West German observer
| West German observer: Official organ of the NSDAP | |
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| description | National Socialist propaganda magazine |
| Area of Expertise | General public newspaper, local newspaper, propaganda magazine |
| language | German |
| publishing company | West German Observer, Cologne-Deutz (Germany) |
| First edition | May 10, 1925 |
| attitude | March 1945 |
| Frequency of publication | weekly, from 1930 daily |
| Editor-in-chief | Josef Grohé, from 1931 Peter Winkelnkemper |
| editor | Robert Ley, National Socialist Party of Germany |
| ZDB | 1324706-2 |
The West German Observer (WB) was a newspaper belonging to the NSDAP in the Cologne-Aachen district . It was founded on May 10, 1925 as a weekly NSDAP magazine, appeared daily in Cologne from September 1, 1930, and was discontinued at the end of World War II with the collapse of the Nazi dictatorship in March 1945.
As the official NSDAP party organ, the West German Observer was characterized by political and radical anti-Semitic campaigns. His drastic language and visual style was based on the anti-Semitic weekly newspaper Der Stürmer .
editorial staff
The newspaper was owned by the NSDAP-Gaus and was initially run by Josef Grohé as publisher and editor-in-chief in a printing house on Cologne's Ubierring . In 1928 the Gauleiter Robert Ley made himself the editor of the West German Observer . Josef Grohé remained in the newspaper as editor-in-chief until he was replaced in this position in 1931 by Peter Winkelnkemper , who had previously worked for the national NSDAP organ Völkischer Beobachter .
In 1933, the National Socialist regime confiscated the former SPD- owned printing house in Cologne-Deutz at Deutz-Kalker Strasse 46, which until then had housed the Rheinische Zeitung , which had been banned at the same time . From there, the NSDAP published its propaganda magazine via Westdeutscher Beobachter GmbH . Richard Jahr became the publisher in Cologne-Deutz.
Various authors wrote for the West German observer , but they were not mentioned in the newspaper by their real names and rarely with abbreviations. Most of the drastic caricatures for the articles came from an illustrator with the abbreviation "teja". As Gauleiter and editor of the West German Observer, Robert Ley had a clear influence on its content. Ley specialized in slanderous and hateful articles that were mostly intended to hit Jewish citizens or Jewish companies.
Goals, target groups and guidelines
The West German observer saw himself as a political weapon of the NSDAP and for this reason never reported neutrally, but always purposefully. The National Socialists knew about the power of the media and used them strategically to support political campaigns. For example, the then Mayor of Cologne Konrad Adenauer and the Cologne police chief Carl Otto Bauknecht were attacked via the newspaper as part of the alleged "Jewish system". The focus was also on alleged scandals that affected Jewish companies or private individuals such as the Tietz family of department stores . This opposition to the republic and republican values formed the core of the newspaper's message.
The West German observers was initially addressed as "Battle leaf" of the Nazi party and his radical tone rather an extreme audience. This comprised dissatisfied citizens of various forms who reacted particularly strongly to the emotionalized propaganda. In later years the magazine addressed the entire German population of the Gaus in a more moderate tone.
For the official recognition of the NSDAP leadership, the paper had to meet a number of conditions. Among other things, party newspapers had to adhere to the party line and they were not allowed to publish advertisements from Jewish companies.
Structure and style of the newspaper
Even during the Weimar Republic , the newspaper exhibited radical anti-Semitism and a clear opposition to the republic and democracy. She regularly carried out smear campaigns against local Jewish politicians, entrepreneurs, and artists. The observer used a populist , sensational journalistic style and was already visually noticeable by the large and sensational bar headings. “A typical newspaper issue would include a provocative headline to grab a potential reader's attention, often tying into a local scandal. [...] As in the sensational press of the present, it often turned out that the 'information' following the headline was full of lies, attitudes and hidden hints, which led to numerous lawsuits for libel or defamation. "
Often an article by a prominent NSDAP member followed on the lower part of the front page, often in the person of the Gauleiter. In some cases, a large block of script was placed at the lower edge, which contained slogans like the one in Stürmer (“The Jews are our misfortune!”). The following pages of the magazine contained special articles.
A shift in the center of gravity can also be observed here. While in the Weimar Republic the observer still found sections such as "Family Mammon" (specialized in articles about the alleged influence of the Jews), in the Third Reich entertainment supplements and sections such as "Travel and Recreation" or "Industry and Technology in the National Socialist State" were included the newspaper.
The West German Observer appeared daily with a morning edition of eight pages and an evening edition of eighteen pages. In addition to the Cologne city and Cologne-country edition, there were secondary editions in Aachen , Bonn and Siegburg , Euskirchen , Cologne-country and Bergheim , Düren , Jülich , Erkelenz , Geilenkirchen / Heinsberg , Stolberg , Eschweiler and Bergisch Gladbach .
The written style of the West German observer was characterized by an easily understandable language and recurring patterns in content and form. The lurid bar headings mostly dominated the overall picture, propaganda messages between the articles were intended to discipline the readers (“Citizens can only be those who are comrades”). In addition, the imagery of the caricatures for the articles was extremely drastic.
Criminal proceedings in the Weimar Republic
In the Weimar Republic there were several court and prohibition proceedings against the West German observer . Among other things, they took place because of "excitement of public nuisance", "exclamation of class hatred" and "insulting the republic", which resulted in bans or the withholding of certain issues of the newspaper. For example, after the so-called "Nastaeten incident" on March 6, 1927, in which a group of NSDAP supporters forcibly stormed an allegedly Jewish hotel, the West German observer was temporarily banned for four months. The then editor-in-chief Josef Grohé had to answer in court several times because of the observer's content and was sentenced to several weeks in prison in the spring of 1928.
In addition, the State Youth Welfare Office of the Rhine Province brought about two proceedings against the West German observer at the inspection centers for dirty and trash writings , in Berlin and in the revision at the Oberprüfstelle in Leipzig . The reason for these two proceedings was the anti-Semitic inflammatory article "Moral crimes in the Tietz house" in the September 9, 1929 edition. The fictitious "sensational story" had thematized an alleged case of child abuse in the department store of the Jewish Tietz family . However, the sheet was not included in the list of dirty and scrapbooks . Both examination commissions refused to impose sales restrictions on the West German observer .
meaning
In 1927, 14,000 readers in the Rhine Province bought the West German Observer every week . The examination procedure of the article “Moral crimes in the Tietz house” acquired greater socio-cultural significance through its critical inclusion in the article “dirt or trash or money shortage” by Kurt Tucholsky under his alias Ignaz Wrobel in the political weekly newspaper Die Weltbühne in 1930. Herein Tucholsky pleaded for civil resistance to anti-Jewish publications, but against a ban on such agitation under the dirt and trash paragraph. He therefore agreed with the decision of the state test centers. Tucholsky justified his position with the fact that an article like that of a false abuse case should be prosecuted in case of doubt - but not with a “rubber factory”, which in his eyes is the law to protect young people from rubbish and dirty writing .
From 1933 to 1945, the Observer developed into the highest circulation paper in Cologne. In 1934, the West German Observer had a circulation of around 186,000 copies. However, there are indications that many subscribers were forced to subscribe to the paper after the seizure of power in 1933 by party organs. In 1937 the newspaper appeared with a circulation of more than 208,000 copies. Nevertheless, the West German observer is classified as a rather average representative of the Nazi Gaupresse. The West German observer was hired at the end of the war .
The radio and the Cologne newspaper
In the run-up to Hitler's seizure of power, the National Socialist propaganda organs bundled their activities. At the end of 1931, the Völkischer Beobachter, the NSDAP radio magazine Der Deutsche Sender and the Westdeutsche Beobachter launched a series of attacks on radio during the Weimar Republic. The WB was because of its proximity to the West German Radio AG . Predestined and defamed him about in January 1932 on two ways in pseudo-social manner he made about the salary of its director funny, "director M. Hardt 4,000 a month [...] A special monetary compensation for every microphone service (e.g. for the performance of a poem - duration ten minutes!) - around 150 tax marks! ”In reality, the editorial staff was against the political attitude of the democrat Ernst Hardt appointed by Konrad Adenauer . Second, the West German observer combined his hatred of Jews with his hatred of the political left: “Westdeutscher Rundfunk [...] has developed into a hotbed of pro-Bolshevik disintegration work. Just imagine: Of the nine departments of West German Broadcasting, the seven most important ones are occupied by Jews! ”In the year of the seizure of power, this tendency continued. The broadcasters - like the print media - were brought into line. The West German observer remained loyal to the broadcasting issue and underlined the importance of broadcasting as a propaganda instrument in the local Cologne section of its August 23, 1933 edition: “First effects of the new radio policy: 300,000 Cologne residents are to become radio subscribers. Cologne receives a radio advice center - Great radio campaign by the radio chamber to increase the number of listeners - The role of the new people's receiver - Scheduled advertising for new radio listeners ”.
The West German observer also criticized the print competition in a defamatory manner. In the spring of 1932, for example, he printed fake letters of termination from subscribers to the Cologne local edition of the Kölnische Zeitung in a regular column entitled “The Daily City Gazette Cancellation” . The paper insinuated that the publisher and in particular the Kölnische Zeitung, with its “refinement turned into paper”, owed their survival to dubious donors, and with this argument again openly played out its anti-Semitism: “The large advertisers, the department stores, the ready-to-wear Jews, the big branded companies - we think especially the expensive magazine advertisements - in Jewish possession ”.
Saar German lighthouse
The Saardeutsche Leuchtturm first appeared on January 15, 1928. The newspaper was essentially a reprint of the West German Observer for the Saar area . Only the heading “On the black board” differed from the newspaper of the Reichsgau Cologne-Aachen. Only three editions of the paper appeared, after which the newspaper was banned by the Saarland government commission.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Severin Roeseling: The brown Cologne: a city guide through the city center in the Nazi era . Emons, Cologne 1999, ISBN 3897051419 , p. 48; 138 f.
- ^ Ulrich S. Soénius: Kölner Personen-Lexikon . Greven-Verlag, Cologne 2008, ISBN 9783774304000 , p. 583.
- ↑ Ronald Smelser: Robert Ley - Hitler's man on the "labor front", a biography . Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 1989, p. 65 ff .
- ↑ a b c d e Ronald Smelser: Robert Ley - Hitler's man on the "labor front", a biography . Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 1989, p. 57-66 .
- ^ Albrecht Kieser: Cologne Newspapers in National Socialism - Notes on a suppressed chapter of Cologne newspaper history ; Article in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung Online on February 27, 2008 [1] accessed on September 15, 2008.
- ^ West German observer . No. 38 . Cologne 1928.
- ↑ https://www.textlog.de/tucholsky-geldverknappung.html
- ^ Arnold Klein: Press in Cologne 1933-1945 . Library of the NS Documentation Center, Cologne 1995, p. 469-473 .
- ^ Carl Schneider (Ed.): Handbook of the German daily press, Institute for Newspaper Studies Berlin . Armanen-Verlag, Leipzig / Frankfurt am Main 1937, p. 154 f .
- ↑ Dietmar Schirmer: Myth - Salvation Hope - Modernity: Political-cultural interpretive codes in the Weimar Republic . VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 1992.
- ↑ Der Deutsche Sender , Edition 4, Volume 3, January 1932, p. 4.
- ↑ On this racist made-up word see Uwe Westphal: Berliner Konfektion und Mode 1836-1939, The Destruction of a Tradition; Edition Hentrich, Berlin, 2nd edition, 1992
- ^ Kurt Weinhold: The history of a newspaper house 1620-1945. Cologne 1969, ISBN 3-7701-2478-2 , pp. 274f
- ^ Gerhard Paul : The NSDAP of the Saar area 1920-1935 . Saarbrücker Druckerei und Verlag (SDV), Saarbrücken 1987, ISBN 3-925036-11-3 , p. 150 .