Wolfgang Bretholz

Wolfgang Henry Bretholz , pseudonyms: Walther Bartz and Otto Olm (born August 28, 1904 in Brno , Moravia , † August 31, 1969 in Lausanne ) was a Swiss journalist .

Live and act

Youth and Weimar Republic

Bretholz grew up in the city of Brno, which belongs to Austria. His father was the historian and state archives director Berthold Bretholz . After attending primary school and high school in Brno, Bretholz studied law in Berlin and Leipzig . 1925 doctorate he attended the University of Leipzig with a thesis press law to Dr. jur .

From 1925 to 1927 Bretholz was editor of the Dresdner Neuesten Nachrichten , then from 1927 to 1929 the editor of the Braunschweiger Neuesten Nachrichten . In 1929 he moved to Berlin as editor for the weekly Das Tage-Buch . In August 1931, Theodor Wolff brought him to the Berliner Tageblatt as head of the domestic affairs department . As the author of anti-National Socialist articles, Bretholz was particularly hated by the National Socialists. On the night of the Reichstag fire , Bretholz caused Wolff to flee after discovering Wolff's name on an arrest list of Nazi-minded editors of the Mosse family. Bretholz brought Wolff, who was still hesitant, to the train station a few hours before the arrest squad intended for him arrived. The March article written by Bretholz led to a two-day ban on the newspaper, which prompted Bretholz to flee Germany.

Exile and World War II

In exile, Bretholz initially found a livelihood in Prague , where he founded the newspaper Prager Mittag together with Paul Cassirer , for which Adalbert Spann and KE Winter, among others, could be won as employees. Bretholz then worked as an editor for the Prague press from 1935 to 1939 . Since 1937 he was also a correspondent for the Schweizer National-Zeitung . Bretholz was one of the first opposition exiles to be expatriated: In the Reichsanzeiger of March 29, 1934, he appeared in the second expatriation list of the German Reich at number 5 next to the expatriations of Johannes R. Becher (No. 1), Albert Einstein (No. 9) and Oskar Maria Graf (No. 11). On November 30, 1938, his doctorate was withdrawn by the law faculty of the University of Leipzig .

Shortly before the “ Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia ” was established, Bretholz fled to Poland in March 1939 . There he worked as a reporter for Swiss and Swedish newspapers. The outbreak of World War II forced him to first go to eastern Poland, where he was interned briefly and where he talks about the beginnings of the few existing newspaper reports Soviet administration of the eastern of the Curzon Line areas in the years 1939 to 1941 wrote . From there, Bretholz first traveled to Romania .

In 1940 Bretholz went to Turkey . Since 1944 he reported from Bulgaria . From 1948 he lived permanently in Switzerland, which had naturalized him as early as the 1930s. After 1950 he worked for the German press, among other things, as the “diplomatic correspondent” for Welt am Sonntag . Politically, he represented conservative views at the time: he railed against the “incorrigible illusionists of détente ” and the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and criticized “radical troublemakers” at German universities.

Late years of life

In the post-war period Bretholz also published a number of books devoted to autobiographical experiences and various questions of world politics. He received special attention with the book Uprising of the Arabs , which an American critic praised as an impressive work: " impressive in its scope, in the detail of its commentary and, not least of all, in its size ".

reception

Bretholz, whose writing style , according to the obituary in Spiegel , was shaped by the “ kuk couleur” of his origin from Habsburg Moravia, died in 1969 in a Swiss canton hospital, ill for years. His last book, a biography of his mentor Wolff, did not get beyond a preliminary study.

For Bretholz's literary work there are mostly extremely positive assessments: Konrad Adenauer found Bretholz's article about foreign countries, for example, according to the Spiegel , “better than all crime novels”. The American John Calhoun Merrill labeled him in 1968 with the note “ Bretholz [...] is generally recognized as one of the best writers on international affairs in Europe. "And the historian Walther Hofer characterized Bretholz with the words:" [a] brilliant journalist, staunch democrat and indomitable opponent of the National Socialists "

Fonts

Book publications

• The system of press law responsibility. Basis for a new regulation of the German press legislation , 1926. (Dissertation, Leipzig)
• I saw them fall. Report on the events in Eastern and Southeastern Europe in the years 1944-48 , Dresch, Munich 1955 DNB 450616908 .
• India. Pakistan, India, Burma, Thailand (Siam), Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam. (With the photographer Hans Keusen) Dresch, Munich 1957.
• Uprising of the Arabs , Dresch, Munich / Vienna / Basel 1960, DNB 450616894 .

Essays

• The Soviet Union and the German Question . In: Bulletin , Volume 11, April 1964, 6-7.

Newspaper articles (selection)

• The way into the dark . In: Berliner Tageblatt , May 31, 1932,
• In the name of freedom . In: Berliner Tageblatt , No. 108, March 4, 1933.
• People's democracies in crisis . In: Die Welt , January 15, 16, 17 and 20, 1953.

literature

• Wilhelm Sternfeld , Eva Tiedemann: German Exile Literature 1933-1945. A bio bibliography . Foreword by Hanns Wilhelm Eppelsheimer . Schneider, Heidelberg / Darmstadt, 1962

Web links

• Literature by and about Wolfgang Bretholz in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hans-Albert Walter: Deutsche Exilpresse 1933-1950 , Vol. 2, p. 19.
2. ↑ Michael Hepp (Ed.): The expatriation of German citizens 1933-45 according to the lists published in the Reichsanzeiger . tape 1 : Lists in chronological order. De Gruyter Saur, Munich / New York / London / Paris 1985, ISBN 978-3-11-095062-5 , pp. 4 (reprinted 2010).
3. ↑ Thomas Henne: The withdrawal of doctoral degrees from the law faculty of the University of Leipzig 1933-1945 . 2007, p. 78.
4. ^ Council of Middle Eastern Affairs: Middle Eastern Affairs . Volume 14, 1963, p. 152.
5. ↑ Wolfgang Bretholz died . In: Der Spiegel . No. 37 , 1969, p. 200 ( online ).
6. ↑ John Calhoun Merrill: The Elite Press. Great Newspapers of the World , 1968, p. 208.
7. ↑ Walther Hofer: Hitler, the West and Switzerland. 1936-1945 . 2001, p. 411.