Neue Zeitung (KPD, Munich)
The Neue Zeitung was the party newspaper of the Communist Party (KPD) in Bavaria at the time of the Weimar Republic .
1918 to 1933
The Neue Zeitung was founded in Munich in 1918, the first edition appeared on December 20th. It was initially close to the USPD and was a daily newspaper with current reporting and comments from the editors. Kurt Eisner , Prime Minister of the Munich Soviet Republic , was a regular employee.
After the unification of the left wing of the USPD with the KPD, the Neue Zeitung became the party newspaper of the KPD in Bavaria in 1920. It took over the function of the Munich Red Flag , which, based on the model of the Berlin Red Flag, had appeared as an organ of the KPD and the Spartakusbund in Munich and was banned after the end of the Soviet Republic.
After the Hamburg uprising in 1923, the KPD was formally banned in Bavaria until 1925, but was still allowed to participate in elections. From 1926 the Neue Zeitung appeared only as a party newspaper for the southern Bavaria district, while the Nordbayerische Volkszeitung appeared for the northern Bavarian district (later Neue Zeitung - Edition A ). The total circulation of both editions was between 2500 and 6000 copies, only a minority of the KPD members subscribed to the newspaper.
The management of the newspaper changed frequently. Members of the leadership included Wilhelm Olschewski senior, later a member of the Hartwimmer-Olschewski resistance group . From 1930 Walter Häbich , chairman of the Communist Youth Association , worked as an editor and author of numerous articles for the newspaper.
From 1930 the newspaper appeared again for both Bavarian districts. From 1931 a weekly newspaper of the KPD appeared in Bavaria, the Bavarian Echo . The last legal edition of the Neue Zeitung appeared at the end of February 1933, before the KPD and its publications were banned after the National Socialists "seized power ".
After 1933
Just a few weeks after the ban, illegal editions of the Neue Zeitung appeared. The main authors were Walter Häbich and the former editor Willi Grimm. Former Rotsport members Franz Xaver Schwarzmüller and Georg Frühschütz organized the printing . The first edition (with the number 3) had a circulation of a few hundred copies and called for May demonstrations against the National Socialists.
From May 1933, the production of the printing matrices was relocated to a library room in the Asamhaus on Sendlinger Straße , to which a Catholic friend of Frühschütz, Hugo Scheurer, had access. The printing was initially carried out in a sheet metal workshop in Obersendling . Issue 6 of the newspaper had a circulation of 1,850 copies. Frühschütz was arrested in July and the Obersendling workshop was discovered in August. Schwarzmüller moved the print shop to the basement of a friend's house, but it was discovered before Issue 7 could be distributed. In September the matrices were discovered in the library room on Sendlinger Strasse and shortly afterwards Walter Häbich was arrested. Schwarzmüller fled to the Soviet Union at the end of 1933, where he was murdered during the Stalin purges .
By the end of August 1934, other underground communist groups organized four more editions of the Neue Zeitung.
literature
- Marion Detjen: Appointed an enemy of the state. Resistance, resistance and denial against the Nazi regime in Munich. Buchendorfer Verlag, Munich 1998, ISBN 3927984817 .
- Hartmut Mehringer : The KPD in Bavaria 1919-1945. In: Bavaria in the Nazi era. Vol. 5. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 1983, ISBN 3486424017 .
- Heike Bretschneider: Resistance to National Socialism in Munich 1933–1945. Miscellanea Bavarica Monacensia, No. 4. Stadtarchiv Munich, 1968.
Footnotes
- ↑ According to sources Detjen and Mehringer, the library room was above the Asamaal in the rear building of the Asamhaus, according to source Bretschneider, however, in the priest's house, which is on the other side of the Asamkirche.