New German publisher

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The Neue Deutsche Verlag (NDV) was a Berlin publisher founded in 1913 by Felix Halle , which after the transfer to Willi Münzenberg in 1923 developed into the core of the network of companies of the International Workers Aid (IAH). The publishing house was initially based in the IAH office at Unter den Linden 11, later moved to Wilhelmstrasse 48 and in 1929 employed 50 people across the city. After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, Munzenberg continued his publishing work from Paris until 1937 with the Éditions du Carrefour .

Emphasis on magazines

Munzenberg's entry into the Neue Deutsche Verlag - he received it free of charge according to the publisher's director, Babette Gross - initially served the purpose of selling the magazine “Sichel und Hammer” (soon renamed “ Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung ” or “AIZ”) in a private company to publish a non-organizational publisher. After the Hamburg uprising in 1923, the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and its press were banned, a subsequent ban on organs like that of the IAH was obvious. In addition, in view of the increasing popularity among sections of the working class for fascist ideology , the Communist International wanted to gain an opportunity to exert influence here, even across party lines. Only in the course of 1924 did a book department develop in the NDV, but without any direct reference to the IAH.

The main idea behind the expansion of the journalistic activities was the continuation of the political mobilization of the population brought about during the campaign to expropriate the princes . The main means for this were magazines at the “NDV”, apart from the “AIZ” these were “Der Arbeiterfotograf”, “ Eulenspiegel ” and “Der Weg der Frau”. The distribution was taken over for "Literature and World Revolution", "International Literature" and temporarily "The New Russia".

Books for an impoverished class of buyers

Advertisement from 1929
Boris Pilnjak : The Volga falls into the Caspian Sea , translation 1930

The idea of Bolshevization required the Comintern to take a stronger stance against the literary influence of the bourgeoisie on the working class, which should have easier access to the main theoretical works of Marxism and Leninism . For this there were communist party publishers, including the " Internationale Arbeiter-Verlag ", the main publishing house of the KPD, and surrounding publishers that did not take up all aspects of the political struggle, such as the " Malik-Verlag ", the "Agis-Verlag" and the aus "NDV" originating from the IAH mass agitation. Here it was also allowed to print what, like Kurt Tucholsky's Deutschland, Deutschland über alles , in the opinion of the head of the book department, Hans Holm, was “not a communist book”. 12,000 copies were sold in ten days, a confirmation of the concept of including authors who, from the KPD's point of view, were only “followers”.

But the business of the "NDV" was primarily to serve the daily tasks and campaigns of the IAH with a variety of brochure literature and to propagate the development of the Soviet Union - this with a group of authors who may come to terms with capitalism to make a living, or temporarily to support the line of the publisher. At least in political terms, the brochures have achieved considerable success. However, the attempt an attack on the then prevailing Grosch literature by means of "political fictions" was crowned with little success to do and a new mass-market popular fiction literature to establish. Reportage literature attracted more attention, Larissa Reissner was the outstanding author here. From the new Soviet fiction, too, those "followers" were printed who allowed themselves reservations about the circumstances that had occurred.

The scientific elementary books , which were supposed to make natural and social science subjects easy to understand for the proletariat , served another field . The Illustrated History of the Russian Revolution , with its 591 pages, actually reached a circulation of 35,000 copies , which was also available as a delivery edition in the form of 24 booklets.

Different forms of distribution

The aim was to serve all German-speaking areas, for which purpose branches and sales offices were founded - after February 1933, the publisher's name lived on through them. The "NDV" used three types of distribution channels:

  • Part of the program could be obtained through the bourgeois book trade after the "NDV" had managed to become a member of the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels with lengthy efforts . There were no obstacles to the party bookstores of the KPD; there were also around 50 sympathetic bookstores, some of which were established with the help of the "NDV" or the IAH.
  • Organizations such as the KPD, IAH, Rote Hilfe and the “League against Imperialism” were supplied directly, and their literary supervisors took care of sales. The “AIZ” sponsors also offered the “NDV” book and brochure production.
  • From October 1926 on, the book club “ Universum Bücherei für Alle ” also opened a distribution channel that was considered progressive at the time. In contrast to the “NDV”, bourgeois-critical literature could also take a central place here.

wish and reality

Social-democratic critics sometimes denounced “Munzenberg Communism”, publications in which nothing of Marxism could be discovered. Even the " Inprekorr " criticized the mass organizations in 1932 and criticized the lack of anti-war literature. In purely mathematical terms, however, only about a ninth of voters read a communist newspaper in 1928 and 80 percent of the IAH members were unemployed. In addition, proletarian revolutionary literature only made up one percent of total sales on the German literary market in 1932, thus strengthening the general concern of the “NDV” to bundle the works of writers in the fight against fascism and thus to reach undecided workers and petty bourgeoisie relativized.

Publications in the NDV (selection)

1920

1925

  • Vladimir Sarabianov : New Economic Policy. Private capital in industry and trade of the Union of the SSR
  • Max Beer : England in upheaval
  • Hans Glaubauf : Russia. Official report of the English trade union delegation to Russia and the Caucasus in November and December 1924

1926

  • Heinrich Graßhoff : Five centuries of prince robbery. German princes in the mirror of history
  • Eduard Schiemann : The end of the tsarist family. The last days of the Romanovs
  • Larissa Reissner : In the land of Hindenburg. A trip through the German Republic

1928

1929

  • Richard Linsert (Ed.): Paragraph 297.3. «Fornication between men»? A contribution to criminal law reform.
  • Otto Katz : Nine men in the ice. Documents of a polar tragedy
  • Kurt Tucholsky : Germany, Germany above everything

1930

1931

  • Paris Commune 1871. Reports and documents from contemporaries
  • Andor Gábor : Spies and saboteurs before the People's Court in Moscow. Report on the high treason trial against Ramsin and comrades from November 25 to December 7, 1930 in the trade union building in Moscow

literature

  • Rolf Surmann: The Munzenberg Legend. On the journalism of the revolutionary German labor movement 1921-1933 , Prometh Verlag, Cologne 1982, pp. 58, 83-92 u. 154-158, ISBN 3-922009-53-0 .
  • Kasper Braskén: The International Workers' Relief, Communism, and Transnational Solidarity. Willi Münzenberg in Weimar Germany , Verlag Palgrave Macmillan, Houndsmills 2015, pp. 121-123, ISBN 978-1-137-30423-0 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Braskén 2015: p. 121
  2. ↑ Jörg Thunecke: Willi Münzenberg and the Éditions du Carrefour (1933−1937): An overview , in [o. V.]: Lion Feuchtwanger and the German-speaking emigrants in France from 1933 to 1941 , Verlag Peter Lang, Bern 2006, p. 381.
  3. ^ Babette Gross: Willi Munzenberg. A political biography , Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1967, p. 162.
  4. ↑ Surmann 1982: p. 58.
  5. ↑ Surmann 1982: p. 82.
  6. ↑ Surmann 1982: p. 154.
  7. ↑ Surmann 1982: p. 91.
  8. ↑ Helmut Trothow: The legend of the red press Tsar , Die Zeit, June 1, 1984.
  9. ↑ Surmann 1982: p. 158.