Pariser Tageblatt

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The Pariser Tageblatt and its successor, the Pariser Tageszeitung , was the only German-language daily newspaper in exile that was published until 1940. From the first issue of December 12, 1933 , to June 14, 1936, it appeared daily in Paris . The Pariser Tageblatt was a non-party foundation of various German liberal and left-wing journalists. The aim was "to create a platform for liberal ideals", according to the editor-in-chief, Georg Bernhard in the editorial of the first issue in December 1933. Before his expulsion he had been editor-in-chief of the Vossische Zeitung in Berlin for many years . Most of the other employees were also prominent Berlin journalists. The authors included Henri Barbusse , the Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Edvard Beneš , Hellmut von Gerlach , Oskar Maria Graf , Heinrich Mann and the former National Socialist Otto Strasser . The editors and employees tried from France to fight National Socialism politically. Nevertheless, the newspaper was not a combat paper like the communist counterattack published by Willi Münzenberg or the Deutsche Volkszeitung (1936–1939) , but rather corresponded to the "type of a rather lightweight tabloid". The newspaper also tried to convey to its readers the specifics of the new home country France.

In 1936, most of the editors and staff made a coup against the publisher Vladimir Poliakov. They were able to effect the expropriation of the old publisher and set up a new newspaper at a different address as the Paris daily newspaper . Apparently, Willi Munzenberg and the KPD were behind this plot for a while . The new newspaper existed until shortly before the German invasion of the Germans in World War II .

history

The Russian of Jewish descent Vladimir Poliakov (born Odessa 1864 - died Paris 1938), father of Léon Poliakov , was a successful businessman and newspaper publisher in the tsarist empire . He owned a chain of newspapers in St. Petersburg, Vilna, and Odessa. With the conquest of Odessa by Bolshevik troops, Poliakov fled to Paris. At the end of 1933 he published the Pariser Tageblatt as the daily newspaper of German exile. The partner and co-financier was Isaak Grodzenski, the Polish editor of the Parisian Yiddish newspaper Pariser Haynt or Haint (in German Paris Today ).

Georg Bernhard , who headed the Vossische Zeitung until 1930 and was a member of the Reichstag of the German Democratic Party (DDP) from 1928 to 1930 , became editor-in-chief . Deputy was Kurt Caro , former editor-in-chief of the Berliner Volks-Zeitung .

From the first issue on December 12, 1933, the newspaper appeared daily with four pages, from January 1934 on Sundays with a two-page insert. The newspaper had a solid structure. The first page contained political comments, editorials, reports from Germany. On the second page there was a column with press reviews from abroad, the third page had news from Paris. On the fourth page was u. a. the serial and the “Today in Paris” events calendar. Extra categories changed on the days of the week such as the Friday film overview, on Saturdays the sports preview, on Mondays music reviews and the “Blick ins Reich”. The Sunday supplement contained the columns "Theater and Film" by Alfred Kerr , art, travel and literary contributions.

The newspaper was financed by the advertising section, which took up to one and a half printed pages, and was distributed by post to various European countries. The newspaper advertised subscriptions, it cost 50 centimes at the kiosk and had a circulation of 14,000 copies. About 1,100 of these were subscriptions and free copies for advertising purposes. The only well-paid journalist was the editor-in-chief Bernhard. The other employees were poorly or underpaid. Nevertheless, they worked with us, otherwise they would have been unemployed and without any income. The newspaper was also distributed abroad, which prompted the German embassy in Budapest at the end of 1935 to obtain a ban on the newspaper in Hungary .

Salomon Grumbach , who wrote under a pseudonym and who provided his readers with information about the political situation in France, was one of the permanent employees . Other permanent employees were u. a. Paul Westheim , the Prague correspondent Kurt Grossmann . Foreign employees included Upton Sinclair and Wickham Steed . Other authors included Paul Bekker , Robert Breuer , Manfred George , Anna Geyer , Erich Gottgetreu , Gertrud Isolani , Berthold Jacob , Harry Kahn , Lili Körber , Rudolf Leonhard , Heinrich Mann , Paul Marcus , Carl Misch , Rudolf Olden , Alexander Roda Roda , Joseph Roth , Joseph Wechsberg , Alfred Wolfenstein and Georg Wronkow .

As a serial novel were printed u. a. Klaus Mann's novels Escape to the North and Mephisto (Roman) , Balder Olden's novel of a Nazi , Joseph Roth's Tarabas. A guest on this earth , Georges Simenon's The Man from London and Heil Kadlatz by Paul Westheim.

A special event was the kidnapping and later release of journalist Berthold Jacob , who was also involved in the Pariser Tageblatt in 1935 and who had lived in Strasbourg since 1931.

The Saar referendum , the result of which was viewed with concern by the emigrants, and the beginning of the Popular Front negotiations in France, about which only sparse reports were made, also fell in the time of publication .

Appropriating the Tageblatt and re-establishing it as a "Paris daily newspaper"

From the beginning there was friction between Poliakov and the editorial team. For example, the editorial team wanted to link the newspaper more closely to the project of the popular front initiated by the Communists of the German opponents of Hitler against the Third Reich. Bernhard was himself a member of the Lutetia Circle. Poliakov, who had been an opponent of communist endeavors since his expulsion from Soviet Russia, rather wanted to focus on the anti-Semitism of the Nazis. Financial problems also played a role. In 1936 there was a break between Poliakov, who was looking for a way out of the financial crisis, and most of the editorial staff and the publishing staff. They tried to get the newspaper under their control and to destroy it. On page 1 of the June 11, 1936 edition, the editors wrongly accused Poliakov of collaborating with the National Socialists and claimed, among other things, that he had “wanted to sell the newspaper to the Nazis”. Poliakov tried to refute the lies in special editions of the Pariser Tageblatt. But the editors prevented the distribution of these numbers by force. The newly appointed editor-in-chief, the renowned journalist Richard Lewinsohn , and the journalist Heinz Pol brought out two more issues, but Lewinsohn was attacked and beaten so that he resigned from his office. The editorial offices were destroyed, most of the new edition was dumped in the Seine and the subscriber file was stolen.

Bernhard took over the newspaper with the editors Fritz Wolff and Kurt Caro under a slightly changed name as the "Pariser Tageszeitung". According to recent findings, it is certain that Willi Munzenberg and the KPD were behind the founding of the newspaper. They financed the newspaper through intermediaries in 1937/38 and influenced personnel policy. But they gave Bernhard a free hand in the editorial work. An attempt by the KPD to take over the newspaper failed. Even Willi Münzberg did not manage to take over the newspaper after his separation from the KPD.

Many emigrants and intellectuals fell for the denunciation that Poliakov had been a traitor. Bernhard managed to mobilize leading intellectuals from the emigration and from France against Poliakov. The plot was finally uncovered by Ivan Heilbut , to whom telegrams from the conspirators had been leaked. A Zionist court of honor under the direction of Vladimir Jabotinsky , an investigative committee set up by emigrants and a French court subsequently came to the conclusion that the accusations were unfounded, but by then Poliakov had already been kicked out and tried to keep the newspaper published have to give up. He died two years later.

The affair opened rifts of suspicion among the emigrants. Lion Feuchtwanger dealt with the affair in the novel Exil , in the preface of which he had to emphasize in 1939 “that the publisher of my 'Pariser Nachrichten' has nothing to do with the deceased Russian émigré Poliakov, owner of the 'Pariser Tageblatt', who was suspected to have made a pact with the National Socialists; as it later turned out through legal proceedings, wrongly “in order not to stir up the disastrous quarrels among the emigrants. Victor Basch was one of the few who publicly admitted and withdrew their premature partisanship against Poliakov. The conviction of Bernhard in June 1937 by a French criminal court meant that he had to withdraw from the Paris daily newspaper.

Consequences of the Pariser Tageblatt affair

The Tageblatt affair caused divisions in cultural organizations in exile. A group of influential journalists around Leopold Schwarzschild with his exile magazine “ Das Neue Tage-Buch ” and u. a. Konrad Heiden withdrew from the common popular front project. Influential authors such as Alfred Döblin , Konrad Heiden and others left the communist-dominated protection association of German writers . In 1937 they joined the Free Press and Literature Association founded by Schwarzschild and Hans Sahl . The Paris daily has been weak since it was founded. Financial and editorial crises occurred frequently. Bernhard was forced to resign at the end of 1937. Finally, in 1938, Leopold Schwarzschild succeeded in installing one of his editors, Joseph Bornstein , as the newspaper's editor-in-chief. When the German exiles were interned with the outbreak of war in 1939, the circulation fell and the newspaper had to be discontinued in February 1940.

literature

  • Hélène Roussel; Lutz Winckler (Ed.): Right and left of the Seine. Pariser Tageblatt and Pariser Tageszeitung 1933–1940. Niemeyer, Tübingen 2002, ISBN 3-484-35089-X .
  • Willi Jasper : The Poliakov Affair. The failure of liberal journalism. In: Menora - year book for German-Jewish history (7/1996), pp. 117–132.
  • Hélène Roussel; Lutz Winckler (Ed.): Deutsche Exilpresse and France, 1933–1940. Lang, Bern 1992, ISBN 3-261-04491-8 .
  • Liselotte Maas: Handbook of the German Exile Press 1933–1945, Volume 4. The newspapers of German exile in Europe in individual presentations. Ed. Eberhard Lämmert, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-446-13260-0 , pp. 155-180.
  • Liselotte Maas: Kurfürstendamm on the Champs-Elysées? The loss of reality and morality in trying a daily newspaper in exile. In: “Exile Research. An international yearbook ”. Volume 3, Munich 1985, pp. 106-126.
  • Angela Huss-Michel: Literary and Political Journals of Exile. 1933-1945. Metzler, Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 3-476-10238-6 , pp. 82-85.
  • Walter F. Peterson: The Berlin liberal press in exile. A history of the Pariser Tageblatt - Pariser daily newspaper. 1933-1940. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1987, ISBN 3-484-35018-0 .
  • Martin Mauthner: German Writers in French Exile, 1933-1940. Vallentine Mitchell, London 2007, ISBN 978-0-85303-540-4 .
  • Hanno Hardt, Elke Hilscher, Winfried B. Lerg (eds.): Press in Exile. Contributions to the communication history of the German exile 1933–1945 . Saur, Munich 1979, pp. 129-135.
  • Michaela Enderle-Ristori: Market and intellectual power field: literary criticism in the features section of “Pariser Tageblatt” and “Pariser Tageszeitung” (1933–1940) . Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1997 ISBN 3-484-35057-1 . Zugl .: Tübingen, Univ., Diss. 1994

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ so Liselotte Maas 1985 after Willi Jasper : The Poliakov affair. The failure of liberal journalism. In: Menora - Yearbook for German-Jewish History (7/1996), p. 118.
  2. ^ A b c Léon Poliakov: The affair "Pariser Tageblatt". In: Hélène Roussel (ed.): Deutsche Exilpresse and France, 1933–1940. Pp. 105-115
  3. ↑ Angela Huss-Michel: Literary and political journals of exile. 1933-1945. Metzler, Stuttgart 1987, p. 83.
  4. ^ Hanno Hardt, Elke Hilscher, Winfried B. Lerg (eds.): Press in Exile. Contributions to the communication history of the German exile 1933–1945. Saur, Munich 1979, p. 129.
  5. ^ René Geoffroy: Hungary as a place of refuge and place of work for German-speaking emigrants (1933–1938 / 39). Frankfurt am Main: Lang 2001, p. 261.
  6. ↑ Liselotte Maas: Handbook of the German Exile Press 1933-1945, Volume 4. The newspapers of German exile in Europe in individual representations . Edited by Eberhard Lämmert, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-446-13260-0 , p. 155
  7. ↑ a b Hélène Roussel: The German exile in the thirties and the question of access to the media. In Hélène Roussel, Lutz Winckler (ed.): Right and left of the Seine. Pariser Tageblatt and Pariser Tageszeitung 1933–1940. Niemeyer, Tübingen 2002, ISBN 3-484-35089-X , p. 22.
  8. ↑ Hélène Roussel, Lutz Winckler (ed.): Right and left of the Seine. Pariser Tageblatt and Pariser Tageszeitung 1933–1940. Niemeyer, Tübingen 2002, ISBN 3-484-35089-X , p. 4.
  9. ^ Lion Feuchtwanger: Foreword to Exile: Roman . Querido Verlag, Amsterdam 1940.
  10. ^ Gisela Lüttig: Afterword in Lion Feuchtwanger: Exil . Under the title: About this volume p. 773.
  11. ^ Short biography on the homepage of the Leo Baeck Institute New York
  12. ^ Hélène Roussel: The German exile in the thirties and the question of access to the media. In: Hélène Roussel, Lutz Winckler: Right and left of the Seine. Pariser Tageblatt and Pariser Tageszeitung 1933–1940. 2002, p. 34.
  13. ↑ Review (pdf, 1 MB)