North German echo

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The newspaper Norddeutsches Echo (NE) was the newspaper of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in Schleswig-Holstein . It appeared from April 1946 to August 1956. The editorial office was in Kiel and a local editorial office was maintained in Lübeck .

History of the newspaper

The first edition of the NE was published on April 3, 1946 under license from the British Military Government . The had made the condition that the term KPD should not appear in the newspaper head. License holders were Alfred Heitmann and Alfred Oertel. Erich Meyer acted as the first editor-in-chief. At the beginning of the Nazi regime, he had published an illegal communist newspaper and was then imprisoned for twelve years in a penitentiary . The newspaper had difficult starting conditions, the social democratic Schleswig-Holsteinische Volkszeitung the military government approved a starting circulation of 50,000, the Kieler Nachrichten 40,000, the NE, however, only 10,000 copies. The technical equipment (especially that of the print shop) was worse than that of the other Kiel licensed newspapers. In the first two years the NE only had four pages and only three issues per week could be produced. In the summer of 1947, the three-person Lübeck local editorial team began its work; it was initially headed by Klaus Weigle , who later became chairman of the KPD and who also became deputy editor-in-chief in Kiel in 1949.

A first important topic of the NE was the criticism of the dismantling of shipyards and industrial companies. After the newspaper had reported critically about nutritional problems and insufficient supplies of the population, the military government was reprimanded for the first time in 1948. After a second warning because of unpopular political reporting close to the KPD, there were two 90-day publication bans in 1950.

As early as the spring of 1949, political current struggles had broken out in the newspaper. The KPD state management had accused the editorial team of tending towards “objectivism” and reporting too balanced. Erich Meyer resigned as editor-in-chief. His position was filled by the former communist Gertrud Rast , who had previously been the KDP state chairman and was already in 1919 Had heard of co-founders of the KPD . In the course of the year the disputes came to a head, parts of the editorial team resisted the editor-in-chief's instructions. Among other things, it was about reporting on developments in what was then the "Eastern Zone". Individual editors were dismissed and also expelled from the KPD. After these disputes were over, reports on KPD activities came more to the fore. Soon afterwards, the NE got involved in internal party disputes over Titoism . All publication organs of the KPD were committed to the uncritical presentation of the theoretical and political conceptions of Josef Stalin . The loyalty to the line was reflected in the decrease in acceptance of the newspaper. Between 1947 and 1949 the NE had editions of up to 20,000, in 1953 it had fallen to 8,000.

A few months after its ten-year anniversary, the NE was forced to stop with the KPD ban . The last edition of the NE appeared on August 17, 1956, the day the party was banned , and carried the headline: In factories and trade unions: Rejection of a KPD ban . A few hours after the newspaper was delivered, the police occupied the publishing premises and the printing plant and sealed them up. The last editor-in-chief of NE was Erich Grimm, he remained politically active even after the party was banned and joined the DKP in 1968 . In the illegality, hectographed editions of the NE were circulated in small editions for a few years .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Unless otherwise stated, the information is based on: Jürgen Brammer / Kurt Schröder, Norddeutsches Echo. Memories of a communist newspaper . Yearbook Democratic History , Volume 4, Advisory Board for History in the Society for Politics and History Schleswig-Holstein e. V., pp. 384–402, online version (PDF), accessed on March 1, 2017.
  2. ^ Hans Kluth: The KPD in the Federal Republic. Your political activities and organization 1945 - 1956 . Westdeutscher Verlag, Cologne / Opladen 1959, p. 100.
  3. ^ Jürgen Brammer / Kurt Schröder, North German Echo. Memories of a communist newspaper . Yearbook Democratic History , Volume 4, Advisory Board for History in the Society for Politics and History Schleswig-Holstein e. V., pp. 384–402, here p. 403. Online version (PDF), accessed on March 2, 2017.
  4. ^ For example, this edition of the 1957 Bundestag election , Deutsches Historisches Museum , object database.