Crystal (magazine)
Kristall was a Hamburg magazine for the educated middle class, founded as Nordwestdeutsche Hefte , from Axel Springer Verlag . It was published from 1946 to 1966.
The magazine was founded in 1946 as Nordwestdeutsche Hefte by Axel Eggebrecht and Peter von Zahn on behalf of the Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk . The two editors-in-chief of the NWDR were also registered as publishers of the magazine. However, the British military government insisted that the press organ should only be licensed to a private publisher. Axel Springer received the license on the recommendation of Axel Eggebrecht and Peter von Zahn .
The first edition of the Nordwestdeutsche Hefte appeared in April 1946. The monthly magazine, like its British model, The Listener , consisted primarily of political radio commentaries. The magazine developed into a very lucrative business for Axel Springer, as he only had to pay 1,000 Reichsmarks per issue to the broadcaster, with free delivery of the content and advertising by radio. At the end of 1946, the Nordwestdeutsche Hefte had a circulation of 100,000 copies at a sales price of one Reichsmark. Since the buyers of the magazine were won over by radio, Springer founded the program magazine Hörzu in order to secure a high audience for the radio.
Due to the currency reform in June 1948 and the discontinuation of paper quotas, the newspaper landscape changed significantly. In order to keep up with the competition, Springer parted ways with Eggebrecht, Zahn and the NWDR and named the magazine, which was in decline, in September 1948 in Kristall. Northwest German booklets for entertainment and knowledge . Kristall - the addition was dropped later - was an entertaining and relaxed magazine with a circulation of just under half a million copies.
The magazine became a loss-making business. Nor did it bring any profit when Springer brought the two former SS members and employees in the propaganda department of the Nazi Foreign Ministry, Horst Mahnke and Paul Karl Schmidt, from the mirror to the crystal. Paul Karl Schmidt published under the pseudonym Paul Carell with Operation Barbarossa and Burned Earth, two very successful series about the war in the East, in which the Wehrmacht and its generals, especially Erich von Manstein , were heroized. After that, the only fault for the defeat was Hitler's interference in the conduct of the war. Wehrmacht crimes were not mentioned. The series appeared very successfully as book editions by Springer's own Ullstein Verlag .
Further series, for example with the title “The Life of Jesus” or on other topics, should attract new readers and regular subscribers to the magazine. Despite these successful series, Kristall had to be discontinued at the end of 1966 for economic reasons, although Paul Carell's series in particular had contributed to a renewed increase in circulation and the magazine's circulation before it was discontinued was just under 400,000 copies.
literature
- Christian Plöger: From Ribbentrop to Springer. On the life and work of Paul Karl Schmidt alias Paul Carell. Tectum, Marburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-8288-2136-1 (also Diss. Phil. University of Münster 2009), pp. 347-351.
Web links
- René Martens: A heavy issue . In: Friday , December 16, 2012
Individual evidence
- ^ John Jahr jr .: The years with the year in the Hamburger Abendblatt December 10, 2005.
- ^ Benjamin Haller: The magazine plans of the NWDR in: Nordwestdeutsche Hefte zur Rundfunkgeschichte 4, p. 13.
- ^ Benjamin Haller: The magazine plans of the NWDR in: Nordwestdeutsche Hefte zur Rundfunkgeschichte 4, p. 14.
- ↑ Gudrun Kruip: The "world" - "image" of the Axel Springer Verlag in the Google book search Oldenbourg 1999 p. 79 f.
- ↑ Wigbert Benz : The Continuity of the Journalist: Paul Karl Schmidt alias Paul Carell ( Memento from October 27, 2004 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Wigbert Benz: Paul Carell's "Operation Barbarossa". Ribbentrop's press chief Paul K. Schmidt as protagonist of the “clean” Wehrmacht and “preventive” warfare from 1941 to 1995 ( memento from March 13, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Christian Plöger: From Ribbentrop to Springer. On the life and work of Paul Karl Schmidt alias Paul Carell. Tectum, Marburg 2009, p. 347 u. P. 351.