Paul Scheffer (journalist)

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Paul Scheffer (born October 11, 1883 in Kaldau, Schlochau district (today Kołdowo, Pomeranian Voivodeship ), † February 20, 1963 in White River Junction ) was a German journalist .

Origin and early journalistic years

Paul Scheffer came from a well-off middle-class Protestant family. Being in Marburg -born father Dr. iur Wilhelm Scheffer (* 1844; † 1898) was a member of the Prussian state parliament and worked as a high official in various cities of the German Empire . His mother was a daughter of the Düsseldorf private banker Christian Gottfried Trinkaus . After attending grammar school in Koblenz, Berlin and Düsseldorf, he studied philosophy in Munich, Marburg and Graz . In 1913/14 he worked for a few months as an intern at the German Embassy in London . Not conscripted for military service due to unsuitability, Scheffer worked for the information service of the German legation in The Hague in 1915 and from 1916 as a correspondent for the Hollandsch Nieuwsbüro in Germany. In 1919 he began working as a correspondent for the Berliner Tageblatt at Rudolf Mosse Verlag, mediated by Annette Kolb . Initially deployed in The Hague, he reported exclusively on the Spa conference, among other things .

Star reporter in Moscow

In November 1921 he was sent to Moscow and from then on provided information as a Russia expert on the political and economic development of Soviet Russia . Especially at the beginning of his Moscow years he was considered a close confidante of the German ambassador Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau and thus a supporter of the rapallo policy . For a short time Scheffer also worked for the Berliner Tageblatt in 1923/24 in the Ruhr area and temporarily between 1925 and 1927 in the Far East and Italy. According to various accounts, his articles were characterized by literary quality, objectivity and clout, which was in complete contrast to the opinion journalism predominantly practiced at the time . Leading articles by Scheffer from this period that received much attention are for example:

From the mid-1920s, according to Immanuel Birnbaum, the self-confident, financially independent, highly educated and polyglot Scheffer was the “star among German correspondents”. In 1925 he married the former Princess Natalie Petrovna Volkonskaya (born December 28, 1889 in Saint Petersburg as Natalia Petrovna Loukine, † December 11, 1981 in New York City ).

In Moscow he and his wife ran a very hospitable house, where journalists and diplomats regularly gathered for five o'clock tea to discuss art, literature, religion, world history and Soviet politics. Thanks to its diverse connections for the foreign press, Scheffer's salon developed into a “kind of second embassy, ​​a forecourt of the external commissioner”. He had direct personal contacts with Georgi Wassiljewitsch Tschitscherin , Karl Radek , Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin and Leon Trotsky . Along with the Americans Louis Fischer and Eugene Lyons and the Swiss Emil Ludwig , Scheffer was one of the only foreign journalists to whom Josef Stalin granted interviews during this time.

Persona non grata in the Soviet Union

At the end of the 1920s, Scheffer came increasingly into conflict with the Moscow authorities. He repeatedly reported on the forced collectivization , the beginning of the Holodomor and the personality cult around Lenin . While journalists such as Heinrich Mann and Carl von Ossietzky affirmed the “violent politics of Bolshevism as a rational power” and rejected the Weimar Republic, in which, in their view, “only chaos prevails and the impoverished masses stumbled aimlessly and morally brutal”, Paul Scheffer outlined the “ Almost all Russians longing for charismatic leaders ”. With clear parallels to Stalin, he described the “search for signposts in a seemingly aimless time” and the Lenin cult as “heroic legends in which memories of mass terror are already beginning to overlap and make us forget that Lenin, because of his claim to omnipotence, is complicit in the extent of this of famine and only allowed aid after it had been ideologically adjusted ”.

Scheffer's first book, Seven Years of the Soviet Union , which was published in several languages, was published at the same time . Based on his visits to all major cities in Russia, as well as extensive trips to Siberia and the Far East, the politically oriented journalist left out his personal views and experiences in this work. Objectively, he described the political and economic conditions of the rising Soviet power. The representations are said to have attracted a lot of attention from William J. Donovan , who later became the US intelligence coordinator.

At the end of November 1929, the Soviet government refused Paul Scheffer re-entry into the USSR “because of increasingly unfriendly reporting over the past three years”. After his involuntary departure, William Morrow & Company published the book Twice Born in Russia: My Life Before and in the Revolution in New York , in which his wife was named as the author and Moura Budberg as the translator under the pseudonym Natalia Petrova . The book was unique at the time and became a bestseller in the United States in the 1930s, especially among American women's groups. The treatment of "Russians of non-proletarian origin" as well as the mass shootings, arrests and torture of "class enemies" by the GPU are described very clearly . Remarkably factual, free from resentment, bitterness or revenge, it depicts a strong woman's will to survive and an accusation against the pre-revolutionary aristocracy and their ignorance.

Excursus: Natalie Scheffer was a graduate of the Kaiserin-Katharina-Institut , a higher education institution for noble girls in Saint Petersburg, was considered very clever and spoke several languages ​​(including German, English, French, Latin). From her first marriage (1908-1918) to Prince Nikolai Sergejewitsch Volkonsky , the chamberlain of the last Tsar , she had two sons, Prince Dmitri Nikolajowitsch (* 1913; †?) And Prince Peter Nikolajowitsch (* 1916; † 1997). In 1917 she fled with him and the children from Saint Petersburg to the Crimea . After her husband entered into a liaison with her sister, Leonie Petrovna Loukine, she divorced in August 1918. Prince Volkonsky married Leonie Petrovna Loukine in 1919; Together with their first-born son, they escaped in the same year with members of the royal family on the HMS Marlborough to Istanbul . From there they went to the USA in 1930. Natalie Petrovna stayed with her son Peter Nikolajowitsch in the Crimea and after her divorce founded a kindergarten for noble children in Eupatoria . She operated this economically successfully until the Bolshevik conquest of Crimea in 1920. The former princess had to witness the murder of aristocratic families and the starvation of large sections of the population up close. In 1922 she met Edmund Aloysius Walsh and Eduard Gehrmann by chance , who organized a famine relief campaign throughout Russia on behalf of the papal together with French, Italian, German and American missionaries from the Crimea. Natalie has been hired as an interpreter and personal secretary to Father Walsh to assist. In this way she came to Moscow with her son to the Vatican Mission to the East, where she met Paul Scheffer in 1923. After the wedding in 1925, Peter Nikolajowitsch Wolkonski was adopted by Scheffer. In 1928 they moved to Berlin; henceforth Natalie Scheffer no longer accompanied her husband on his travels to Russia.

Since both Scheffers spoke perfect English and Paul Scheffer wrote articles in English on a regular basis, it can be assumed that Moura Budberg's name was listed for camouflage reasons. However, in the foreword to the first edition of Twice born in Russia: My Life Before and in the Revolution there were references to Princess Natalie Wolkonskaja and Paul Scheffer as the author; The book then specifically mentions the Volkonsky regiment and the meetings of her first husband with the Tsar as his private secretary. The similarities with Scheffer's writing style were also unmistakable. After the book was published, the Soviet Union officially declared Scheffer a persona non grata .

From 1930 he developed into a sharp anti-communist and was criticized by Carl von Ossietzky as a “journalistic prima donna who gets into a situation immediately if a silk pillow is not placed in front of each foot”. Ossietzky continued in the Weltbühne : “Anyone who writes about Russian things today as a friend or opponent of Bolshevism bears an enormous responsibility, and it becomes a huge burden for a publicist like Mr. Scheffer, who was previously considered an outspoken Russophile . Because it was Mr. Scheffer who first made the Soviets socially acceptable in Germany. It is thanks to him that the posters of the anti-Bolshevik parties have largely disappeared in Germany. "

In his criticism, Ossietzky suppressed Scheffer's interpretative journalism , who tried to objectively present several points of view in all of his articles. He personally rejected the communist worldview as early as 1921.

Editor-in-chief of the Berliner Tageblatt

At the beginning of March 1930 Scheffer went to the USA as a correspondent for the Berliner Tageblatt . His wife accompanied him and saw her firstborn son there again after eleven years. Dimitri Nikolajowitsch studied at Harvard University , which Peter Nikolajowitsch then also attended. Natalie Scheffer bought a house in Vermont , where many Russian exiles had settled, and obtained US citizenship in 1935. In 1932 Paul Scheffer moved to London as a foreign correspondent. In private he and his wife regularly commuted between America and Europe for the next few years.

In July 1933 he was appointed head of the foreign policy department and in April 1934 the editor-in-chief of the Berliner Tageblatt . After the seizure of power by the National Socialists did Joseph Goebbels , who repeatedly criticized the "monotony" of the German press, establish the newspaper as a German "World Journal". For this he assured Scheffer a free hand in the design of the content. According to communications scientist Christina Holtz-Bacha , Scheffer - like many bourgeois politicians and journalists - had a level of agreement with “sensible National Socialists”, which concerned, for example, areas of foreign policy and the rejection of communism, but also had very clear limits. Scheffer met Goebbels regularly, but remained friends with Jews and publicly and strictly rejected pathological anti-Semitism.

With a lot of energy he set about saving the newspaper , which had been badly hit since the economic collapse of the Mosse group , from sinking completely into journalistic insignificance. He managed to increase the circulation significantly. He attached great importance to foreign reports. To this end, Scheffer sent young journalists on week-long trips to countries that were largely unknown and exotic to many readers at the time. Examples include Petra Vermehren , who traveled exclusively in the Balkans , and Margret Boveri , who carried out research on his behalf in Malta , Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt as well as in Sudan and the Abyssinian Empire ; or Herbert Ihering , who even flew to India, South America and Hollywood for film reviews .

In his articles, Scheffer always spoke of "Herr Hitler" instead of "Führer" or "Chancellor". At a press conference of the Propaganda Ministry in 1935 there was a scandal . Scheffer had written in an editorial that “peoples with intact religious communities, such as those in Italy and England, are superior to other nations in terms of mental elasticity. Germany, on the other hand, lacks the regular binding force ”. Alfred-Ingemar Berndt , the spokesman for the Propaganda Minister, yelled at Scheffer if he didn't know Alfred Rosenberg's first volume, "Myth of the 20th Century" . To the horror of the conference participants, Scheffer not only forbade himself to use the harsh tone, but added with cutting irony: "Incidentally, I note that Germany now has a religion of which the first volume has already been published."

With the four-year plan , Goebbels goals also changed from 1936 onwards. The focus was now on the optimization of resources , among other things by means of managing the use of labor, the allocation of paper and raw materials, and the associated reduction in press products. Like all newspapers, from this point in time the Berliner Tageblatt also had to meet various requirements from steering bodies. Scheffer, who always tried to preserve his independence, finally gave up in exasperation and left Germany at the end of 1936. He and his wife traveled privately to the Dutch East Indies , Malaysia, Siam , China and Japan for two years .

Internment in the USA

Following his trips to Southeast Asia, Scheffer worked as a foreign correspondent for various German newspapers in New York City. From May 1940, for example, he regularly delivered reports on the USA to the weekly newspaper Das Reich . In the same year his book "USA 1940. Roosevelt - America in the decisive year" was published by Deutscher Verlag . In it he went into the enormous rearmament of the USA since 1938 and pointed out that "if the warmongers prevail over the pacifist forces, the USA will emerge from the conflict as a global superpower".

After the United States entered the war , Scheffer was supposed to be embarked for Germany along with the diplomatic staff and the other German journalists, but shortly before departure he broke his hip joint in a harbor hotel and the doctors declared that he could not be transported. Then on December 16, 1941 he was deported as an enemy alien to an internment camp , where his injury was initially not treated and later incorrectly treated. He had to pay for the medical expenses himself. Due to the account and transfer block imposed by the US government on German citizens, Scheffer ran into existential difficulties. Natalie Scheffer had to sell her house in Vermont to pay for her husband's treatment costs. With the support of the American journalist Dorothy Thompson , a friend from Scheffer's Moscow years, Scheffer, who was now forever in a wheelchair, could be released on January 15, 1943 as an "anti-Nazi". He found accommodation on a farm owned by Dorothy Thompson, who was a close friend of Eleanor Roosevelt and who regularly brokered the publication of technical articles in the American journals Foreign Affairs , Aria and The Contemporary Review . Nevertheless, until the end of the war he had to carry a registration card with him and present himself to the authorities in person every month.

Other sources indicate that Scheffer's release was primarily due to General William J. Donovan . According to this, Scheffer is said to have been in the service of the OSS and to have written a secret memorandum for Franklin D. Roosevelt about the German Reich and Russia as early as 1939 . This unsubstantiated information contradicts Scheffer's arrest and his two-year internment. Likewise, later statements by American authors are completely inaccurate, according to which Scheffer “as a German-Jewish journalist and Nazi opponent emigrated to the USA in 1937”. Scheffer came from a Protestant family; He left Germany voluntarily for private and family reasons; Although it can be proven that he was not an outspoken friend of the National Socialists, due to his activities as editor-in-chief of the Berliner Tageblatt and as foreign correspondent for the weekly newspaper Das Reich - and the associated membership in the Reich Press Chamber - an open and active opposition to the Nazi state is not recognizable. Scheffer was not a resistance fighter, but a liberal (German) patriot throughout his life .

Freelance American journalist and old age

After 1945 the Scheffers leased a small farm themselves. As a freelance journalist for various American newspapers and consultant for a publishing house in Chicago , Paul Scheffer campaigned for factual, educational publications about Germany. He spent his old age in White River Junction not far from Woodstock (Vermont) . Natalie Scheffer was library director of the Slavic department of the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection , an institute of Harvard University , from 1945 to 1965 . She left Dumbarton Oaks a large collection of Byzantine and Russian art, iconography along with icon and artifact evaluations and died in New York in 1981.

At universities in the USA, Twice born in Russia: My Life Before and in the Revolution and Seven Years in Soviet Russia are still among the most cited standard works in Stalin and Bolshevism research.

Literature (selection)

  • Paul Scheffer: Seven years of the Soviet Union. Bibliographisches Institut Leipzig, 1930.
  • Natalia Petrova (pseud.): Twice born in Russia: My Life Before and in the Revolution. William Morrow & Company, 1930.
  • Paul Scheffer: USA 1940 Roosevelt - America in the decisive year. German publisher, 1940.
  • Paul Scheffer: Eyewitness in the State of Lenin. Piper Verlag, 1972.
  • Margret Boveri: We all lie: A capital newspaper under Hitler. Walter Verlag, 1965.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bärbel Holtz: Scheffer, Paul. in: Neue Deutsche Biographie, Volume 22, 2005, p. 613.
  2. ↑ Alexander Kluge: newspaper makers under Hitler. In: DER SPIEGEL 3/1966, January 10, 1966.
  3. ↑ ibid
  4. ^ Wolfgang Müller: Russia reporting and Rapallopolitik. German-Soviet relations 1924-1933 as reflected in the German press. Phil. Diss. Saarbrücken, 1983, pp. 54-82.
  5. ^ Gerd Voigt: Yearbook for the History of the Socialist Countries of Europe, Volume 31. Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1988, p. 155.
  6. ^ Matthias Heeke: Travel to the Soviets: Foreign Tourism in Russia 1921-1941 . LIT Verlag Münster, 2003, pp. 52–53.
  7. ↑ Rudolf Augstein : Der Spiegel, Volume 20. Hamburg, 1966, p. 76.
  8. ↑ Gottfried Niedhart: The West and the Soviet Union. F. Schöningh, 1983, p. 59.
  9. ↑ Gottfried Niedhart: ibid
  10. ↑ Ulrich Alemann, Gertrude Cepl-Kaufmann, Hans Hecker, Bernd Witte, Elke Suhr: Intellectuals and Social Democracy. Springer-Verlag, 2013, p. 111.
  11. ^ Matthias Heeke: Travel to the Soviets: Foreign Tourism in Russia 1921-1941 . LIT Verlag Münster, 2003, pp. 52–53.
  12. ^ Paul Scheffer: Seven years in Soviet Russia: With a retrospect. Macmillan, 1932, p. 3 (Editorial Reviews).
  13. ^ Paul Scheffer: Seven Years of the Soviet Union. Bibliographisches Institut Leipzig, 1930, p. 418.
  14. ^ Hansjakob Stehle: The Ostpolitik of the Vatican. Piper, 1975, p. 433.
  15. ↑ Dorothy Thompson, foreword to Natalia Petrova: Twice born in Russia: My Life Before and in the Revolution. William Morrow & Company, 1930, p. 8 f.
  16. ↑ Note: The different spellings of Nikolai Sergejewitsch Wolkonski's (Serge Volkonsky etc.) in biographies about Natalie Scheffer (e.g. in the Harvard personal description ) have led to confusion with Sergei Michailowitsch Wolkonski . Natalia Petrovna Loukine is also sometimes found in the literature and Leonie Petrovna Loukine mistakenly swapped.
  17. ↑ Natalia Petrova: Twice born in Russia: My Life Before and in the Revolution. William Morrow & Company, 1930, p. 76 f.
  18. ↑ Wolfgang Schuller: Carl Schmitt Diaries 1930 to 1934. Walter de Gruyter, 2010, p. 3.
  19. ^ Hansjakob Stehle: The Ostpolitik of the Vatican. Piper, 1975, p. 433.
  20. ↑ Natalia Petrova: Twice born in Russia: My Life Before and in the Revolution. William Morrow & Company, 1930, p. 8 f.
  21. ^ Matthias Heeke: Travel to the Soviets: Foreign Tourism in Russia 1921-1941 . LIT Verlag Münster, 2003, pp. 52–53.
  22. ↑ Christopher Lawrence Zugger: The Forgotten: Catholics of the Soviet Empire from Lenin through Stalin. Syracuse University Press, 2001, p. 481.
  23. ^ Norbert Frei, Johannes Schmitz: Journalism in the Third Reich. CH Beck, 2011, p. 46.
  24. ↑ Carl von Ossietzky: Complete Writings 1929 - 1930. Rowohlt, 1994, p. 319.
  25. ↑ Alexander Kluge: newspaper makers under Hitler. In: DER SPIEGEL 3/1966, January 10, 1966.
  26. ↑ Margret Boveri: We all lie: A capital newspaper under Hitler. Walter-Verlag, 1965, p. 322 f.
  27. ^ Paul Scheffer: Eyewitness in the State of Lenin. Piper Verlag, 1972, p. 88 f.
  28. ↑ Christina Holtz-Bacha, Arnulf Kutsch: Key works for communication science. Springer-Verlag, 2013. p. 79.
  29. ↑ Margret Boveri: We all lie: A capital newspaper under Hitler. Walter-Verlag, 1965, p. 322 f.
  30. ↑ Walter Kiaulehn : “We all lie” - Margret Boveri's report on the “Berliner Tageblatt” under Hitler . In: Die Zeit , No. 51/1965
  31. ↑ ibid
  32. ^ "Das Reich" - portrait of a German weekly newspaper . In: Der Spiegel . No. 34 , 1964 ( online ).
  33. ^ Paul Scheffer: USA 1940. Roosevelt - America in the decision year. Deutscher Verlag, 1940, p. 12 f.
  34. ^ Paul Scheffer: Seven years in Soviet Russia: With a retrospect. Macmillan, (1932), new edition 1960, p. 3 (Editorial Reviews).
  35. ↑ Margret Boveri, p. 77 f.
  36. ↑ Bärbel Holtz: Scheffer, Paul. in: Neue Deutsche Biographie, Volume 22, 2005, p. 613.
  37. ↑ Margret Boveri, p. 77 f.
  38. ^ Paul Scheffer: Seven years in Soviet Russia: With a retrospect. Foreword to the new American edition, Macmillan (1932), 1950.
  39. ↑ Alexander Kluge: newspaper makers under Hitler. In: DER SPIEGEL 3/1966, January 10, 1966.
  40. ↑ Walter Kiauiehn: “We all lie.” Margret Boveri's report on the Berliner Tageblatt under Hitler. Die Zeit , December 17, 1965.
  41. ↑ Christina Holtz-Bacha, Arnulf Kutsch: Key works for communication science. Springer-Verlag, 2013, p. 80.
  42. ↑ Bärbel Holtz: Scheffer, Paul. in: Neue Deutsche Biographie, Volume 22, 2005, p. 613.
  43. ↑ Nathalie P. Scheffer Research Papers, 1940-1965 ( Memento of the original from April 24, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed April 24, 2017 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / oasis.lib.harvard.edu
  44. ↑ Christopher Lawrence Zugger: The Forgotten: Catholics of the Soviet Empire from Lenin through Stalin. Syracuse University Press, 2001, p. 481.
  45. ↑ [1]
personal data
SURNAME Scheffer, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist
DATE OF BIRTH October 11, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Kaldau, municipality of Schlochau (today Kołdowo, Człuchów)
DATE OF DEATH 20th February 1963
Place of death White River Junction