Theodor Seibert (journalist)

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Theodor Seibert (born July 27, 1896 in Kempten ) was a German journalist and political writer.

Seibert, son of a Bavarian post office clerk, grew up in Kempten and in Bad Kissingen , where he graduated from secondary school; then he attended secondary school in Munich from 1912 to 1914 . After serving in the First World War on the Western Front , where he was promoted to first lieutenant , he enrolled at the University of Munich in 1918 . In May 1921 he received his doctorate at the University of Erlangen with the dissertation "The rural settlement forms of the Bavarian Franconia".

After previous revolutionary advances by Bolshevism in Berlin and Budapest in Munich, with the participation of a number of Jewish intellectuals, the Bavarian Soviet Republic was proclaimed, Seibert founded the Freikorps Grafing with like-minded opposition members and took part in the fighting in Munich. He was also involved in the Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch . He later joined the Freikorps Oberland , the predecessor organization of the SA in Munich. In 1919 he joined the German Völkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund and worked as an employee of the Völkischer Beobachter ( VB ) and the Heimatland newspaper . In 1920 he became editor of the Süddeutsche monthly magazine ; in autumn 1920 he became a party member of the NSDAP . During the suppression of the third Upper Silesia uprising in 1921, he served as a platoon leader in the Bavarian Oberland Freikorps .

In October 1923 Seibert switched to the Hamburger Abendblatt as an editor . In the period 1925–1929 he worked as its representative and as foreign correspondent for other newspapers in Moscow . From 1929 to 1931 he was the foreign policy editor of the paper, until in 1932 he went to London for four years as the foreign policy correspondent of the Hamburg foreign paper . In July 1936 he moved to the VB , where he kept the London location. In January 1938 he was appointed diplomatic correspondent in the Berlin editorial office of the VB ; two months later he took over the management of the foreign affairs department. In 1939 he became head of the Berlin editorial office of the VB and in October 1941 deputy chief editor .

Seibert, who had acquired knowledge of the Russian language and was considered to be an expert on Russia, traveled to the Soviet Union from 1926 to 1929 . He took part in political show trials as an eyewitness and followed current political events on the ground using reports in the official Soviet daily press. In his book The Red Russia , published in 1931 (published in English translation in 1932 under the title Red Russia ), he described the political conditions and the living conditions of the population in Russia under the rule of Bolshevism . According to reports from official Soviet daily newspapers, 144 executions for so-called political crimes were carried out between September 19 and October 24, 1929 alone.

After Seibert had received a draft notice from the Wehrmacht in May 1941 of the Second World War , he initially acted mainly as a war correspondent - apparently without completely suspending his post at the VB , because in October 1941 he was still active in the editorial office. As far as we know today, his further résumé is unclear. Presumably he went into hiding after the end of the war. Seibert could have been related to the journalist Curt Seibert (1898–1975) or have used his name. When Curt Seibert was suspected of being identical to Theodor Seibert after the end of the war, the interviewee stated: “There is probably a mix-up with the leader of a Prop. Company, First Lieutenant Dr. Theodor Seibert, with whom I am neither related nor by marriage. Dr. Seibert was deputy editor-in-chief of the "Völkischer Beobachter" and first lieutenant in the reserve. During the war he was drafted into the Prop. Troop and was leader of a PK in southern theaters of war for a year. "

Works (selection)

  • Red Russia. State, spirit and everyday life of the Bolsheviks. Knorr & Hirth, Munich 1931.
  • Red Russia . Allen & Unwin, London 1932, translated from the German by Paul Cedar and Paul Eden ( limited preview )
  • How does the English see us? , 1940.
  • The American Enigma, US War Policy in the Roosevelt Aera , 1941.
  • Der Sovietmensch , in: Völkischer Beobachter , July 19, 1941.
  • The Chronic Threat of the East , in: Völkischer Beobachter , No. 327, November 23, 1941.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ernst Nolte : The fascist movements . Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1984, 9th edition (1st edition 1966), p. 25 ff.
  2. ^ Theodor Seibert: The red Russia. State, spirit and everyday life of the Bolsheviks. Knorr & Hirth, Munich 1931, p. 219.
  3. ↑ Romeo Felsenreich: The Journalists of the Völkischer Beobachter - Where did they come from? Where did they go , University of Vienna, Master's thesis, Department of Journalism and Communication Studies, September 2012, p. 108.
personal data
SURNAME Seibert, Theodor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist
DATE OF BIRTH July 27, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Kempten
DATE OF DEATH 20th century