretariat of the Main Board of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (1987), p. 66.
  25. ^ Members of the main board of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany . Ed .: Secretariat of the main board of the Christian-Democratic Union of Germany (1987), p. 11.
  26. ^ Neue Zeit, September 30, 1964, p. 2 and Neue Zeit, November 30, 1971, p. 2 [Imprint]
  27. ↑ Imprint in Neue Zeit , 04.09.1974, p. 2
  28. ↑ Peter Strunk: Censorship and censors - media control and propaganda politics under Soviet occupation in Germany . 1996, ISBN 3-05-002850-5 , pp. 128-137; digitized
  29. ↑ DER SPIEGEL 5/1990
  30. ↑ Horst Dieterschichtel: The way out of the opinion dictatorship. Die Neue Zeit - a newspaper in transition . Frankfurt a. M. 1998, p. 45; ISBN 3-927282-70-7
  31. ↑ Letter from the Eastern CDU dated February 14, 1990 (excerpt): After consultation with the managing director of the party chairman of the CDU, the editors of the daily newspaper will be appointed or hired by the editor-in-chief ...
  32. ↑ Neue Zeit of December 16, 1989, title page, quoted from Sebastian Stude: The CDU in the late GDR, overview of all CDU daily newspapers with GDR districts and circulation numbers . In: Research and Discussion Group GDR History “Hefte zur gdr-geschichte” 114, Berlin 2009, p. 38.
  33. ^ Neue Zeit , January 3, 1994, p. 6
  34. ↑ a b Saxon State Chancellery: Dr. Monika Zimmermann heads department 3, Max Winter takes over department 1 . Biographical information in an article on Flurfunk: The media blog from Dresden , July 26, 2011, accessed on September 10, 2017.
  35. ↑ New times . Berlin, Sunday, July 22, 1945, p. 2, column 4, bottom right.
  36. ↑ Monika Zimmermann: Among lots of people . Halle 2016, ISBN 978-3-95462-678-6 , p. 140.
  37. ↑ a b Serial letter to the former subscribers of Neue Zeit . Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 12, 1994.
  38. ↑ Renate Oschlies : Happy new time: experiences in a block party newspaper . Horch and Guck , 03/2010, pp. 26-27, accessed on September 10, 2017.