South German monthly issues
The Süddeutsche Monatshefte was a cultural magazine published in Munich from 1904 to 1936 . The aim of the magazine was to highlight the intellectual and cultural importance of southern Germany during the German Empire and the Weimar Republic . While the magazine was still liberal in its early stages , it changed into a nationally conservative medium after the First World War, which was lost .
history
Empire
The Süddeutsche Monatshefte were founded in Munich in 1904 as an expression of a southern German cultural patriotism (among others by Wilhelm Weigand ) and supported by numerous personalities (e.g. Josef Ruederer , Friedrich Naumann ). Under the lead editor Paul Nikolaus Cossmann , the magazine changed from a liberal profile to a national-conservative orientation. Numerous Bavarian authors wrote for the monthly issues, including Josef Hofmiller and Karl Alexander von Müller . In 1905, the title page included Hofmiller, Friedrich Naumann, Hans Pfitzner and Hans Thoma . During the First World War, Cossmann built the magazine into a leading organ of militant nationalism. He supported warmongers around Alfred von Tirpitz and Erich Ludendorff and fought the moderate forces in politics and the military, including the Reich Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg .
Weimar Republic
The lost First World War, the loss of the monarchy and the Munich Soviet Republic reinforced the nationalistic orientation of the monthly issues. Topics were in particular the Versailles Treaty , which was perceived as unjust, and the war guilt lie . In 1924 the magazine distributed the so-called stab in the back legend , for which the editor Cossmann had to defend himself in several court cases.
National Socialism
The magazine took a strong right-wing course that was directed against the republic. But Cossmann also fought resolutely against the emerging National Socialism. The monarchist journalist Erwein von Aretin , who often writes in the monthly journals , had already criticized Adolf Hitler in 1923 in the Süddeutsche monthly journals. Towards the end of the 1920s, the magazine advocated monarchism. It was propagated as an alternative to the threat of National Socialism. The January issue of 1933 was titled King Rupprecht . Ruprecht was the Bavarian crown prince whom Cossmann and his friends apparently thought suitable for the role of king. Cossman was considered by the National Socialists as a "particularly vicious Jewish opponent". Cossmann and Aretin were arrested in April 1933. Cossmann was deposed as publisher and the magazine was brought into line. Cossmann was not released until over a year later. In 1938 he was arrested again and died in 1942 in the Theresienstadt concentration camp .
Leo Friedrich Hausleiter was appointed as the new National Socialist editor . Arthur Hübscher , who had been acting as a rather apolitical editor since 1924, became the editor . The Süddeutsche Monatshefte tried to survive as a rather apolitical magazine. But that was hardly possible. For example, the main issue of 1934 was entitled Deutsche Rassenpolitik and contained, among other things, a foreword by SS functionary Horst Rechenbach and a contribution by the Nazi racist and Hein Schröder, who published in the journal Volk und Rasse, entitled Racial thinking in the new state . In 1936 the magazine Süddeutsche Monatshefte was discontinued.
Edition
Before the start of the First World War, the circulation was around 3,500. During the war and in the post-war period, the circulation was at times 100,000, but it fell sharply again in the course of the 1920s.
literature
- Jens Flemming : Against the intellectualistic decomposition of old moral values. The South German monthly books between war and National Socialism , in: Michel Grunewald (ed.), Le milieu intellectuel conservateur en Allemagne, sa presse et ses réseaux (Convergences 27), Bern 2003, 165–201.
- Hans-Christof Kraus: cultural conservatism and stab in the back legend. The "Süddeutsche Monatshefte" 1904-1936 , in: Ders. (Ed.): Conservative magazines between the empire and dictatorship. Duncker and Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 978-3-428-11037-7 , pp. 13-43.
- Hans-Christof Kraus in Süddeutsche Monatshefte in Historisches Lexikon Bayerns November 28, 2011.
- Wolfram Selig : Paul Nikolaus Cossmann and the south German monthly issues from 1914-1918. A contribution to the history of national journalism in the First World War (Dialogos 3), Osnabrück 1967.
Web links
- Digitized at archive.org: 1905, 2nd volume ; 1908, 1st volume (wrong title there 1904)
Individual evidence
- ↑ According to Kraus 2003, p. 41, the political stance of the monthly issues was " generally [...] in some respects representative of the behavior of national-conservative circles in the Weimar Republic ".
- ↑ Hans-Christoph Kraus in the Historical Lexicon of Bavaria s. literature
- ↑ Hans Christof Kraus: cultural conservatism and stab in the back legend. The "Süddeutsche Monatshefte" 1904-1936 , in: Ders. (Ed.), Conservative magazines between the Empire and the dictatorship, Berlin 2003, p. 19.