Saxon day sheet
Sächsisches Tageblatt (ST) was the title of the state newspaper of the Liberal Democratic Party of Germany (LDP) published in Dresden from February 1, 1946 to July 31, 1990 .
One of the founders was the later President of the People's Chamber of the GDR , Johannes Dieckmann (1893–1969). In the first few years the paper appeared four times a week, later on working days with district editions in Dresden, Leipzig , Karl-Marx-Stadt ( Chemnitz ) and initially also in Görlitz in a limited edition of 60,000 copies. The editor-in-chief was in Leipzig in the 1980s.
The editorial office in Leipzig, in the early years under the direction of the later editor-in-chief of the LDP central organ " Der Morgen ", Gerhard Fischer , was politically determined by the LDP politician Manfred Gerlach , who was elected in 1990 as the last chairman of the GDR State Council . Until the founding of the GDR in 1949, the newspaper was subject to daily pre- censorship by the Soviet military administration . The Dresden editorial office was based in the former Saxon State Printing House on Wettiner Platz in the Wilsdruffer suburb .
Among the few newspapers that - until the GDR press was completely brought into line at the beginning of the 1950s - stood out through independent and sometimes oppositional reporting, the “Sächsische Tageblatt” took the top position, alongside the organ of the East CDU in Dresden, “ Die Union ”, in which the publicist and television commentator Matthias Walden, alias Otto von Saß, who would later become prominent in the West , was active. In 1950, the newspaper was the only newspaper in the GDR to report on the spectacular, unified escape of the most popular soccer team in the East at the time, SG Friedrichstadt (formerly Dresdner SC ) with the later national coach Helmut Schön , to the West. During these years, the editorial team was exposed to extreme pressures from the occupying power and then from the GDR rulers in their efforts to find an independent course. Editors were repeatedly arrested between 1946 and 1954.
The editor-in-chief was governed by the founding editor-in-chief Ernst Scheiding and his son Wolfgang Scheiding via Rudolf Zechmeister , Herbert Winkler, Dr. Heinz Haufe to Christian Zeis (after fleeing to the West, local politician in Frankfurt am Main ) a constant change. After the popular uprising of June 17, 1953 , almost the entire editorial board took a nightly move to West Berlin , after the Ministry for State Security had smuggled their "secret employee" Günter Hegewald (code name "GM Hans") into a Dresden The LDP resistance group had also succeeded in unmasking the illegal network of correspondents for the West Berlin broadcaster RIAS, which was run by the department heads Heinz Rossig and Helmar Meinel at the “Sächsisches Tageblatt” . About twelve members of the LDP group, who had connections to the East Office of the Free Democratic Party in West Berlin, could not escape arrest in time and were sentenced to prison terms of up to 14 years in a show trial. In a separate procedure, this also included the head of the economic department of the “Sächsisches Tageblatt”, Rudolf Jordan-Bautzen .
The “ST” subscribers valued the newspaper as an alternative to the “Party Chinese ” papers in the SED press even after the synchronization . The editors' endeavor was not to lapse into announcement journalism, to provide help through non-political contributions to problems of daily life in the GDR and to place particular emphasis on the cultural topics of primary interest in Dresden. This was honored to the end by the readership, who usually came from the former middle class and the new intelligentsia, even if the editorial freedom of action was temporarily severely restricted by the mandatory articles and argumentation instructions prescribed by the LDP party leadership in Berlin. “My opinion will come from Berlin at two o'clock!” Was a common saying of the editors.
After the political turnaround in the GDR, which was fully supported by the newspaper, the “Sächsische Tageblatt” was discontinued in 1990 and brought together with the Dresden daily newspapers “ Die Union ” and “ Saxon Latest News ” under the new title “ Dresden Latest News ”. This third largest newspaper in the region is published by the Leipzig publishing and printing mbH & Co. KG, in which the dd_vg SPD Media Holding counting Madsack and Axel Springer AG until 2009 held the main shares. In February 2009, Axel Springer AG sold its shares to the Madsack Group. The publishing company also publishes the “ Leipziger Volkszeitung ” (LVZ) as the trade fair city's only local newspaper.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Press release Axel Springer AG: "Axel Springer sells regional newspaper holdings to the Madsack publishing group"