Thuringian General

Thuringian General
description	German daily newspaper
publishing company	Thüringer Allgemeine Verlag GmbH & Co. KG
First edition	January 13, 1990 ("The People" April 9, 1946)
Frequency of publication	working days
Sold edition	131,523 copies
( IVW 2/2020, Mon-Sat)
Editor-in-chief	Jan Hollitzer
Web link	thueringer-allgemeine.de

The editorial office is in Erfurt-Bindersleben

Alternative logo

The Thüringer Allgemeine ( TA for short ) is a regional daily newspaper based in Erfurt . It is part of the Thuringia media group , which is part of the Funke media group , formerly WAZ media group (together with Ostthüringer Zeitung and Thuringian regional newspaper ) and is one of the regional newspapers with the highest circulation in Germany.

The TA emerged in 1990 from the newspaper Das Volk , which was published from 1946 as an organ of the SED in the Erfurt district . In the course of the turnaround , the editors and publishing staff decided to convert the paper into a "new independent newspaper" with the name Thüringer Allgemeine and renounced the SED. It first appeared under the new name on January 13, 1990.

The paid circulation is a partial edition of the much smaller Thuringian newspaper together 131,523 copies, down 58.9 percent since the 1998th

The Thüringer Allgemeine appears with the following 14 local editions, the distribution of which is based on the district boundaries that existed until 1994: Apolda , Arnstadt , Artern , Bad Langensalza , Eichsfeld , Eisenach , Erfurt , Gotha , Ilmenau , Mühlhausen , Nordhausen , Sondershausen , Sömmerda and Weimar .

history

Distribution of the newspaper Das Volk to the postmen in the main post office in Gotha (1954)

The previous newspaper Das Volk appeared for the first time on April 9, 1946. The Thuringian people , party organ of the KPD and later the SED, was allowed to appear five times a week with the approval of SMAD as early as 1945 with a circulation of 600,000 copies. The latter was not permitted to the LDPD's Thuringian newspaper , which had meanwhile been brought into line, until 1951. From 1951 the people became the organ of the Erfurt district leadership of the SED.

In 1990, the Thüringer Allgemeine was the first of the three Thuringian district newspapers of the SED to declare itself independent. In the course of the election campaign for the Volkskammer election in March 1990, the editors and employees of the publishing house decided not to advertise the PDS as the successor party to the SED and declared themselves independent. The conversion of the paper into a “new independent newspaper” with the name Thüringer Allgemeine was supported by around a third of the employees. It appeared under the new name for the first time on January 13, 1990. In the first edition , the title Das Volk was given the new name Thüringer Allgemeine . At that time, the editorial team chose Sergej Lochthofen (who was not a member of the SED) as editor-in-chief from among its ranks .

So that the newspaper could become independent, the Thuringian General Employee-Beteiligungs-GmbH with the number HRB 100009 and a capital of 25,000 GDR marks was registered with the state notary's office in Erfurt on February 28, 1990. The newspaper is still part of this GmbH today. As shareholders or managing directors of the GmbH, some who still run the newspaper today signed. Sergej Lochthofen is listed there to this day and is therefore a co-owner of the newspaper. Until May 24, 2004, Lochthofen's superior from the GDR era, Peter Sterzing, was also registered in the employee participation GmbH. The former head of the foreign department of Das Volk was led by the Ministry for State Security with the name "Peter Sturz". Lochthofen knew about Sterzing's past.

The other newspapers in Thuringia followed the example of TA and also declared themselves independent.

From eight pages, the newspaper grew enormously with new content. The outdated technical equipment found it difficult to withstand the increased competition in reunified Germany. The delivery system by the post office, which did not deliver the newspaper to some readers until noon, also required reforms. In order to bear the high costs of such a renewal, a takeover by publishers in the old federal states was considered. Finally, the Thüringer Allgemeine joined the WAZ media group together with the Ostthüringer Zeitung and the Thuringian regional newspaper . The WAZ media group invested half a billion DM and equipped the Thüringer Allgemeine with the latest technology.

Among other things, it caused a sensation nationwide in 1999. At that time, she published a blank spot on one page. An interview with the Federal Government's Eastern Commissioner at the time, Rolf Schwanitz (SPD), was originally intended to be printed there. According to the editors, however, when the interview was authorized, the latter had changed the answers and questions to such an extent that the newspaper responded by not printing it.

Since 2010, Thüringer Allgemeine has been cooperating more closely with the other newspapers Thüringische Landeszeitung (TLZ) and Ostthüringer Zeitung (OTZ) of the Mediengruppe Thüringen (MGT), formerly the Thuringian newspaper group (ZGT), which in turn belongs to the Funke media group . In the print editions, a growing number of articles are exchanged with one another.

On September 1, 2015, the newspaper introduced an online payment model.

In the run-up to the 2019 state elections , an almost empty area was printed again. At this point, an interview with the top candidate of AfD Thuringia , Björn Höcke , should be published. However, he declined the interview.

Edition

The Thüringer Allgemeine is one of the German daily newspapers with the greatest loss of circulation in recent years. The circulation sold has decreased by an average of 3.7% per year over the past 10 years. Last year it decreased by 6.9%. It is currently 131,523 copies. The share of subscriptions in the circulation sold is 94.2 percent.

Development of the number of copies sold

Chief editor

The long-term (1990-2009) chief editor Sergei Lochthofen was in 1953 Vorkutlag in the Soviet Union in the Gulag born. In 1990 he was instrumental in ensuring that the newspaper could no longer be misused as a party's election campaign tool and instead became the first in East Germany to become independent. From then on it appeared under the direction of Lochthofen and under the name Thuringian General .

In addition to Dirk Löhr, the editor-in-chief was also deputy to Antje-Maria Lochthofen, Sergej Lochthofen's wife. During the GDR era, she attended the SED party college. She made it to the position of deputy editor-in-chief of the newspaper Das Volk and is now performing the same function again at Thüringer Allgemeine .

According to the WAZ Group's plans, Lochthofen should no longer exercise his office from January 1, 2010. According to his own statements, this was communicated to him by the management on Wednesday, November 25, 2009. With Lochthofen, his wife Antje-Maria, previously deputy editor-in-chief, should also lose her post. A protest note from the editorial staff of the Thüringer Allgemeine was only allowed to be published in a censored form in the print edition at the intervention of the WAZ group. Lochthofen then called the recall of his wife as "kin as with the Nazis or under Stalin". As a result, he was dismissed as editor-in-chief on December 2, 2009 and replaced by Paul-Josef Raue . On May 15, 2016, Johannes M. Fischer became the new editor-in-chief of TA. His deputy is currently Thomas Bärsch . Jan Hollitzer has been editor-in-chief since November 1, 2018.

Editors-in-chief

Editors-in-chief of the SED regional newspaper Thüringer Volk (1946–1950):

Period	Surname
1946-1949	Karl Doerr (SPD) equally
1946-1950	Otto Trillitzsch (KPD) equally

Editors-in-chief of the SED-Landes and district newspaper Das Volk (1950–1990):

Period	Surname
1950-1954	Kurt Hanke
1954-1959	Erich Richter
1959-1965	Rolf Schablinski
1965-1974	Gerhard Fuchs
1974-1981	Harald Kreft
1981-1990	Werner Herrmann
1990	Sergej Lochthofen

Editor-in-chief of the daily newspaper Thüringer Allgemeine (since 1990):

Period	Surname
1990-2009	Sergej Lochthofen
2009-2016	Paul-Josef Raue
2016-2018	Johannes M. Fischer
since November 2018	Jan Hollitzer

literature

• Andreas Herbst (eds.), Winfried Ranke, Jürgen Winkler: This is how the GDR worked. Volume 2: Lexicon of Organizations and Institutions, Do-It-Yourself Movement - Customs Administration of the GDR (= rororo-Handbuch. Vol. 6349). Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-499-16349-7 , p. 922.

Web links

Commons : Thüringer Allgemeine  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Homepage of the Thuringian General
• Homepage of the media group Thuringia

Individual evidence

1. ↑ With a partial edition of the Thuringian national newspaper
2. ↑ according to IVW , second quarter 2020, Mon-Sat ( details and quarterly comparison on ivw.eu )
3. ↑ Jürgen Louis: The early years of the Thuringian national newspaper as reflected in its history . In: Hans Hoffmeister How it all began. Thuringian regional newspaper 1945/46 . Rene Burkhardt-Verlag Erfurt, 2007
4. ↑ Roy Spring: 'Das Volk' has never experienced this: Chronicle of the overthrow in Thuringia's largest daily newspaper after the fall of the Wall , Die Zeit, February 2, 1990, and it was there and written down: Reports about a German revolution , Inst . Communication, publishing group Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 1990.
5. ↑ Kai Schlieter: The ultimate taste determiner . In: taz , July 31, 2009
6. ^ Ingo Rentz: Thuringian newspapers are partially paid for. Horizont , August 3, 2015, accessed April 10, 2017 . 
7. ↑ Jan Hollitzer: Editorial: White space instead of Höcke interview. Thüringer Allgemeine, October 7, 2019, accessed on May 3, 2020 . 
8. ↑ according to IVW ( online )
9. ↑ according to IVW , second quarter 2020, Mon-Sat ( details and quarterly comparison on ivw.eu )
10. ↑ according to IVW , fourth quarter in each case ( details on ivw.eu )
11. ^ Protest against Lochthofen being recalled. (No longer available online.) MDR , November 28, 2009, archived from the original on March 9, 2010 ; Retrieved April 10, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
12. ↑ encroachment on independence. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on December 4, 2009 ; Retrieved on April 10, 2017 (declaration by the Thuringian General's staff meeting on November 28, 2009, original wording on the Thuringia website of the German Association of Journalists). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
13. ↑ Thüringer Allgemeine censored statement by employees. In: Thuringian Blogzentrale. November 30, 2009. Retrieved April 10, 2017 . 
14. ↑ Deposed editor-in-chief accuses WAZ group of Nazi methods , November 26, 2009, accessed on November 26, 2009
15. ^ WAZ group dismisses the boss of the "Thüringer Allgemeine" , December 2, 2009, accessed on December 2, 2009
16. ↑ Johannes M. Fischer will start as editor-in-chief of Thüringer Allgemeine on May 15 , 2016, accessed on June 21, 2018