Rheinische Zeitung (SPD organ)

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The Rheinische Zeitung was a daily newspaper published by the SPD in Cologne, which appeared for the first time in 1892 and consciously referred in the title to the previous newspaper of the same name and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung from 1848/49, edited by Karl Marx . The first editor-in-chief was Carl Hirsch from 1894 to 1896 , who came from the Frankfurter Zeitung . He was followed by August Erdmann from 1896 to 1907 and Johannes Meerfeld from 1907 to 1920 . The newspaper appeared with changing social-democratic tendencies, whose long-time editor-in-chief was as successor to Meerfeld from 1920 the Reichstag deputy and temporary Reich Minister of the Interior (1923) Wilhelm Sollmann , until it was banned by the National Socialists. On February 6, 1933, the newspaper was banned for three days and on February 28, 1933, its daily edition was confiscated by the police. On this day social democratic newspapers appeared in Prussia for the last time. All newspapers and pamphlets were initially banned for two weeks, on March 13 and 27 the bans were extended to two weeks each. On March 10, 1933, the Cologne District President announced that he had ordered the August Bebel House to be closed. This was inaugurated on May 1, 1931 as the new home of the Rheinische Zeitung and was also known as Druckhaus Deutz . On May 10, 1933, the entire assets of the SPD were confiscated and the printing works were finally expropriated in accordance with the law on the confiscation of property against the people and the state of July 14, 1933. The Nazi newspaper Westdeutscher Beobachter resided in the former printing and publishing house of the Rheinische Zeitung on Deutz-Kalker-Strasse in Cologne-Deutz until the end of the Second World War . The building was occupied by SA troops after the Reichstag election on March 5, 1933, and a swastika flag was hoisted on the roof. On March 9, 1933, Sollmann and the local editor Hugo Efferoth were attacked by SA and SS men in their apartments, transported to the Braune Haus (seat of the Gauleitung) in Mozartstrasse, where they were severely mistreated. The last data center sales manager was the later popular mayor of Cologne, Theo Burauen .

On February 18, 1946, a social democratic group of editors led by the later first chairman of the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) Hans Böckler and the Mayor of Cologne, Robert Görlinger, received a license from the British military government to re-publish the Rheinische Zeitung as the first German daily newspaper in Cologne after the war. The daily circulation was 122,000 copies. The editors-in-chief were the journalists Willi Eichler and Heinz Kühn , who had returned from emigration . Eichler later played a key role in drafting the Godesberg program as a member of the SPD party executive , while Kühn became Prime Minister of the first social-liberal coalition in North Rhine-Westphalia.

With the currency reform in 1948 , a cut in circulation by a third by the military government, the abolition of compulsory licenses for newspapers and the reappearance of old competing titles such as the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger in 1949, the economic situation of the SPD body deteriorated, which was finally after an attempt at restructuring was sold to the Rheinisch-Westfälische Verlagsgesellschaft in Essen ( NRZ Neue Ruhr Zeitung ) by the publisher Dietrich Oppenberg through cooperation with Rhein-Echo, which is published in Düsseldorf . Efforts by the SPD executive committee to maintain influence with a capital stake of ten percent had previously been strictly rejected by Oppenberg. With the connection to the NRZ, after a transition phase as Westdeutsche Neue Presse, the name was changed to Neue Rhein Zeitung as an independent daily newspaper with its own editions and editorial offices in Bonn, Aachen, Leverkusen-Opladen and in the former districts of Cologne-Land and Bergheim. The editorial managers at the printing site in Cologne were Karl Zöller, Peter Fuchs , Helmar Meinel , Arnd Schwendy and Hans Mester, one after the other .

literature

  • Peter Fuchs: The quick end of the social democratic press in Cologne. In: Gerhard Brunn (Ed.): Social Democracy in Cologne. Emons-Verlag, Cologne 1986, ISBN 3-924491-08-9 .
  • Heinz Kühn: Wilhelm Sollmann. In: Gerhard Brunn (Ed.): Social Democracy in Cologne. Emons-Verlag, Cologne 1986, ISBN 3-924491-08-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Information Office of the City of Cologne: Wilhelm Sollmann I, Cologne 1981, p. 32.
  2. ^ Message Office of the City of Cologne: Wilhelm Sollmann I, Cologne 1981, p. 66, p. 92–95 and Historical Archive of the City of Cologne: Wilhelm Sollmann II (document section and exhibition catalog on Wilhelm Sollmann I), Cologne 1981, p. 46–47 , 49, 52-53, 62, 64-66.