Franz-Eher-Verlag

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Franz Eher Successor GmbH
legal form GmbH
founding December 2, 1901
resolution October 29, 1945 (ban)
1952 (deletion)
Seat Munich
management Wilhelm Baur
Branch publishing company

The Franz-Eher-Verlag ( Franz Eher Successor GmbH ) was the central publisher of the NSDAP . The party bought it on December 17, 1920 for 115,000 marks . A bookstore belonged to the publishing house, which was also taken over. Max Amann took over the management from April 4, 1922. The sole shareholder of Eher-Verlag was temporarily the National Socialist German Workers' Association e. V. (NSDAV for short), the early supporting organization of the NSDAP, whose chairman was Adolf Hitler . The publishing house later became part of the NSDAP. After the ban by the Allies, the Bavarian state wound up the publishing house and it was deleted from the commercial register in 1952 .

history

The publisher was entered in the Munich commercial register on December 2, 1901 by Franz Eher , after he had acquired it in March 1900 from the printer's owner Johann Naderer from Munich-Haidhausen . The publishing house was actually founded under the name Münchener Beobachter on January 2, 1887, but had neither journalistic nor economic success. Even under Eher's leadership, the Munich observer's edition remained low. After Eher's death on June 22, 1918, Rudolf von Sebottendorf , the chairman of the right-wing extremist Thule Society , initially took over the editorial office and then bought a publisher's license from Eher's widow Friederike. The Munich observer became the organ of the Volkish Thule Society. On September 14, 1918, Sebottendorff's wealthy friend Käthe Bierbaumer (* July 4, 1884), who came from Neustift near Oedenburg ( Sopron ) in Hungary and now lived in Bad Aibling, was entered in the commercial register as the owner of the publishing house "Franz Eher Nachf." . On September 30, 1919, it became the "Franz Eher Successor GmbH". The legal form of the GmbH was also chosen to avert the threat of bankruptcy . The establishment was notarized by the notary's office in Konstanz II, where Sebottendorf had called a "crisis meeting".

The main shareholder remained with a deposit of 46,500 Reichsmarks Käthe Bierbaumer, who later also sponsored Hitler personally, and Franz Freiherr von Feilitzsch (20,000 Reichsmarks). Sebottendorf's sister Dora Kunze, the anti-Semite and völkisch ideologue Gottfried Feder , managing director Franz Xaver Eder and the Munich paper manufacturer Theodor Heuss held further shares . Since October 1919, the “Munich book trade house M. Müller & Sohn” has been printing the Munich observer, which now appears twice a week .

The main company headquarters was a three-story, unrepresentative building at Thierschstrasse 11 near Munich's Isartorplatz. From 1933 onwards, the entire party literature was printed and published by Eher-Verlag. Later branches were added in Berlin (from January 1, 1933), Vienna and others in Munich. From 1933 to 1943 Rolf Rienhardt was administrative director, he succeeded Wilhelm Baur , who remained so until the end of the war. The chief editor was the writer Karl Schworm . The head of the bookstore and other managing directors was the RSK country manager Josef Berg .

The NSDAP Reichsleiter for the Press , Max Amann , was of decisive importance for the seemingly incessant expansion of the publishing house, which was considered the largest press trust worldwide at the end of the 1930s and beginning of the 1940s . Via the Eher publishing house, he controlled almost the entire publishing, i.e. economic, side of the German press landscape. He also became President of the Reich Press Chamber . This inevitably brought him into direct competition both with Otto Dietrich , the Reich Press Chief of the NSDAP , who was responsible for the content of the party press , and with Joseph Goebbels , who, as Reich Propaganda Minister , also had press policy powers.

In the course of the 1930s, the NSDAP bought some parts of the Hugenberg group and smaller publishers. Three large publishing groups were affiliated with Eher-Verlag. On the one hand the Standarte-Verlags- und Druckerei-GmbH (in which the 70 Gauzeitungsverlage were grouped), the Herold-Verlagsanstalt GmbH (in which the bought-in middle-class publishers were accommodated) and the Europa-Verlags-GmbH (for all foreign publishers, especially after 1938). Various press distribution companies also belonged to this conglomerate .

The largest publications of the Franz-Eher-Verlag were: Mein Kampf , der Völkische Beobachter , Das Schwarze Korps , The Attack , Illustrierter Beobachter (1926), National Socialist Monthly Issues (1930), Academic Observer (1929), Our Will and Way (1931) , The SA-Mann (1932), The Nettle (1931), the National Socialist Party Correspondence (1932) and The Movement . With Michael , a novel by Joseph Goebbels was published in 1929, which had several editions.

The publishing house was banned by the Control Council Act No. 2 of October 29, 1945 as an organization of the NSDAP. After 1945, the Free State of Bavaria became the legal successor to the publishing house.

Eher-Verlag had its publishing and printing rooms in the Schellinghöfe (corner of Schellingstrasse / Barerstrasse) in the Maxvorstadt district of Munich. The first NSDAP party headquarters at Schellingstrasse 50 was on the other side of the street. After the end of the war, the Free State of Bavaria assigned the production facilities to Axel Springer Verlag , which until the 1990s produced, among other things, the Bild newspaper in Maxvorstadt. Then the area was completely redesigned and is now a residential complex. The bookstore was at Thierschstraße 11. The building is still standing today and is a music store.

literature

  • Hans Bühler, Olaf Simons: The dazzling business of Matthias Lackas. Corruption investigations in the publishing world of the Third Reich. Marteau, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-00-013343-7 .
  • Norbert Frei , Johannes Schmitz: Journalism in the Third Reich (= Beck'sche series 376). 3rd revised edition. CH Beck, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-406-45516-6 .
  • Oron J. Hale : Press in the straitjacket. 1933-1945. Droste-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1965.
  • Peter de Mendelssohn : Berlin newspaper city. People and Powers in the History of the German Press Berlin. Ullstein, Berlin 1959 (revised and expanded edition. Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin / Vienna 1982, ISBN 3-550-07496-4 ).
  • Thomas Tavernaro: The publishing house of Hitler and the NSDAP. The Franz Eher Successor GmbH. Edition Praesens, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-7069-0220-6 ( Review by Patrick Merziger. In: H-Soz-u-Kult, May 13, 2005).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hermann Gilbhard: The Thule Society , Munich 1994, p 197th
  2. ^ Paul Bruppacher: Adolf Hitler and the history of the NSDAP Part 1: 1889 to 1937 , Norderstedt 2014, p. 61.
  3. ↑ Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke: The occult roots of National Socialism , Graz 1997, p. 130.
  4. ^ Cris Whetton: Hitler's Fortune , London 2004, p. 40.