Progress press agency
The Progress-Presse-Agentur GmbH (PPA) was a press agency founded in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1971, which mainly supplied the GDR news agency ADN . When the SED broke off funding in 1989, the agency was dissolved.
The agency was founded on December 20, 1971 by former correspondents of the dissolved correspondent network of the Voice of the GDR and ADN in Düsseldorf. The four founding shareholders of PPA came half from ADN and half from the voice of the GDR . As a goal of their work they called "the reflection of the activities of the democratic forces of the Federal Republic in all areas of politics and society".
Besides ADN and the voice of the GDR, the agency's main customers were the Soviet agency TASS and the news agencies of the Eastern Bloc countries . In other Western European countries, the French Communist Party press, the CGT trade union and the Italian L'Unità were among the subscribers. In the Federal Republic of Germany, PPA was mainly used by the DKP party organ Our Time (UZ) and other media in the DKP environment.
In addition to the head office in Düsseldorf, the agency had offices in Bonn, Hamburg, Hanover, Mannheim and Munich as well as temporary branches in Frankfurt and Stuttgart. Headquarters and offices corresponded via the public telex network, through which the most important customers also received their messages. The other customers received the reports in the form of a daily repro service by post. There was a permanently switched telex line to the two main GDR customers, which led through the ADN office in Bonn. In order to be able to follow the main customer ADN in the change from lower case to upper case, the teletype technology in all offices was replaced by computer teletex systems in 1989.
The agency's employees were all German citizens and politically committed to the DKP . The party political connection was clearly expressed when, in 1986, the previous DKP press spokesman and former deputy editor-in-chief of the party organ “UZ”, Eberhard Weber, was appointed editor-in-chief.
The agency often distributed Tatar reports .
After the fall of the wall, ADN was no longer able to meet its financial obligations towards PPA. There were also bad debts in Poland, Bulgaria and France. Therefore, at the end of November 1989, the PPA management announced the immediate discontinuation of the service to their customers. ADN General Director Günter Pötschke condoled the colleagues concerned about the dedicated line: “We do not know how and whether we will ever be able to close the gap that has now been created by the loss of a news service from our partner PPA that has been so valuable to us for many years for reporting on ADN is created. "
literature
- HJ Höhne, report on news agencies, Nomos-Verlag, Baden-Baden 1977.
- "Forced end with unanswered questions - ADN separates from German subsidiary: The PPA ceased broadcasting" in Frankfurter Rundschau , December 12, 1989.
- Klaus Arnold: Cold War in the ether. The German broadcaster and the GDR's western propaganda. LIT Verlag Münster-Hamburg-London, 2002, ISBN 3-8258-6180-5 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Roland Kirbach: DKP: Left by the comrades. The SED stops financial aid for West German offshoots in Die Zeit , December 22, 1989
- ↑ a b The GDR cashed in 10/1981 . In: Der Spiegel . No. 10 , 1981 ( online - Mar. 2, 1981 ).