Walter Schwerdtfeger (journalist)

Walter Georg Hermann Schwerdtfeger (born July 11, 1901 in Berlin , † June 19, 1979 in Groß-Karben near Frankfurt am Main ) was a German journalist who passed on press instructions from the Reich Press Conference to foreign correspondents during the National Socialist rule .

Career

In 1922 he became a business editor for the Berliner Börsen-Zeitung . Schwerdtfeger was a member of the Reich Press Conference , a journalistic association that was integrated into the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda on July 1, 1933 . The editors' law (passed on October 4, 1933, entered into force on January 1, 1934) made the journalist profession a civil servant, a process that is incompatible with journalistic professional ethics. The efficiency of the National Socialist censorship and control policy was based in part on the fact that its mechanisms remained hidden from the public. The directing and exploitation instructions issued at the Reich Press Conference were classified as secret. Violations of the confidentiality regulations were punished in the first years after the takeover of this body into National Socialist direction with exclusion from the Reich Press Conference or professional ban as "editor". The foreign journalists excluded from the Reich Press Conference repeatedly gained insight into this material and were thus able to recognize the taboo areas of reporting in the German Reich. On May 29, 1935, the Manchester Guardian published a series of full press releases. On July 2, 1935, Schwerdtfeger was arrested on suspicion of treason , taken to the Gestapo headquarters at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8 and transferred to the Moabit prison on July 16, 1935 as a remand prisoner. He was charged with forwarding secret documents from the Reich Press Conference to foreign colleagues for several months. On July 21, 1936, the People's Court sentenced him to life in prison for treason.

Although the Deputy Reich Press Officer , Ministerialrat Kurt Jahncke , took the Schwerdtfeger case as an opportunity to demonstrate the drastic consequences of a breach of trust to the members of the press conference, the indiscretions from this body continued even after the stock market journalist was arrested. All press instructions issued in August came into the possession of the Manchester Guardian, which on October 1, 1935 was again able to offer its readers an impressive selection from the confidential directives of the National Socialist propaganda apparatus. The Manchester Guardian had the title on October 1, 1935 on page 9: "How Opinion is Manipulated in Germany - The Secret Instructions to the Press."

Since it is unlikely that the Guardian would find a new supplier for confidential documents from the Reich Press Conference after the sensational arrest of Schwerdtfeger on July 2, 1935, the same source can be assumed in both cases. Schwerdtfeger is ruled out as a possible Guardian informant. In his unpublished notes, Schwerdtfeger denies being responsible for disclosing the material to the Guardian. In his unpublished autobiography, Schwerdtfeger named his contacts in Berlin's foreign correspondent corps: Louis Paul Lochner from the Associated Press , Louis Süß from the Paris business newspaper "L'Information" and Paul Wegener from the Wiener Neue Freie Presse

The material was not leaked to The Manchester Guardian editorial team via the regular Berlin correspondent, Charles Lambert, but via a special intelligence service set up and directed by Frederick Augustus Voigt .

While Voigt was only allowed to look briefly into the transcripts of the press instructions in May 1935 (Voigt to William Percival Crozier , May 30, 1935, in: MGA, 213/343), he came into possession of the original documents at the end of September 1935. These were obviously not journalistic transcripts from the Reich Press Conference, but copies of the official minutes issued by the Propaganda Ministry (Voigt an Crozier, 1935 IX 25, MGA 214/162: I have now got two of the original hectographed sheets that have been circulated by the Ministry to the German newspapers). The editorial papers contain no information about the informants.

After about four weeks in prison in Berlin-Charlottenburg, he was transferred to the Brandenburg-Görden prison and transferred to southern Germany in the summer of 1944.

After 1945 Schwerdtfeger was the publisher and editor-in-chief of the Badische Neuesten Nachrichten and author of various novels. He published under the pseudonyms Henry Wolf and Alan D. Smith. Schwerdtfeger was also active as a publisher, so he founded a short-lived publishing house in Karlsruhe under his own name and was later co-owner of the Frankfurt publishing house Internationale Motor-Edition . For a few years he was deputy chairman of the supervisory board of the German news agency (DENA). From 1947 to 1951 he sat for the SPD in the city council of Karlsruhe.

Schwerdtfeger was initially from 1925 to 1936 with Charlotte, b. Drichel, married (one child together) and from 1948 with Anja, b. Jooss (three children).

Publications

Novels

as Alan D. Smith

• The Panergon Embassy , Frankfurt am Main / Zurich 1952, serial book publisher ( loan book publisher )
• Adam and Eve times four , Frankfurt am Main / Zurich 1953, series book publisher
• Atomic explosion cobalt (Element 216 I), Frankfurt am Main / Zurich 1954, serial book publisher
• Sonnenkraft (Element 216 II), Frankfurt am Main / Zurich 1954, serial book publisher
• Lena Feys Wandlungen , Düsseldorf 1956, Astoria-Verlag
• A woman without blemishes , Düsseldorf 1961, Bach
• Yasha's mystical staff , Hemmingen 1997, H. Müller

Web links

• Literature by and about Walter Schwerdtfeger in the catalog of the German National Library
• Alan D. Smith in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• René Gilbert: Walter Georg Hermann Schwerdtfeger in the Stadtlexikon Karlsruhe, 2015

Individual evidence

1. ↑ this against Gabriele Toepser-Ziegert 3ZI, p. 38 *, note 138
2. ^ Walter Schwerdtfeger, Prison Years 1935-1945, p. 15 f .; Institute for Contemporary History , Ms 361; Markus Huttner, British press and National Socialist church struggle: an investigation by the Times and the Manchester Guardian from 1930 to 1939, F. Schöningh, 1995, 814 pp . 50 [1] [2] ; edited by Gabriele Toepser-Ziegert, Hans Bohrmann, Nazi press instructions from the pre-war period, edition and documentation Vol. 3 / I: 1935, [3]
3. ↑ Erika Bucholtz, The "house prison" of the Gestapo headquarters in Berlin: Terror and Resistance 1933–1945, Topographie des Terrors Foundation, 2005, 240 pp., 109 [4]
4. ↑ Schwerdtfeger, Walter Georg. In: Who is who? : the German Who's Who. - 12th edition of Degeners Who is it ?. Arani, Berlin 1955.