Press and Politics in the Weimar Republic

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Press and Politics in the Weimar Republic BERNHARD FULDA

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford   Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York  Bernhard Fulda 2009

The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Fulda, Bernhard. Press and politics in the Weimar Republic / Bernhard Fulda. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–19–954778–4 1. Press and politics–Germany–History–20th century. 2. Press–Germany– History–20th century. I. Title. PN5208.F85 2008 073–dc22 2008041402 Typeset by Laserwords Private Limited, Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 978–0–19–954778–4 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

For my parents


Acknowledgements When I first set out to write my Ph.D., I wanted to write a history of the economics and politics of the German press between 1910 and 1924. However, I was soon to discover the reasons for what I considered an exciting gap in the existing literature: air raids towards the end of the Second World War and newspaper archives containing tons of paper in the heart of city centres had failed to co-exist harmoniously. In fact, any historian of the German press before 1945 has to make do with a very sparse and eclectic archival source base, while at the same time facing a deluge of surviving newspaper issues. I faced two choices: either to give up the entire enterprise; or to change the research question to one that would rely less on sources from publishing houses. So I decided to widen the scope of the book, and to assess the significance of the press within the political culture of the Weimar Republic more generally. With the benefit of hindsight, I could not have asked for a more fascinating research topic. At the time, however, the happy ending of this odyssey was not always as obvious, and I owe great thanks to three historians without whom this book would not have come into existence: my doctoral supervisor, Richard J. Evans, offered constant support, displayed an unwavering interest in my research, and successfully kept me going. My undergraduate tutor, Niall Ferguson, continued over the years to provide thought-provoking and stimulating feedback on my writing, and has been very helpful in many ways. Last, but certainly not least, Adam Tooze read the entire manuscript not just once but twice: first as a Ph.D. examiner some years ago, then the expanded version as a friend and colleague. It is difficult to express in words how important his advice has been. When I say that this is certainly a much better book as a result of his criticisms and suggestions, this ought to be taken as evidence for the fact that I am getting ever closer to mastering the art of British understatement. I am also very grateful to those who, over the last few years, have read and commented on parts of this book, and who have helped form my ideas, in particular to Richard Bessel, Frank Bösch, Chris Clark, Moritz Föllmer, Norbert Frei, Karl Christian Führer, Jocasta Gardner, Dominik Geppert, Stefan Goebel, Oliver Grant, Abigail Green, Oliver Krüger, Naomi Ling, David Midgley, Gerhard Paul, Hartmut Pogge-von Strandmann, Matthew Robinson, Torsten Riotte, Corey Ross, Emma Rothschild, Sujit Sivasundaram, Andrew Zurcher, and my brothers Joachim, Andreas, and Christian. Christopher Wheeler, my editor at Oxford University Press, was everything that an author could wish for: highly informed, interested, helpful, and reliable. Working with him was both a joy and a privilege. I owe further thanks to the participants of our weekly Monday workshop in German History, who read through early drafts and helped me cut

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Acknowledgements

a lane through the maze of historical detail. From this benefited the participants of seminars at the University of Oxford, the Institute for Historical Research in London, the German Historical Institute in London, and the Deutscher Historikertag in Kiel, who provided me with further thoughtful comments and criticism. I would also like to thank the many institutions which have funded my research and often provided a very stimulating environment, in particular the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes; the Centre for History and Economics, King’s College, Cambridge; St John’s College, Cambridge; the Arts and Humanities Research Council; the Kurt Hahn Trust; and the Sir John Plumb Charitable Trust. Over the last few years, I have enjoyed the invaluable privilege of being a Research Fellow at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. It is a wonderful place for a historian, and I am deeply grateful to my colleagues and my students there. Further thanks go to Mrs Lilian Grosz and Ralph Jentsch of The Estate of George Grosz, Princeton, New Jersey, USA, for the permission to use Grosz’s great painting Stützen der Gesellschaft; to Elke Schwichtenberg and Romana Berg from the Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz; and to Walter Mühlhausen and the Stiftung Reichspräsident-Friedrich-Ebert-Gedenkstätte in Heidelberg for all his help. Finally, I could not have written this dissertation without the support of archives and their archivists. I would therefore like to thank the staff of the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz and Berlin-Lichterfelde, of the Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin-Dahlem, and of the Landesarchiv in Berlin; of the Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, then still in Bonn; Joachim Zeller and his colleagues at the Zeitungsabteilung der Staatsbibliothek in Berlin-Westhafen; Hans Bohrmann at the Zeitungsinstitut in Dortmund; and Dr Labs of the Springer Archive in Berlin. Above all, however, I am extremely grateful to Aya Soika for the unquestioning love and support she has given me over the last ten years, and to my parents, from whom I have my love of books and interest in politics. They have given me more than I shall ever be able to thank them for; this book is dedicated to them.

Contents List of Illustrations List of Figures List of Tables List of Abbreviations

xiii xiv xiv xv

Introduction 1. The Berlin Press, 1918–32

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Commercialization and consumer orientation Weltanschauung and politicization Newspaper circulation and elections Readers and content Newspaper finances Tabloids Press support and electoral behaviour Conclusion 2. Media Personalities, 1918–24 The personification of defeat The press campaign against Erzberger Erzberger on trial Climate of hate Rising from obscurity Putsch stories Creation of a media personality Conclusion 3. Competing Stories, 1924–5 Press politics and scandal-mongering The Magdeburg trial Staging Barmat: the judiciary as catalyst Scandal as a political weapon The proliferation of scandal The consequences of scandal Conclusion

15 17 21 26 29 32 38 42 45 46 50 55 60 63 65 68 72 75 76 80 89 91 96 98 103

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Contents

4. The ‘Unpolitical’ Press: Provincial Newspapers around Berlin, 1925–8 The ‘unpolitical’ Führer: rallying for Hindenburg Politics of the ‘unpolitical’ press Expropriating the princes Conclusion 5. Conquering Headlines: Violence, Sensations, and the Rise of the Nazis, 1928–30 The crisis of the parliamentary ‘system’ The rise of political violence May Day 1929: creation of scapegoats Hugenberg, Young, and the Nazis Scandal-mongering The making and breaking of parties Spinning murder stories The perception of dynamism Campaigning against the Nazis Breakthrough Conclusion 6. War of Words: The Spectre of Civil War, 1931–2 Facing an unruly press The spectre of civil war Crisis Gauging public opinion Spreading terror The proliferation of violence Press manipulations The making of the president Hindenburg’s non-partisanship Rolling back democracy Conclusion 7. Conclusion The imagination of influence The dynamics of political communication The Weimar Republic in the eyes of the beholder

107 109 117 120 126 131 132 134 136 143 146 150 152 155 159 162 166 169 170 172 174 178 180 184 187 190 195 198 200 203 203 207 211

Contents Salesmen of ideology Governing the press Consequences Notes Bibliography Index

xi 216 218 222 225 299 317


List of Illustrations 2.1 2.2 4.1 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 6.1 6.2 7.1

Anti-Erzberger caricature in Kladderadatsch, August 1919 Anti-Erzberger caricature in Kladderadatsch, March 1920 Local newspapers campaigning for Hindenburg in April 1925 Photo-collage from Mosse’s 8-Uhr-Abendblatt, 101, 2 May 1929 Press photo of barricade, May 1929 Vorwärts caricature of Communist accounts of the May riots 1929 Angriff caricature at the occasion of the anti-Young Plan campaign 1929 Angriff illustrations of Communist violence, 1929–30 Angriff caricature after Nazi election success in Saxony in June 1930 Angriff caricature of anti-Nazi press coverage, September 1930 Angriff caricature of putsch scare in liberal press, September 1930 Front page of Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe on 31 October 1931 Hindenburg election poster, spring 1932 ( Bundesarchiv) George Grosz, Pillars of Society, 1926 ( The Estate of George Grosz, Princeton/New Jersey, USA)

54 59 111 139 140 142 145 154 157 160 164 182 193 208

Unless otherwise stated, copyright of these illustrations is held by the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Zeitungsabteilung. The publisher and the author apologize for any errors or omissions in the above list. If contacted they will be pleased to rectify these at the earliest opportunity.

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List of Figures and Tables

List of Figures Fig. 1.1 Berlin elections to Reichstag, Prussian parliament, and city council, 1924–32 Fig. 1.2 Advertising and sales income of Hugenberg papers, 1925–32

25 31

List of Tables Table 1.1 Table 4.1 Table 4.2 Table 4.3

Circulation figures for the Berlin press, 1925–32 Elections to the Reich presidency, 1925 Expropriation referendum, 1926 Elections to the Reichstag, 1924–32

24 115 124 128

Abbreviations 12UB

(Neue Berliner Zeitung) Das 12-Uhr-Blatt

A

Angriff

AZ

Angermünder Zeitung und Kreisblatt

BA

Brandenburger Anzeiger

BArchK

Bundesarchiv Koblenz

BArchL

Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde

BaM

Berlin am Morgen

BBC

Berliner Börsen-Courier

BBZ

Berliner Börsen-Zeitung

BLA

Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger

BM

Berliner Morgenpost

BT

Berliner Tageblatt

BVP

Bayerische Volkspartei (Bavarian People’s Party)

BVZ

Berliner Volks-Zeitung

BZ

Brandenburger Zeitung

BZaM

BZ am Mittag

DAZ

Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung

DDP

Deutsche Demokratische Partei (German Democratic Party)

DNVP

Deutschnationale Volks-Partei (German Nationalist People’s Party)

DP

Deutsche Presse

DTgbl

Deutsche Tageblatt

DTztg

Deutsche Tageszeitung

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Abbreviations

DVP

Deutsche Volks-Partei (German People’s Party)

DZ

Deutsche Zeitung

FZ

Frankfurter Zeitung

G

Germania

GG

Geschichte und Gesellschaft

GStAPK

Geheimes Staats-Archiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, BerlinDahlem

KPD

Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Communist Party of Germany)

KrZ

Neue Preußische (Kreuz-)Zeitung

KZ

Königswusterhausener Zeitung

LAB

Landesarchiv Berlin

MM

Montag-Morgen

NA

Nachtausgabe

NbKbl

Niederbarnimer Kreisblatt und Bernauer Zeitung

NP

National-Post

NSDAP

Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers’ Party)

OGA

Oranienburger General-Anzeiger

P

Der Prignitzer

PolArchAA

Politisches Archiv Auswärtiges Amt (Foreign Office Archive, Berlin)

PZ

Prenzlauer Zeitung

RF

Rote Fahne

RM

Reichsmark

SA

Sturmabteilungen (Storm Troopers)

SPD

Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party of Germany)

T

Tempo

Abbreviations UK

Uckermärkischer Kurier

V

Vorwärts

VolksZ

Volks-Zeitung

VZ

Vossische Zeitung

WaA

Welt am Abend

Z

Zentrum (Catholic Centre party)

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Introduction What is truth? For the masses that which they continually read and hear. May some poor blighter sit around somewhere and collect facts to determine ‘the truth’—it will remain his own truth. The other, the public truth of the moment, which alone matters for effects and successes in the real world, is today a product of the Press. What the Press wills, is true. Its commanders evoke, transform, interchange truths. Three weeks of press work, and all the world has acknowledged the truth. . . . No tamer has his animals more under his power. Unleash the people as reader-mass and it will storm through the streets and hurl itself upon the target indicated, terrifying and smashing windows. A hint to the press-staff and it will become quiet and go home. (Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, vol. 2, 1922)

There was no shadow of a doubt in Oswald Spengler. The press, he proclaimed in his bestselling book, The Decline of the West, had become an overwhelming power in Western culture and was currently bringing about the end of democracy. Dictators of the press like the British press magnate Northcliffe were keeping the ‘slave-gang’ of their readers under the whip of leading articles, telegrams, and pictures. With its destructive potential, Spengler declared, the press today was an army, ‘with journalists as officers and readers as soldiers’. Like in every army, the soldier ‘obeys blindly’, oblivious of war-aims and operation plans. Kept in unqualified intellectual slavery, the modern newspaper reader was a hapless subject to the whims of those who controlled the press.¹ It is unclear how many of Spengler’s own readers actually made it to these pronouncements, which came towards the very end of a rather fat second volume. What is clear, however, is that Spengler’s belief in the power of the press was neither specifically German nor simply the transient product of a particular moment in time, namely the years immediately after the First World War. For more than two hundred years now, ever since commentators of British politics pointed to the emergence of a ‘fourth estate’, academics, politicians, and journalists have subscribed to the idea that the press (and the media more generally) wields enormous political power.² However, how this power actually translates into political influence is one of the most puzzling questions historians and media scientists have tried to address.

2

Press and Politics in the Weimar Republic

The Weimar Republic is a case in point. It was abolished by a politician, Adolf Hitler, who benefited from landslide gains at elections, yet his party press was miserably unsuccessful. At the same time, the newspaper with the largest circulation in Germany, the Berliner Morgenpost, was a product of the phenomenally successful publishing house Ullstein, a Berlin-based Jewish enterprise supporting the left-liberal Democratic Party, which—despite this support—had ceased to exist by the end of 1930. This paradox is addressed by the present study, which sets out to analyse the influence of the press on politics and political culture in Germany’s first republic. Of particular interest is the relationship between press and electoral behaviour. Historians still struggle to explain the crucial loss of legitimacy that democracy suffered, for which the Nazi electoral breakthrough in September 1930 was but one symptom. Hitler’s success at the 1930 elections is no longer explained simply by the onset of the Great Depression and its concurrent rise in unemployment. Most of the recent electoral analyses have concluded that conventional approaches to the complex electoral movements towards the end of the Republic have been insufficient. The one factor they all emphasize needs more research is local newspaper ‘climate’.³ The idea that the Nazi breakthrough could be linked to a particular press climate is not exactly new. In fact, one of the key tenets of Weimar history is that the press magnate Alfred Hugenberg helped Hitler to achieve national stature through an alliance in 1929 against the reparations plan, the Young Plan. Through the press support that Hitler received from the Hugenberg papers, many researchers explain the sudden rise of the Nazis in the early 1930s. Yet to assume that the Nazi breakthrough of 1930 was brought about ‘in Cinderella fasion by the magic touch of Hugenberg’s headlines’ raises more questions than it answers.⁴ It does not explain why Hugenberg, himself the leader of the right-wing nationalist party DNVP and radically anti-republican, failed to achieve electoral success, despite the continuous backing he received in his own papers. It is the same phenomenon we encounter in Berlin’s newspaper market, where over 50 per cent of all newspapers sold in the early 1930s originated in the Jewish publishing houses of Mosse and Ullstein, staunch supporters of political liberalism, whilst electoral support for liberal parties was on the point of vanishing. In fact, for all those who consider the Republic doomed right from its beginning, it should come as a surprise that until the very end of Weimar democracy newspapers of Jewish publishing houses were the most popular in Germany. By 1931, Ullstein publications had a weekly circulation of well over four million, making the company the giant of German publishing. Its development was the liberal success story of the 1920s; Ullstein came to be regarded as a pillar of the Weimar state like the Bauhaus, the Reichstag, and Stresemann.⁵ As it turned out, it was a crumbling pillar. Thus, the power of the press remains a questionable concept for Weimar Germany, and numerous questions about the press and its effects for the new democracy arise. What newspapers did people read? why did they read them?

Introduction

3

and what—if any—political effect did newspaper consumption have? What was the nature of political coverage in the German press of this time? What did the great majority of German contemporaries actually know about the democracy in which they were living? These are anything but easy questions to answer, not least because of the particular structure of the decentralized German newspaper market in the 1920s. There was a greater wealth of newspaper types than ever before or after. Many a small provincial town had its own newspaper with a circulation of a few hundred copies. Official party organs competed for readers with commercial mass newspapers which offered light entertainment, advertisements, and a strong regional focus. In the cities there were newspapers which only appeared on Mondays, or only in a specific district. Tabloid newspapers experienced their breakthrough in the Weimar Republic and existed alongside daily newspapers published by trade unions or the Reich Agrarian Association. Statistical handbooks and advertisers’ manuals at the time listed well over 3,000 newspapers in all of Germany during the 1920s and early 1930s.⁶ Contrary to the impression conveyed by Spengler, the press in this period was not a homogeneous collective but a colourful assortment of very different publishing enterprises. The mass media of the 1920s have recently attracted an increasing amount of scholarly work. However, historians of German mass culture have mostly chosen to concentrate on radio and film.⁷ This is surprising, because throughout the 1920s newspapers were the predominant medium of mass communication in Germany. Radio broadcasting was only beginning to take off, with 3.5 million registered listeners by 1930.⁸ Even when families of those registered listeners are taken into account, the occasional radio audience of nine or ten million was just half the figure of the total daily circulation of the German press, at around twenty million copies in the early 1930s—and, of course, newspapers tended to be read by more than one person, making the total newspaper audience much larger.⁹ Significantly, newspapers were not just bought for the political news they provided but also for the entertainment they offered. Almost all accounts of mass culture in Weimar Germany ignore the fact that newspaper reading was—at least quantitatively—the most popular spare-time activity and an important cornerstone of mass entertainment in this period. Film has attracted more scholarly attention, but even in a record year like 1929, when some 350 million cinema tickets were sold, about twenty times as many newspaper copies were consumed by readers.¹⁰ If the 1930s were to become the decade of film and radio in Germany—and even this is open to doubt—the 1920s were undoubtedly the decade of the press.¹¹ The relative lack of historical interest in the press is striking because the ascendancy of a mass press had once been high up on the academic research agenda. In 1910, at the very first conference of the German Association for Sociology, Max Weber—one of the later fathers of the Weimar constitution—delivered a paper exlusively devoted to the newspaper business. He raised

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some fundamental questions: what power relations are created by newspapers? What sort of link is there between newspapers and political parties, the business world, the numerous pressure groups influenced by, and trying to influence, public opinion? Does the increase in capital constitute an increase in the power to influence public opinion at will, or, on the contrary, are capital-intensive businesses more sensitive to fluctuations in the public’s mood since they do not want to put invested capital at risk by offending subscribers? What exactly is the influence of the final product, the newspaper?¹² Academics all over Germany took up the call: newly founded institutes for ‘Zeitungswissenschaften’ (newspaper science) sprang up in Cologne, Berlin, Leipzig, and Heidelberg, churning out doctoral theses on economic, cultural, and technical aspects of the newspaper business year after year. After 1918, public debate about the reasons for the ‘defeat’ in the ‘press struggle’ during the First World War provided a further boost to this new area of academic investigation.¹³ In fact, institution building increasingly dominated the scholarly agenda. Between 1928 and 1930 Otto Groth published his monumental four-volume work, Die Zeitung, with the explicit aim of creating a new academic discipline.¹⁴ After 1945 Groth and his colleagues Karl d’Ester and Emil Dovifat were successful in (re-)establishing newspapers and publishing more generally as a area of distinct research called ‘Publizistikwissenschaft’. Although the official English translation of this term given by German universities these days is ‘media studies’, the literal translation (‘publishing’ or ‘journalism’ science) still reflects the origins in newspaper science. But while the founding fathers of Publizistikwissenschaft all had a strong interest in the historical dimension of their research topic, the majority of their disciples located their field primarily in the social sciences rather than in the humanities.¹⁵ Apart from a few notable exceptions, the history of the German press and its political influence has therefore received relatively little attention from practitioners of media studies.¹⁶ An early pioneer of press history in Germany was Kurt Koszyk. Koszyk started his academic career in the 1950s with studies of the socialist press in Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany, and then went on to produce the first archive-based studies of the history of the German newspapers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries up to 1945.¹⁷ Taking up some of the issues raised by Max Weber in 1910, Koszyk was primarily interested in highlighting the proprietary and organizational structures of the German political press. This topic acquired increasing significance in the wake of the 1968 student unrest, when Axel Springer, the conservative owner of Germany’s largest press empire and of the tabloid Bild, became one of the main targets of left-wing criticism. It is no coincidence that the 1970s and early 1980s saw the appearance of a number of studies dealing with Alfred Hugenberg, the right-wing press baron of Weimar Germany.¹⁸ These works provided a comprehensive analysis of the organizational and financial intricacies of Hugenberg’s elaborate corporate architecture, and his role in the DNVP. However, with the exception of Wernecke’s study, none

Introduction

5

examined how Hugenberg actually employed the media resources at his disposal for his political aims. There was no engagement with the actual output of the Hugenberg press empire, the newspaper content produced, and little analysis of the more general issue of newspapers’ influence. Ironically, at a time when the consensus among media scientists was that media influence on consumers was very weak, these historical studies of Hugenberg, like Koszyk’s more general work, simply took the power of the press for granted, and implicitly assumed a direct link between newspaper proprietor and editorial policy. As an effect, the role of political editors has been reduced to that of subservient scribes. In fact, proprietorial influence over the editorial policy of a paper was a very circumstantial and often ineffective process. The private papers of Georg Bernhard, chief editor of Ullstein’s political flagship, the Vossische Zeitung, contain ample evidence of the strong disagreement of the Ullstein brothers with the politics which Bernhard propagated in their paper.¹⁹ Similarly, Theodor Wolff, chief editor of the Berliner Tageblatt, and Otto Nuschke, chief editor of the Berliner Volks-Zeitung, over ten years successfully resisted repeated attempts of their publisher, Lachmann-Mosse, to determine editorial policy, at least until December 1930.²⁰ At Hugenberg’s Scherl concern, Adolf Stein and the chief editor of the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, Friedrich Hussong, were masters of political rhetoric and polemics. Like their counterparts at the liberal papers, they were political actors in their own rights, and it seems that they had considerable influence on Hugenberg’s politics. The role of political editors has not gone completely unnoticed, thanks to Bernd Sösemann’s extensive research on Theodor Wolff.²¹ The interaction between liberal editors and politicians has also been highlighted by an excellent monograph by Modris Eksteins on the contrast between the decline of political liberalism and the apparent strength of liberal publishing houses.²² Matthias Lau has convincingly demonstrated that attempts by some of Weimar’s federal states to influence editors through official press offices were, by and large, unsuccessful.²³ Continuing on this path of enquiry, one of the aims of the present study is to highlight the role of journalists as political actors, and to assess the impact of their articles as an integral part of the Weimar political system. Press coverage often had a decisive impact on the political agenda and vocabulary of decision-makers, and helped to determine their room for manœuvre. Yet this was not a one-way relationship: journalists also reacted to political initiatives, and what they wrote depended to no small degree on what they read in other newspapers. Some historians have recently adopted a regional approach, and their studies of the local press in Munich, Leipzig, and Bielefeld have made significant contributions to our understanding of the decentralized German press.²⁴ The main focus of this literature, however, has been on structural or editorial developments which influenced the production of newspapers. They do not, therefore, provide a fully satisfactory account of the political impact of the press in the 1920s

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and early 1930s. Still, a regional focus is clearly needed if we are interested in assessing what political news coverage was available to contemporaries of Weimar Germany, and what political influence newspaper consumption might have had. This book concentrates on Berlin and its surrounding countryside. Berlin was not just the capital of the German Reich but also the capital of the Republic’s largest state, Prussia, and thereby a unique political hotspot, especially after the expansion of democratic mass franchise. At the same time, as Germany’s most important industrial city its population size was such that it could accommodate a whole range of political milieux, which were themselves large enough to sustain different mass papers. Although Berlin featured more newspapers than any other German city in this period, little has been written on the Berlin press. The only existing monograph is a popular history which dates back to 1959 and which contains a wealth of anecdotal material informed by the author’s experience as a journalist in Berlin during the 1920s.²⁵ More recently, the cultural historian Peter Fritzsche analysed Berlin newspapers as modernist texts involved in the construction of the metropolis and the perception of urban modernity around 1900. Politics, however, are noticeably absent from his otherwise very stimulating analysis.²⁶ There are two main reasons why so little has been written on the Berlin press. First, most of the archival material of the big Berlin publishing houses perished during the great fire caused by one of the last air raids on central Berlin on 3 February 1945.²⁷ Primary material relating to the production of Berlin newspapers is therefore sparse, and the few remains are scattered over a whole variety of archives in different locations. We therefore lack much valuable information relating to discussions of editorial policies, publishers’ commercial strategies, and journalistic practice. Secondly, and more importantly, the main corpus of primary material—newspapers themselves—is an unwieldy subject for analysis. Many historians have shied away from concentrating on newspaper coverage because, as Modris Eksteins explained at the time, ‘a study merely of editorial opinions will always remain, to a large extent, an exercise in précis and paraphrase’, Indeed, later studies of such-and-such an event or topic ‘in the mirror of the press’ have hardly attracted much critical attention or proven intellectually inspiring.²⁸ As there is little straightforward empirical evidence for the actual reception of newspaper content by contemporaries, most historians have avoided tackling this question altogether. The press and its political influence in the Weimar Republic, in other words, is not an easy subject to study. Yet even if one does not share Spengler’s apocalyptic vision of the press and its readers, it is difficult to deny the importance of the mass media for contemporaries’ state of informedness. For most Germans in the 1920s, newspapers constituted the only available window on politics. On the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, in 1925, Hugenberg received a letter from an old university friend, the historian Heinrich Rickert, professor in Heidelberg, who told him he often encountered Hugenberg’s name in the Frankfurter Zeitung.

Introduction

7

Unfortunately, Rickert admitted, he rarely understood the complexities of party politics: ‘After all, I cannot participate in public life, and so I remain a spectator. But although my interest is still quite lively, I am struggling to find orientation in the commotions of our time, so that I cannot even identify the intentions and plans of the various parties.’²⁹ Like Professor Rickert, most Germans did not actively participate in politics and were ‘spectators’. In Berlin, like in any other German city, most citizens would derive their knowledge on the political process and particular events through information mediated by the press. According to Leo Wegener, another of Hugenberg’s friends, this dependence on newspapers also applied to politicians.³⁰ Of course, newspapers were not the only source of information for Berliners in the 1920s. Other print media, like weekly or monthly magazines, posters, and leaflets carried information which Berliners would consume. These were accompanied by a whole range of oral sources: conversations among neighbours, in pubs at the traditional Stammtisch, on the tram, subway, and buses, as well as topics discussed at association meetings and political rallies. For a historian interested in the state of informedness of Berliners during the Weimar Republic, these communication flows are almost impossible to reconstruct.³¹ However, there are good reasons to believe that newspapers formed the basis of many of these conversations, since they permeated society as they had never done before. Many contemporary sources say that newspaperreading was a favourite pastime on buses and subways; working-class neighbours exchanged their newspapers to save money; every pub offered at least one newspaper for perusal.³² Police spy reports of workers’ conversations during the Wilhelmine period show the extent to which newspapers informed much of the talk of ordinary people.³³ Within the communication system of Berlin in the 1920s, newspapers were still the predominant medium for information on politics. While we lack sources about other communication flows, newspapers have survived in great numbers and form the core of this study. However, source analysis of newspapers is complicated, not least because of the vast amount of text which calls for some sort of structured approach.³⁴ Many communication scientists since Harold D. Lasswell have championed a quantitative approach to content analysis, based on the compilation and coding of sample texts to derive exact and verifiable results, and have denied the legitimacy of ‘reading between the lines’.³⁵ This approach has not gone unchallenged. One of the most adamant critics of quantification, Siegfried Kracauer, was himself a journalist in the Weimar Republic. He criticized the hugely complicated procedure which ignores all expertise and experience of the analyst while overemphasizing frequent but irrelevant aspects of the analysed text.³⁶ Admittedly, quantitative content analysis has made significant progress since Kracauer’s criticism, and few would now dispute the degree of sophistication which goes into the creation of coding frames and context analysis.³⁷ Yet this has not necessarily helped to make the approach more appealing to historians. In the case of the Weimar press the

8


proposition of coding a meaningful sample of newspaper texts—let alone the complete volumes from 1918 to 1933 of more than thirty Berlin and regional dailies on which this book is based—bears little relation to the archival and research realities at the present stage. This is not to say that a quantitative element in the analysis would be without value. In fact, the situation would be very different if all newspaper texts were available in digital format allowing for a variety of analyses. Being able to state with confidence the frequency with which certain terms appeared in the Berlin press, for example, would help to clarify the role of newspapers in community sensitization and agenda-setting. Arguably, most historians would be already satisfied with a simple ‘search’ function. There can be no doubt that if newspapers as a source were accessible in electronic format, we would witness a surge of historical interest in the role of the media in different periods. In fact, despite the lack of digital newspaper databases for this period, the last few years have seen an increasing engagement of historians with the emergence of a mass press and the impact this had on German society, especially during the Wilhelmine period. Rosenberger’s study of the role of the press in the origins of the First World War has demonstrated the limitations of a quantitative content analysis approach.³⁸ More convincingly, Jeffrey Verhey has made use of newspaper texts in his analysis of public opinion and the creation of the myth of the ‘spirit of 1914’.³⁹ Frank Bösch has written extensively about the nexus of democratization and the medialization of politics in the Wilhelmine Empire, analysing political scandals.⁴⁰ And the cultural historian Philipp Müller has analysed the public dramatization of crime in late Wilhelmine Berlin.⁴¹ Above all, Peter Fritzsche’s book on the role of the Berlin press in the construction of the narrated city around 1900 has been an important inspiration for my own work, because I was fascinated by his analysis and yet disagreed with some of his main findings. Fritzsche argues that in an age of urban mass literacy, the city as a place and the city as text defined each other in mutually constitutive ways: ‘The crush of people and welter of things in the modern city revised ways of reading and writing, and these representational acts, in turn, constructed a second-hand metropolis which gave a narrative to the concrete one and choreographed its encounters.’⁴² Like Fritzsche, the present study emphasizes the importance of mass-media texts and images for the perception and sense of reality of contemporaries. Ranke’s dictum that historians should find out ‘wie es eigentlich gewesen’ should not be understood simply as a call to establish what ‘really’ or ‘actually’ happened, but to reconstruct the specific traits of past events, how it ‘essentially’ was. And this ought to include an attempt at finding out about ‘wie es anscheinend gewesen’—the different appearances of events to contemporaries which influenced their perceptions and convictions. Media scientists have found that the way that information is communicated has fundamental effects on reception and subsequent constructions of meaning and significance. This is why an analysis

Introduction

9

of the mass media should be a indispensable element of any historical study. Yet, unlike Fritzsche, I find it difficult to blind out the significance of politics, especially when dealing with the daily press. Fritzsche’s focus on the pre-war period ignores the fact that, quantitatively, the apogee of metropolitan texts was reached only in the late 1920s when tabloids added an additional one million newspaper copies to Berlin’s daily street life. Yet if he had chosen to focus on 1930 rather than 1900 he would have had to conclude that there was not one secondhand metropolis but many, and not one narrative but many conflicting ones. Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe, the Communist Welt am Abend, and Mosse’s liberal 8-Uhr-Abendblatt did not add up to one big metropolitan collage, but constituted hostile players in an urban battle of political opinion-shaping. My book aims to show that the fragmentation of the press into competing and often mutually hostile communication networks was a key feature of Weimar Germany’s political culture, and that this was crucial in sustaining and intensifying the ideological politics of this period. My two way argument, pace Fritzsche, is that reading and writing about politics invited as well as contained individuals’ movements through the abstract world of German politics.⁴³ In terms of media effects, the present study draws on the theories and findings of media studies over the last two decades.⁴⁴ One particularly significant phenomenon re-emerges throughout the period covered: individuals believed that other contemporaries were much more strongly influenced by the media than they were themselves. This impression was one created by the media itself as well as by media experts, intellectuals, and politicians, often through generalizing statements about ‘public opinion’ or the ‘public’. Oswald Spengler was not the only one who shared this belief. ‘That which is reported to the reader in black and white as a factual occurrence [geschehene Tatsache], he mostly believes’, was a typical declaration of one newspaper scientist.⁴⁵ Weimar contemporaries loved to refer to Napoleon who had allegedly described the press as one of Europe’s ‘great powers’.⁴⁶ Napoleon’s alleged utterance was used for the title of a sensationalist book—Grossmacht Presse. Enthüllungen für Zeitungsgläubige; Forderungen für Männer— which aimed to expose the true power behind national and international politics. These days, the author proclaimed, the press was not just a ‘great power’ as Napoleon had it, but a ‘world power’: ‘Greater than the influence of priests and scholars is the influence of journalists.’⁴⁷ The assumption that others were helpless subjects to the persuasive and manipulative powers of the mass media induced many decision-makers to initiate some action; action which was therefore motivated primarily through media coverage.⁴⁸ This ‘third person effect’ emphasizes that it is not necessarily the actual effects of media coverage that matter, but the question if, and how many, people believe that the media exercises a powerful influence.⁴⁹ Politicians in particular were prone to this belief: they were inexperienced in the management of public relations in the new age of mass democracy and mass media, as well as being convinced of the omnipotence of the press. The following chapters will offer ample evidence for

10


politicians’ close interaction with the press, and their responses and reactions to press coverage. I have taken what could be labelled a commonsensical case-study approach to the selection of texts which mostly come from newspapers that appeared at least six times a week. For example, for the analysis of the press campaign against Matthias Erzberger, all selected newspapers were read for the period October 1918 to April 1920, and June to September 1921. One of the themes in the campaign against Erzberger, the alleged ‘backstabbing’ of the undefeated German army in 1918, resurfaces in the analysis of the defamation trial involving Reich President Ebert in December 1924, for which newspapers were read for the two weeks of the court proceedings, plus the two weeks immediately before and after the trial. Following hot on the heels of the Ebert trial, the Barmat scandal of early 1925 was a more lengthy affair covered from the first press mentioning of the Barmat concern in November 1924 to Hindenburg’s election as Reich President in April 1925. The Barmats reappeared in the press at the occasion of the conclusion of the parliamentary investigating committee in October 1925, at the beginning of the Barmat trial in January 1927, and at its end in March 1928. For these instances, newspapers were read for up to fourteen days. Every time a period was covered, any reference to any one of the analysed past events, issues, or personalities was also registered, a cumulative process with a steep learning curve and an exploding number of photocopies on file. For some of the events covered by this book, contemporary newspaper clipping collections proved a useful indicator for the topicality of an issue.⁵⁰ However, for information on the distribution of these newspaper texts and their actual impact on the average readers, we will mostly rely on circumstantial evidence drawn from a whole range of other written sources. Part of the Scherl publishing archive has survived in the collection of Hugenberg’s papers in the Bundesarchiv Koblenz; the archive of the Axel-Springer-Verlag in Berlin accommodates the few remains of the Ullstein archive. Quite a lot of pressrelated material has been found in the private papers of editors and politicians kept in the Bundesarchiv in Berlin and Koblenz. For further information on journalists’ and publishers’ concerns, the relevant issues of the journals Deutsche Presse and Zeitungs-Verlag have been consulted. Other sources include published diaries and governmental files, as well as parliamentary minutes. Chapter 1 benefited particularly from the surviving material on the organization of the KPD, the Communist party, especially its press and propaganda files in the Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR (SAPMO), held in the Bundesarchiv Berlin Lichterfelde; the Prussian Ministry of Justice files and those of the Berlin General State Prosecution were very useful for Chapter 3; similarly, the Reich Ministry of the Interior and the Reich Chancellory files yielded important contextual evidence for Chapter 6. My analysis of the impact of Berlin papers on politics and political culture in this period moves on several levels, both chronologically and conceptually. The

Introduction

11

first chapter describes the structure of the Berlin press, highlights the importance of politicization and popularization for newspapers, and analyses the relationship between newspaper circulation and electoral results. This study is the first to provide a survey of circulation developments, and attempts to point out the strengths and limits of a quantitative approach to political culture. At the same time, the chapter emphasizes the fragmented nature of the Berlin newspaper market, in which, for example, consumers of the Communist Rote Fahne would be confronted with a completely different version of ‘news’ than were readers of the reactionary Neue Preussische (Kreuz-)Zeitung. These themes are then developed in the following chapters, which try to reconstruct—through different case studies—the actual influence the press had on voters and on the actions of political decision-makers at certain points. For much of this period, politicians themselves mostly read elite political papers. The first chapter shows that these elite papers had relatively little impact on the voting population. But as the second and third chapters demonstrate, political coverage in these broadsheets could have a decisive impact on the nature of parliamentary conflict and repeatedly determined the terms of politcal debate. Who was a ‘very important person’ in post-war Germany? The abdication of William II left the German media without its most popular political celebrity. This void was filled by the press through the creation of scapegoats and the construction of new political heroes. The second chapter studies the right-wing hate-campaign against one prominent member of the new regime, Matthias Erzberger, and the rise to stardom of a political fringe figure, Adolf Hitler between 1922 and 1924. What did contemporaries know about the politicians in the new democracy? How were politicians visualized and dramatized in the press, and to what extent did this inform contemporaries’ political choices? The third chapter focuses on the interdependence of press, judiciary, and legislature, and sets out to demonstrate the crucial role of small partisan broadsheets in Weimar’s political process. It is based on two case studies; the defamation trial initiated by Reich President Ebert in December 1924; and the Barmat scandal of spring 1925. The Ebert trial enabled nationalist journalists to portray the Reich president as a traitor who carried responsibility for the stab-in-the-back in 1918. The scandal-mongering against Jewish businessmen, the Barmat brothers, resulted in the collapse of their consortium, the arrest and death of a Reich minister, and a widespread perception of endemic corruption in the new democratic system. On another level, the book sets out to clarify the concept of media landscapes and communication networks, by looking at the effects of regionality in the Weimar press, which is studied in Chapter 4. The decentralized, fragmented nature of the German newspaper market meant that the great majority of contemporaries derived political information from a local paper. This chapter analyses provincial press coverage of the presidential election campaign in 1925, and the referendum calling for the expropriation of the princes in 1926. It shows that even in self-professed ‘unpolitical’ newspapers catering to a local audience,

12


ideological news coverage was the norm. At the same time, it demonstrates that overt press support for particular candidates or parties did not have a significant electoral effect. Only where alternative sources of information, like a competing newspaper of a different political orientation, did not exist could the press excert a noticeable electoral impact. Chapter 5 then deals with Berlin’s mass press, particularly with the tabloid press which experienced its breakthrough in Germany in the 1920s. By 1930, mass and tabloid newspapers held a marketshare of over eighty per cent in Berlin. This chapter highlights the change in tone in political coverage after the summer of 1928, and it analyses the media image of the two radical parties, the KPD and NSDAP, before the crucial Reichstag election of September 1930. Particular emphasis is given to the depiction of violence, the construction of a media reality through press photography, and the use of cartoons to carry political messages in Berlin’s mass newspapers. The chapter presents new evidence to explain the Nazi breakthrough in 1930, not with the alliance between Hugenberg and Hitler in 1929 but with the repeated splits within Hugenberg’s Nationalist Party, which happened in full view of the newspaper-reading public. The final chapter studies the intensive news coverage of political violence in the last two years of the Weimar Republic, and examines the failure of government press management. Even at this point, the Nazi press was unsuccessful in attracting a wider readership. So why did voters choose to support the Nazis? The chapter argues that the economic crisis as such was insufficient in mobilizing voters to vote for the NSDAP. Rather, press presentation of increasing Communist violence and the perceived threat of civil war, together with the media image of an indecisive government, turned the Nazis into an attractive choice for voters desperate for decisive action. July 1932 was just the climax of a long period of hostile press coverage with which Weimar democracy was faced, and which led to a political climate favourable to all anti-system parties. The end of democracy was not brought about by the press single-handedly, as Oswald Spengler prophesied in his Decline of the West. But, ultimately, the dysfunctional relationship between press and politics which originated in the revolutionary establishment of the Weimar Republic played a crucial role in undermining the legitimacy of Germany’s first parliamentary democracy.

1 The Berlin Press, 1918–32 Hugenberg servant, Mosse slave, Ullstein vermin From Deutsche Presse, 20, 22 May 1926: ‘Kollegiales’

For much of the nineteenth century, German newspapers had been small, distinctively elitist, political enterprises with a limited public. They started prospering only when they were discovered as viable business enterprises, a development triggered by the abolition of a prohibitive government tax on the press in 1874. Coupled with innovations in printing technology, this resulted in a rapid and continuous growth in newspaper titles and total circulation until the 1920s.¹ This growth was primarily driven by a distinctively new concept of commercial newspaper, the Generalanzeiger, which emerged in the 1880s.² Generalanzeiger were newspapers that had an extensive advertisement section and where advertising income had replaced sales income as the main source of funding. By lowering prices, publishers reached a vast literate working-class audience formerly excluded from newspaper reading. Between 1885 and 1900 newspapers became omnipresent factors of everyday life, with almost every other citizen buying a newspaper, compared to one in nine in 1850.³ Newspaper publishers now had to cater to a mass audience. At the same time, the increasing dependence on advertisements also limited a paper’s geographical distribution: most advertisers ran local businesses and were predominantly interested in attracting readers from the close vicinity.⁴ Hence, the growth of the German press had a strongly regionalized nature, with even the smallest town having its own newspaper. Between 1881 and 1932 the number of newspaper titles in Germany increased from around 2,400 to over 4,700, more than in Britain and France put together.⁵ But there was not one German newspaper with a truly national circulation, or even with a circulation over a million copies. In 1913, the average circulation of a German paper was just under 5,700 copies.⁶ Still, newspaper circulation in this period reached unprecedented heights. The First World War further boosted demand for news and generally increased newspaper circulation.⁷ This increase was then reduced by inflation, but nevertheless the 1920s saw considerably higher distribution figures than in the pre-war period. Circulation figures for the whole German press are notoriously difficult to construct, as publishers rarely published print-runs, and, if they did,

14


often inflated circulation figures to attract potential advertisers. Contemporary estimates of at least 25 million for 1932 were probably overly optimistic.⁸ Based on the first reliable figures published for 1934, it seems reasonable to put the total print-run of the German press in the late 1920s at around 20 million copies.⁹ The mixture of a mass readership in a relatively clearly defined local context was characteristic of Berlin. Already before 1914, three publishing houses had established themselves firmly in the Berlin newspaper market: Mosse, Ullstein, and Scherl.¹⁰ Their flagship papers excelled at combining vast advertisement sections, low sale prices, and a huge circulation. By 1914 these three companies had developed into Germany’s biggest publishing empires, covering a great range of printable products. Once it was possible to print photos of great quality, weekly illustrated magazines had become hugely popular and were an important source of advertisement income; Scherl’s Die Woche and Ullstein’s Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung sold all over the country.¹¹ Their dailies, however, lacked a similar nation-wide circulation. Although Mosse’s Berliner Tageblatt, Ullstein’s Berliner Morgenpost, and Scherl’s Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger had the highest circulation of all German newspapers, sales centred on Berlin. Dependent on local advertisements and with a strong emphasis on local news coverage, the newspapers were targeted at Berliners and held little interest to people outside Berlin. While they dominated the Berlin newspaper market with a combined total circulation of nearly a million copies each day, they hardly ever found their way west of the River Elbe.¹² Despite the powerful position of big publishing firms, Berlin’s newspaper market also reflected the decentralized geographical fragmentation of the German press. Apart from the big dailies, Berlin featured about thirty daily district papers. These were small papers with a distribution limited to one or several of the twenty districts which formed Greater-Berlin after the communal reform of 1920. In their emphasis on local district news and local advertisements, district papers were quite similar to the average small-town Generalanzeiger. A third of them had a circulation of over 10,000; the biggest, the Spandauer Zeitung printed over 27,000 copies a day; one of the smallest, the Karlshorster Lokal-Anzeiger ran at 2,500.¹³ Berlin was the German press capital not just because it accommodated Germany’s three biggest publishing houses but also because of the existence of a greater number of political newspapers than in any other city. This, again, was a consequence of long-term developments in the growth of the press in Germany. German newspapers had a long tradition of adhering to a political cause. The revolution of 1848 had resulted in a multitude of newspaper foundations with a clearly defined political agenda. It was not just a quip that ‘newspapers found parties’: as a platform for a particular political line they soon served as focal points for political movements.¹⁴ In the second half of the nineteenth century, they often developed into official party organs. Thus, the Kölnische Zeitung and the Frankfurter Zeitung stood for the bourgeois Liberals; the Neue Preußische Kreuz-Zeitung and Die Post were semi-official organs of the Conservatives, as were

The Berlin Press, 1918–32

15

the Kölnische Volkszeitung and Germania for the Catholic Centre party. Even if these papers were rarely as closely a part of the official party apparatus as was the case in the Social Democratic Vorwärts, they were often used for party-political objectives, sometimes labelled ‘Gesinnungspresse’.¹⁵ Half of all papers in 1913 were openly committed to some political conviction.¹⁶ With both the Reichstag and the Prussian Landtag sitting in Berlin, the city became the focal point of German politics after 1871, and an increasing number of partisan papers were published in Berlin. Elite political papers had traditionally been concerned primarily with high politics. Based on sales revenue, their high subscription prices prevented a high circulation. Advertisements, local news, and entertainment—in short, everything that effectively made newspapers popular—were frowned upon. Many political commentators prior to the First World War dismissed the emerging Generalanzeiger press as ‘unpolitical’.¹⁷ However, although local papers and Generalanzeiger often avoided overt political commentary in order not to deter a significant part of their readership, they were by no means apolitical: most tended to be on official-conservative bourgeois lines, supportive of the monarchy and hostile to Social Democracy. The same was true of the majority of other papers running under the official banner of being parteilos or not stating any political stance at all. Before 1918 this applied to fifty per cent of all papers.¹⁸ The Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger was a prime example for this patriotic—‘national’—stance on politics, which repeatedly indulged in radical and polemic political campaigning.¹⁹ Thus, it was not the existence or lack of politics in the papers but the different motivation behind the existence of the two newspaper types that distinguished Generalanzeiger from overtly political papers: whereas the former were primarily conceived as business enterprises aiming at consumer satisfaction and profit maximization, the latter were perceived as an elementary part of the political struggle, as political mouthpieces with an ‘idealist’ attitude to the economics of the newspaper business.²⁰ The advertisement section thus became the dividing line between Generalanzeiger and Gesinnungspresse.²¹ But increasingly, especially after the First World War, this line became blurred, and nowhere more so than in Berlin. On the one hand, the 1920s experienced the breakthrough of a consumeroriented press, while seeing at the same time an increase in the politicization of newspapers. These two trends, sometimes competing, sometimes converging, shaped all newspapers in this period. C O M M E RC I A L I Z AT I O N A N D C O N S U M E R O R I E N TAT I O N Since the beginning of the twentieth century, newspapers had realized the need to provide the readership with updated information. For this and for economic reasons—principally, in order to work their printing presses to capacity—many

16


newspapers came up with a second daily edition in Berlin, in most cases adding an evening edition to the morning edition.²² The whole economic concept lay in the calculation that an extra edition was possible with little concurrent increase in overheads: the editorial staff was rarely augmented for the extra edition. The pressure to produce larger quantities of text with limited human resources resulted in an increasing reliance on syndicated columns from press agencies and Korrespondenzen.²³ But it was not just the increase in frequency that expanded the scope of metropolitan papers. Also, the intensification of competition and the ever-increasing demand for entertainment meant that newspapers had to appeal to particular target groups in the reading audience, particularly women. They did this by introducing weekly or, if they could afford to, daily, supplements like the ‘Hauswirtschaftliche Plauderei’ in Ullstein’s Berliner Morgenpost, alongside supplements focusing on youth, house and garden, science and technology, travel, and daily sections on sports, entertainment such as film and theatre reviews, radio programmes, music, and so on. The war and its aftermath accelerated the introduction of distinctly modern features into the German media. Tabloids were one example.²⁴ Traditionally, sales of newspapers in Germany had exclusively relied on weekly or monthly subscriptions and home delivery. Tabloids, however, were primarily distributed through street sales. The first daily ‘Boulevardzeitung’, Ullstein’s BZ am Mittag, had already been successfully launched in 1904. Other Berlin publishers soon realized the advertisment value of selling a limited number of their subscription dailies through their own street vendors, but despite the unusually great success of BZ am Mittag they shied back from publishing a proper ‘Strassenverkaufszeitung’ themselves. The main reason for this reluctance was the commercial challenge of this particular form of retailing. Sales figures could vary wildly, with increases of more than 200 per cent in events of great sensation, and—more often—decreases of more than fifty per cent on quiet and rainy days.²⁵ The conflict between street vendors and publishers about the price for returned copies added further complexity to the tabloid business.²⁶ Without a firm subscription basis, a tabloid paper had to acquire its readership every day anew, and thus relied heavily on attractive headlines and a certain amount of sensationalism. Not surprisingly, this sensationalism encountered the supercilious disdain of many bourgeois contemporaries. ‘Certain newspapers in the big city’, criticized one observer, ‘cultivate sensation as a genre and thereby paint a picture of life that does not correspond with reality.’²⁷ The outbreak of war in 1914 changed the situation dramatically. Readers did not want to have to wait to find out about the latest developments. Readers everywhere developed an insatiable demand for the latest ‘news’, and publishers accommodated this demand with a multitude of high-circulation special editions sold exclusively on the street. At a time of falling advertisement income, sales income played an increasingly important role. Bold headlines, pictures, boxes, and bars changed the layout even of traditional subscription newspapers, which


17

now sold well over ten per cent of their circulation on the street.²⁸ War did not just result in a politicization of sensations, it also sensationalized politics. Politicians, who had previously deplored the profit-orientation of allegedly non-political, sensation-mongering newspapers, slowly began to change their views. Even Social Democrats recognized the need for a certain amount of sensationalism to sell politics. As Otto Braun, later to become the first Social Democratic prime minister of Prussia, pointed out at the 1917 party conference: We like talking among ourselves condescendingly of the need for sensation of the great masses. But let us be honest: every human being has the need for a bit of sensation. The more eventful the time, the more this need becomes apparent, and the daily press which completely ignores this human weakness would soon appear without a reading public, because nobody goes to the newsvendor to buy sleeping pills.²⁹

After the war, the number of Berlin tabloids multiplied: in 1919, some editors of the 8-Uhr-Abendblatt decided to start up another tabloid, to compete with Ullstein’s BZ am Mittag, called Neue Berliner Zeitung which soon became popular under its trading name Das 12-Uhr-Blatt. The newly founded Communist paper, Die Rote Fahne, found its tabloid equivalent in Die Welt am Abend, a socialist evening paper founded in 1922, which was bought up by Willi Münzenberg in 1925 and turned into Berlin’s most popular Communist newspaper. In 1922, Hugenberg too established an evening tabloid edition, Die Nachtausgabe, of his political broadsheet, Tag. These tabloids inundated Berlin’s streets and resulted in a cut-throat competition for publication times.³⁰ Thus, during the Weimar Republic Berlin featured a wealth of newspapers unrivalled by any other city. In 1925, there were thirty different daily newspapers in Berlin, plus another thirty to forty daily district newspapers.³¹ Counting all dailies, including morning and evening editions as well as the district papers, Berlin in 1925 was already faced with an enormous three million newspaper copies per day. With a potential readership of three million adults, Berlin at that time indeed had the ‘most insatiable newspaper readers in the world’.³² One contemporary commentary helps to illustrate the impression created by this ‘spectacle of the unprecedented development’ of the Berlin press: Each Berlin hour throws millions of newspaper pages onto the streets, into houses, into the administration, into the directors’ offices of banks, into branch offices, into factory offices, into taverns and into the theatre. They flood public transport . . . they drown the parks and they are being transported by newspaper planes beyond mountains, forests and seas: politics, economics, traffic, technology, stock market, sport, art fill and shake the air . . . each hour with loud and novel news, which the press is giving speedy wings.³³

WELTANSCHAUUNG A N D P O L I T I C I Z AT I O N The impression here described is that the city was covered by a tightly knit network of newspapers providing an abundance of information. However, this

18


suggests a homogeneity of the press and an availability of information which stood in stark contrast to the reality of Berlin’s heterogeneous media landscape. Communication flows in 1920s Berlin were complex and heavily fragmented. If a Berliner wanted news on a particular subject, the information he received depended on the kind of communication network in which he moved. In Berlin during the Weimar Republic the free exchange of information was severely restricted by an increasing political polarization of society. Readers of the Communist newspaper Rote Fahne and those of the reactionary Neue Preussische Kreuz-Zeitung would move in completely different worlds. Here, as in other overtly political papers, the effects of political polarization on the paper’s information policy were fundamental. There was hardly any political topic where coverage of the two papers would provide the reader with even similar information: news was reported highly selectively; stories were given a strong slant and edited to accord with the papers’ different political outlooks.³⁴ Arthur Koestler, foreign editor of Ullstein’s tabloid B.Z. am Mittag, recalled in his memoirs that the main determinant of German journalism’s approach to politics was the political world-view as propagated by the individual paper: [German journalism’s] starting point was the correspondent’s Weltanschauung, and the political philosophy of the paper for which he worked. His job was not to report the news and facts . . . but to use facts as pretexts for venting his opinions and passing oracular judgments. ‘Facts’, a famous German editor said, ‘are not fit for the reader when served raw; they had to be cooked, chewed and presented in the correspondent’s saliva.’³⁵

Fed on this kind of diet, Koestler concluded, the German reading public’s ‘approach to reality was distorted by Weltanschauung’.³⁶ According to Koestler’s colleague, Georg Bernhard, the chief editor of Ullstein’s prestigious Vossische Zeitung, there was nothing wrong with this approach to journalism. The primary purpose of the press was not to provide information but ‘views’, he explained in a speech in 1924: ‘[The newspaper] wishes to bring order into things which the reader sees before and around himself every day; it wishes to bring the events in the world to the attention of the reader from a definite point of view.’³⁷ Another editor even claimed that newspapers were forced to be subjective: ‘The demand of the masses for guidance . . . from their think-organ [‘ihr Denkorgan’, i.e. their paper] is so strong that today’s newspapers can no longer expect of their readers to put up with simple news and naked truths.’³⁸ The Weltanschauungs-basis of journalism in the Weimar Republic had its roots in the politicized tradition of the German press. The First World War further intensified the politicization of German society. While the SPD split over the question of support for the war, resulting in a division of the working class, war aims and a fear of continuing democraticization led to a rift in the conservative camp. Mounting domestic political tensions about strategy and war aims were mirrored in an increasingly polarized press. The Social Democratic Vorwärts bore the brunt of internal party strife, which ultimately resulted in the imposition of


19

a new team of editors by the party executive committee in November 1916.³⁹ At the same time, the Pan-German intention to oust Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg resulted in a violent and eventually successful campaign by Hugenberg’s newly acquired Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger against the government.⁴⁰ But it was not just the partisan spirit that rose during the war. The war also increased the awareness of the importance of public opinion, and government intervention in press affairs increased.⁴¹ The initial political unity at the outbreak of war, the ‘Burgfrieden’, was kept up artificially in the press by a ‘state of siege on truth’. Most editors became used to interpretative reporting and the construction of a propagandistic reality that had little resemblance to events on the ground, a fact satirized in Karl Kraus’s epic play Die letzten Tage der Menschheit.⁴² In doing so, editors felt they were contributing to the national struggle.⁴³ Right-wing observers in particular came to explain the revolution and thus the outcome of the war with the superiority of enemy propaganda, among other factors.⁴⁴ The end of the war and the revolution of 1918 left German society deeply polarized. The majority of political parties which had found a modus vivendi with monarchical rule were overtaken by events, and had to redefine their position in the changed political constellation of the Weimar Republic.⁴⁵ Like the political parties, most newspapers had had to reconsider their politics, and contemporaries would recognize general or party-political tendencies in almost every paper.⁴⁶ In fact, newspaper directories listed the political stance of each paper as provided by the publisher among other information relevant for potential advertisers.⁴⁷ Like all of Hugenberg’s papers, the majority of newspapers was unsympathetic to the concept of a republican democracy, and most overtly political papers started on a political crusade that was to last for the lifetime of the Weimar Republic.⁴⁸ Revolution and democracy meant that the mobilization of the public became top priority on any political agenda. It was no coincidence that the Spartakus uprising in January 1919 started with the occupation of the Berlin press district. Some of the most widely circulated images of the uprising showed armed revolutionaries posing behind barricades made of giant rolls of newspaper.⁴⁹ Contemporaries were convinced that the press constituted a crucial factor in the democratic political process; newspapers were destined to ‘lead the masses’.⁵⁰ At the root of this conviction lay a crude, linear perception of newspaper reception. Georg Bernhard was fully convinced that a German viewed his favourite newspaper ‘not merely [as] a source of news information, but also [as] an organ of instruction’.⁵¹ The partisan approach to politics culminated on election days, when almost all newspapers would explicitly encourage their readers to vote for a particular political grouping. Not only did editors think that they could directly influence the masses, they also felt themselves to be participants in the political struggle of opposing Weltanschauungen. When in 1927 the Berliner Volks-Zeitung, Mosse’s left-liberal paper aimed at a working-class audience, celebrated its seventy-fifth birthday, it declared it had always been ‘a paper devoted to battling the forces of darkness’.⁵²

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Its chief editor was Otto Nuschke, one of the leaders of the German Democratic Party (DDP) in the Prussian parliament. In fact, a great number of editors of political papers were members of either the Reichstag or the Prussian Landtag: in 1924, thirteen per cent of the Reichstag’s deputies were publicists by profession.⁵³ The line between editor and politician was never more blurred than during the Weimar Republic. Theodor Wolff, chief editor of Mosse’s Berliner Tageblatt and most prominent voice of German liberalism, was a founding member of the leftliberal DDP; and Georg Bernhard, head of the Vossische Zeitung, was one of the party’s Reichstag deputies.⁵⁴ Joseph Goebbels’s political career before September 1930 was based primarily on his tabloid, Der Angriff. Like Goebbels, many socialists had once started in journalism. Most prominent Social Democracts had been editors of party newspapers for some years before reaching the republic’s highest offices, like Carl Severing, Rudolf Hilferding, Kurt Eisner, Hermann Müller, Paul Löbe, to name just a few. This blurring between politics and journalism resulted in a distinctively aggressive press. Attacks on individual politicians or representatives of the ‘system’ were common.⁵⁵ If a correction was not enforced and no sympathetic paper came to the support of the attacked, the offending paper triumphantly declared the veracity of its allegations.⁵⁶ These could then be taken up by other journalists as established ‘facts’. This happened frequently, because articles written in other newspapers constituted an important source of material.⁵⁷ In fact, editors were avid newspaper readers: a typical editorial office would have subscribed to over a hundred different papers covering the whole range of political world-views.⁵⁸ In Berlin, the biggest single delivery in the daily distribution of the Social Democratic organ, Vorwärts, went into the Jerusalemerstrasse, the heart of the newspaper district.⁵⁹ Articles from papers of a similar political leaning would often be reprinted in excerpts; even articles by a political opponent would sometimes be reprinted, if they provided information which could not be found anywhere else and if this suited the political objective of the editor. Thus articles of the Communist Rote Fahne critical of the SPD were often quoted extensively in DNVP-organs, and vice versa. All political journalists were acutely aware of this multiplier effect and struggled to confront in their own articles each hostile statement in the various papers. In a city with a newspaper-density like Berlin this made for a very intensive preoccupation with the writings of other journalists. The present-day reader of 1920s newspapers is struck by the obvious inter-paper warfare and the system of self-reference: media coverage itself was an important focus of political news reporting. It was usual to attack other papers’ news policy, especially the selection of information conveyed. The amount of quotations from other newspapers and references to particular articles is a distinctive feature of the German press in this period.⁶⁰ The political self-understanding of editors determined the peculiar quality of news reporting, particularly in overtly political papers. Some of the most striking features of Berlin newspapers in this period are the lack of differentiation


21

between news and editorials, the amount of unverified and partisan information, and the deliberate holding back of particular news and information. Despite the abundance of newspapers in Berlin, it would therefore be wrong to assume that there was one general public where each individual was equally well informed through the mass media. Weltanschauung journalism, political polarization, and the fragmentation of the newspaper market resulted in a multitude of differentiated communication flows. In Berlin, readers of the Catholic Centre party’s newspaper, Germania, formed a different communication network from the readers of the Social Democratic Party organ, Vorwärts, which again carried different information from the Communist Rote Fahne or Hugenberg’s Tag: there were several distinct reading publics. The fragmentation of the print media into competing and often mutually hostile communication networks was a crucial feature of Weimar Germany’s political culture. N EW S PA PE R C I RC U L AT I O N A N D E L E C T I O N S Due to the fragmentation of the German newspaper market there were quite a lot of newspapers that could be considered important by political decision-makers. In 1924, the Auswärtige Amt drew up a list of the most important German dailies and their party-affiliations and arrived at a total of sixty-six.⁶¹ More than a third of these were Berlin papers. The Berlin titles were more or less the same ones that the State Commissioner for Public Order had drawn up in 1920 when providing the government with a list of twenty-two Berlin papers and their estimated circulation figures.⁶² In 1922, when the Reich chancellor asked his civil servants for the circulation figures of the most important Berlin dailies, the list included fifteen titles.⁶³ These lists show two things: a continuous consensus on which were ‘important’ papers; and a widespread ignorance concerning their distribution. Contemporaries hardly ever knew circulation figures. Apart from Ullstein, which started publishing quarterly circulation figures in 1926, most publishers kept this information secret. Even when submitting information relevant for advertisers in the various newspaper advertising handbooks, circulation figures were the exception rather than the norm.⁶⁴ Only in 1933 were compulsory statistical reports imposed on publishers; the subsequent ‘drop’ in circulation figures had more to do with previous exaggerations than with the decreasing attractiveness of gleichgeschaltet newspapers.⁶⁵ For contemporaries it was thus very difficult to assess the impact of any given newspaper, and for the most part circulation was overestimated. The list the Reich chancellor received in 1922 lacked data for five of the fifteen titles—among them the Social Democratic Vorwärts, the Communist Rote Fahne, and the Germania of the Catholic Centre party. This absence of exact circulation figures, coupled with the remarkable growth of newspaper titles and circulation over the preceding decades, furthered contemporaries’ vague and rather subjective impression of the political power of the press.

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One reason for the secrecy about circulation figures was business interests or, more specifically, advertisement prices.⁶⁶ Even for political papers, advertising income had become a significant and stable source of revenue. While falling circulation figures led directly to decreasing sales income, advertisement prices would not have to be lowered if the fact of decreasing circulation could be kept from advertisers. The Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (DAZ ) was a case in point. In 1922 the industrialist Hugo Stinnes merged the newly bought Tägliche Rundschau with the DAZ, which he had taken over in 1920 to secure industrialist influence.⁶⁷ At the time of the merger the two papers had had a circulation of 40,000 and 32,000 respectively, according to information of the Reich chancellery.⁶⁸ Stinnes invested in the new DAZ, and for a short while the newspaper prospered.⁶⁹ For 1925, one advertiser’s press catalogue gave a circulation of 79,000 for the DAZ —just over the combined total of the two papers in 1922.⁷⁰ For 1926, the catalogue gave the information ‘circa 60,000’.⁷¹ In fact, this was a rather optimistic account of the paper’s print-run: by this time circulation had already fallen to only a little over 50,000, and was continuing to decrease rapidly.⁷² By 1930, the newspaper had continued to decline, was making heavy losses, and was running at 31,500 copies, according to the private papers of the then chief editor, Fritz Klein.⁷³ In various advertisement catalogues, however, the DAZ claimed it had a circulation of 63,000.⁷⁴ Apparently, the publisher had just added up the two daily editions, a common practice prior to 1933.⁷⁵ However, unlike the circulation figures, the catalogues’ entries for advertising prices for the various papers were real. Significantly, advertising prices for the DAZ increased considerably between 1925 and 1930, despite the fact that the paper was down almost 60 per cent from its previous level.⁷⁶ It paid to inflate circulation figures: total advertising revenue of the DAZ in 1930 was about RM 1.1 million, compared to RM 960,000 of Hugenberg’s Tag, which ran at over 70,000 copies per day.⁷⁷ For some publishing houses, like Ullstein or Scherl, we have relatively exact circulation data, at least for the post-inflationary period; for others, we depend on chance findings in editors’ private papers, or on internal party documents as in the case of the Communist Rote Fahne. For some, advertisement catalogues are the only source, which, despite all inaccuracies, give at least some indication as to a paper’s distribution, since the figures given can be seen as the upper limit, and will rarely have been exaggerated by more than 30 per cent.⁷⁸ When piecing this puzzle together, the overall structure of the Berlin press presents an interesting picture. In 1925, there were three distinct types of newspaper: elite political papers, with a total circulation of about 600,000; Berlin’s mass subscription papers, with a run of nearly a million copies; and tabloids, with a total of around 350,000. Until 1930 total circulation grew by over 30 per cent—but this growth was driven almost exclusively by the explosion of tabloids, which nearly tripled between 1925 and 1930. In the same period the circulation of elite political newspapers fell by some 20 per cent. The contrast becomes even


23

stronger when looking at the figures for 1932: as a result of the Great Depression total circulation had declined to a level just over that of 1928; elite political papers, however, despite the increasing politicization of society, had fallen by more than 35 per cent from the figure for 1925. As Table 1.1 reveals, the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung was not the only political paper to have a relatively low and decreasing circulation between 1925 and 1932. In fact, many of the most prominent political newspapers, like the Social Democratic Vorwärts or the Communist Rote Fahne, had relatively small circulation figures: in 1929, Vorwärts ran at around 75,000 copies per edition; the Rote Fahne even less with under 30,000.⁷⁹ Apart from Vorwärts, only political newspapers from big publishing houses like Mosse, Ullstein, Scherl, and Münzenberg had a circulation of over 50,000. Most others ran at under 40,000; the reactionary Kreuz-Zeitung, with a circulation of around 6,000 copies, was practically clandestine. Ullstein’s Vossische Zeitung was the only one which resisted the general downward trend of political newspapers, at least until 1930. These figures raise some important questions about the electoral impact of newspapers: why did the circulation of the overtly pro-DDP Vossische Zeitung increase from 1925 to 1930 by over 30 per cent, whilst the electoral support for the DDP in Berlin declined from over 250,000 votes in December 1924 to under 150,000 in September 1930? In 1930, the political newspapers of Ullstein and Mosse had a combined circulation of almost double the number of DDP voters.⁸⁰ In fact, these two liberal Jewish publishing houses held over 50 per cent of the Berlin newspaper market, with the total circulation of all their titles standing at over 1.3 million copies per day—but less than 10 per cent of their readers supported the parliamentary party they were backing. Hugenberg was in a similar dilemma. Thanks to his new tabloid, the Nachtausgabe, total circulation of all his papers increased from c.340,000 in 1925 to just under 500,000 in 1930; but with every extra newspaper copy he sold he seemed to lose one vote: electoral support for his party, the DNVP, declined from around 550,000 votes in December 1924 to about 350,000 votes at the Reichstag elections in September 1930. The extra support which the DNVP received from the Berliner Börsen-Zeitung, the Deutsche Tageszeitung, the Kreuz-Zeitung, and the Deutsche Zeitung —with a combined daily circulation of 85,000 to 100,000—also did not translate into votes. Goebbels, on the other hand, was experiencing a different phenomenon altogether. The circulation of his tabloid, Der Angriff, founded in 1927, was almost exclusively limited to the party membership, and the paper had less than 10,000 subscribers in late 1929.⁸¹ At the city council elections in November 1929, however, the NSDAP garnered over 130,000 votes. Less than a year later, at the Reichstag elections in September 1930, the Nazi vote was close to 400,000, while the circulation of the Angriff did not surpass 50,000 until the end of the year.⁸² In fact, much of the increase in circulation was perhaps a result of the election, as was the case with the Völkischer Beobachter: according

Elite political papers Mass papers

Rote Fahne Vorwärts Vossische Zeitung Berliner Börsen-Courier Germania Der Deutsche Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung Der Jungdeutsche Deutsche Tageszeitung Berliner Börsen-Zeitung Der Tag Neue Preussische (Kreuz-)Zeitung Deutsche Zeitung Sub-total Berlin am Morgen Berliner Morgenpost Berliner Volks-Zeitung Berliner Tageblatt Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger Sub-total Welt am Abend 8-Uhr-Abendblatt Tempo BZ am Mittag Neue Berliner Zeitung/12-Uhr-Blatt Nachtausgabe Angriff Sub-total Total

KPD SPD Ullstein liberal Z Z DVP nationalist Agrarian - DVP/DNVP DVP/DNVP Hugenberg–DNVP DNVP DNVP Münzenberg–KPD Ullstein Mosse Mosse Hugenberg–DNVP

Berlin tabloids

Newspaper title

Münzenberg–KPD Mosse Ullstein Ullstein liberal Hugenberg–DNVP NSDAP

1925

1926

1927

1928

1929

1930

1931

32.5 95 36 40 43 24 79 42 30 34 86.5 6 60 608.5 – 492 90 170 220.5 972.5 12 90 – 180 30 37.5 – 349.5 1,930.5

37 90 58 40 43 28.5 53 42 30 42.5 74.5 6 48 592.5 – 569 80 163 209 1, 021 54.5 91.5 – 185.5 30 59.5 – 421 2,034.5

37 85 66.5 25 43 33.5 47.5 33.5 27.5 42.5 72 6.5 36.5 556 – 581.5 75 158 212.5 1, 027 104.5 93 – 186 40 66 4.5 494 2,077

32 82 69 25 43 38 42.5 25 25 42.5 77 6.5 24.5 532 – 608.5 70 150 219 1, 047 185 95 – 197 60 127.5 7 671.5 2,251

28 74.5 72 25 43 38 37 28 25 42.5 71 6.5 26 516.5 70 617 73 137 219.5 1, 116.5 229 97.5 118.5 190.5 50 193.5 15 894.5 2,527

25 75 76.5 24 43 38 31.5 25 25 32 69.5 6 26 496.5 75 607.5 77.5 121 213 1, 094 225 100 142 183.5 75 206.5 50 982 2,572.5

23 69.5 69 21.5 41 36 30.5 24 24 29 67.5 5 25.5 465.5 70 553 75 1400 197.5 1, 035.5 180 90 122 167 100 197 70 926 2,427

1932 19 56.5 56 17.5 34.5 30.5 25 20 20 25 57.5 4 25 390.5 65 478 80 130 183.5 936.5 180 80 106 151.5 120 185 98.5 921 2,248

Note: Figures rounded to the nearest 500. Figures given in italics are informed estimates. Sources: See www.hist.cam.ac.uk/academic staff/further details/fulda-press-and-politics.html Abbreviations: KPD = German Communist Pary; SPD = German Social Democratic Party; DDP = German Democratic Party; Z = Catholic Centre party; DVP = German People’s Party; DNVP = German Nationalist People’s Party; NSDAP = National Socialist Party


Publisher–Politics

24

Table 1.1. Circulation figures for the Berlin press, 1925–32 (000s)


25

1,000,000 900,000 800,000 votes cast

700,000 600,000 500,000 400,000 300,000

KPD SPD DDP Z DVP WP DNVP NSDAP

200,000 100,000 De c. Ju 24 ne De 25 c. Ju 25 ne De 26 c. Ju 26 ne De 27 c. Ju 27 ne De 28 c. Ju 28 ne De 29 c. Ju 29 ne De 30 c. Ju 30 ne De 31 c. Ju 31 ne 32

0

Fig. 1.1. Berlin elections to Reichstag, Prussian parliament, and city council, 1924–32 Sources: Otto Büsch and Wolfgang Haus (eds.), Berlin als Hauptstadt der Weimarer Republik, 1919–1933 (Berlin, 1987), 323. Abbreviations: KPD = German Communist Party; SPD = German Social Democratic Party; DDP = German Democratic Party; Z = Catholic Centre party; DVP = German People’s Party; WP = Business Men’s Party; DNVP = German Nationalist People’s Party; NSDAP = National Socialist Party

to Social Democratic information, the Völkischer Beobachter had a street sale of around 8,000 copies just before 14 September 1930. This shot up to over 70,000 in the first weeks after the elections and then fell under 10,000 again by Christmas.⁸³ Despite the rising electoral support for the Nazis, the Berlin edition of the Völkischer Beobachter ceased publication in March 1931.⁸⁴ Even at the height of its circulation in 1932, the Angriff sold only 110,000 copies, while well over 700,000 Berliners voted for the Nazis. One explanation for the difficulty of finding a simple correlation between newspaper circulation and electoral behaviour lies in the fact that political papers were increasingly difficult to sell to a mass consumer audience. In 1923, the financial director of the Scherl publishing house tried to contain attempts by supporters of the DNVP to turn the Tag ever more nationalist, and warned Hugenberg of the grave consequences ‘if the Tag were to be turning into an outright party newspaper, with which after all we have had nothing but bad experiences in Germany’.⁸⁵ Hugenberg actually shared this view. In 1927, he was speaking from experience when explaining that partisan papers did not sell: ‘In the long run, there are not going to be major newspapers in Germany which are owned by an [industrial] company . . . or an association of lobbyists . . . In the long run, there are not going to be major newspapers representing the interests of such a group or such an association—for the simple reason that readers would be deserting them.’⁸⁶ For some reason, though, this knowledge did not lead him

26


to abandon the Tag, which had lost over 15 per cent of its readership within the previous two years. He clearly had the same conviction of the persuasive power of the press that motivated industrialist pressure groups in 1927 to buy up the deficit-making Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, which was continuously losing readers. READERS AND CONTENT Unlike the DDP and the DNVP, the KPD gained electoral support between December 1924 and September 1930. Yet, while the Communist vote increased from 350,000 to 750,000, the party organ, the Rote Fahne, was constantly losing subscribers, despite a huge proletarian readership in Berlin. Most workers, however, were subscribing to Ullstein’s Berliner Morgenpost, which in 1924 already had over half a million readers, fifteen times as many as the Rote Fahne. This was troubling the Communists, and in 1924 the party propagandists set out on a reader survey to find out why the workers were refusing to buy the party newspaper. The concluding report, ‘What do workers think about Rote Fahne?’, contained frank replies and amounted to a devastating critique of the Communist press.⁸⁷ It consists of over sixty responses, sometimes summarized but often verbatim, from readers and non-readers, party members and non-party members, men and women, who were asked about their views on the Rote Fahne and for reasons why most workers preferred to read the Berliner Morgenpost. Since this is one of the few documents which give evidence of newspaper reception, it is worth quoting at greater length. Many replies complained about the rabble-rousing in the paper.⁸⁸ One railway employee put it politely: ‘Even if much of what this newspaper reports is true, one can naturally not expect that people should enjoy these Schimpfkanonaden day after day.’⁸⁹ Many pointed out that the style was difficult to understand and not aimed at simple workers. One comrade noted: ‘The Rote Fahne is not writing for but about the workers’; another concluded ‘The writing style is rubbish.’⁹⁰ Thus the political message would often be lost, as the frank reply of another comrade, a woodworker, proved: ‘Whether I am reading and understanding everything? Nope!’⁹¹ Party politics at the most simple level were, however, equally unappealing, as an employee complained: ‘The thing which the masses . . . often find most disgusting is the great number of proclamations held in a turgid tone.’⁹² It was, he pointed out, ‘more a paper for party functionaries than for the masses’. It did not help that the distribution of the Rote Fahne was extremely unreliable: often it arrived too late in the morning to be read before going to work.⁹³ Another bone of contention was news coverage: many news items were outdated by the time of publication, and there were too many opinions and not enough news: ‘[We] are . . . always only served opinions and statements; the facts one has to collect from the [Berliner] Morgenpost or the


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[Berliner] Lokalanzeiger.’⁹⁴ However valid this Communist news strategy might be, someone remarked, their press bore little relation to reality.⁹⁵ The complaint which appeared most often was that the party organ was ‘not entertaining enough’.⁹⁶ One non-Communist spelt out his expectations: ‘I . . . want to hear something about the natural sciences, about politics, about literature, about crime, in short I want to feel the pulse of life . . . not always politics, politics, and again politics.’⁹⁷ Readers demanded local news and courtroom news, they wanted illustrated supplements and entertaining serialized novels, ‘bourgeois’ sports coverage (particularly of football), and much more advertisements. As one female party member explained it was difficult to compete with the bourgeois press and its ‘Interesting News from Around the World, Brummbär [complaints about local issues], Letter Box, Household Chat, Fashion Templates and such likes.’⁹⁸ One female Morgenpost reader explained she was quite satisfied ‘that there is at least one newspaper which reports as good as nothing on politics’.⁹⁹ Although this was not necessarily an accurate account of the Morgenpost’s offerings, it reflected the widespread consensus that the entertainment provided by the Ullstein paper was the decisive buying factor. Women generally did not hold back with their criticism of the Communist party organ. One Communist’s wife complained: ‘At least on Sundays I want to be reading what is happening in the rest of the world, [I] want to read an entertaining serialized novel on Sunday . . . A lot of wives of your comrades hold the same opinion like me, and other women even more, naturally.’¹⁰⁰ Many a husband who did not read the Rote Fahne indicated that it was his wife who decided which newspaper was read. Numerous reports tell of quarrels within the family about the Communist party organ, with cases of wives cancelling the subscription to the Rote Fahne and ordering the Berliner Morgenpost instead. When not subscribing to the Morgenpost themselves, many women shared the newspaper with a neighbour’s wife. A common reply of non-Rote Fahne readers was ‘that I also have a wife and that she would raise hell if I were to cancel the Motte [Morgenpost] and would subscribe instead to the [Rote] Fahne . . . And in order . . . to have peace and calm at home I adhere to my wife’s wishes in this regard.’¹⁰¹ One construction worker confirmed this picture of domestic newspaper struggle: ‘When I am reading the Rote Fahne, my wife keeps nagging me, or she orders the [Berliner] Volkszeitung for herself.’¹⁰² When questioned, his wife elaborated on her refusal to read the Communist party organ: The Volkszeitung at least comes twice a day, and then it provides me with more entertainment. . . . After all, I don’t want to be reading about politics all the time, that is something for men. I want to read something amusing off and on, like a travel report, what it is like in the Sommerfrische, about winter sports and such things. If one cannot go there oneself, at least one wants to imagine what is is like.¹⁰³

The Rote Fahne failed to appeal to women just like the KPD failed to appeal to the female electorate.¹⁰⁴

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The Communist party organ was becoming a victim of the rising consumer society, and it was not the only paper to suffer this fate. Many complaints about the Rote Fahne were equally valid for other partisan political newspapers. Social Democrats, like Communists, were aware that their party papers were lacking the popular support from which the party benefited at elections. Since the First World War, the SPD press had been torn between party doctrine and the recognized need for modernization by opening to a wider audience, particularly women. Already during the war, SPD papers had experienced a drop in circulation of about fifty per cent, mainly because the families of drafted soldiers had switched to bourgeois papers.¹⁰⁵ Despite revolution and a change of political system, socialist newspapers continued to suffer from falling circulation figures: Social Democratic papers had dropped from 1.8 million before the war to just 1.1 million in 1925.¹⁰⁶ Like the Communists, Social Democratic editors struggled with the question why ‘non-political’ Generalanzeiger kept outperforming their own newspapers, even in predominantly working-class areas. One prosaic reason suggested was that these newspapers simply offered more paper and that readers did not care whether their wrapping paper contained editorial text or advertisements. This was not entirely facetious: in the absence of plastic, newsprint was a crucial element in any household and value for money was not only measured in terms of content.¹⁰⁷ But content was important, too. The equivalent of the Communist reader survey in 1924 was the keynote speech by Wilhelm Sollmann, member of the Reichstag and chief editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, to a conference of Social Democratic editors in Berlin in January 1926. He, too, turned to the Berliner Morgenpost to find out about workers’ tastes: after all, he reminded his colleagues, it had a circulation of just under half of that of the total Social Democratic press.¹⁰⁸ Obviously, Kleine Anzeigen, private advertisements, held a great appeal to the readership: obituaries, engagement and birth announcements, as well as escaped canaries and the like were more popular than political editors realized, Sollmann admitted.¹⁰⁹ The weakness of the Social Democratic press, he contended, lay in the excessive coverage of politics at the expense of local coverage: ‘The overwhelming majority of people get more excited by local events and interests than by high politics.’¹¹⁰ Regional editors ought to draw on the political material available from Berlin, and concentrate on the local section of their newspapers. But instead of writing for their local audiences, regional editors engaged in irrelevant press feuds, Sollmann claimed: The political colleague in Constance, in Cologne, in Görlitz, in Königsberg, in Flensburg polemicizes against the Kreuz-Zeitung, against the Deutsche Tages-Zeitung, against the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, and against other papers of which 99 per cent of his readers have never caught sight, and the editor responsible for local news believes he has to prove once more in his section the abysmal evilness of the German Nationalists, of the Volksparteiler and of the Communists by way of fierce polemics against their local presses.


29

Let us leave out the political racket from the unpolitical section of our newspaper. We are polemicizing, we are ranting too much and we are chatting too little.¹¹¹

Newspapers had to cater to a mass audience, especially the female reader, who mostly decided which paper a family subscribed to. An attractive serialized novel could raise circulation by several thousand, Sollmann pointed out.¹¹² However, the Social Democratic version of entertainment was relatively unattractive; as Sollmann admitted, the feuilleton in the SPD press was sometimes ‘grotesquely one-sided and boring’.¹¹³ Court-reporting was still deficient; the partisan coverage of political trials, Feme-murders, and secret organizations was tiring in its repetitiveness.¹¹⁴ The Social Democratic news agency, the Pressedienst, had expanded its unpolitical production to include sports, feuilleton, chronologies, but even here it was still too overtly political.¹¹⁵ Light entertainment and local news, with less political news—this mixture served by the Generalanzeiger suited the taste of a mass audience, and according to Sollmann the duty of SPD editors was to accommodate this Massengeschmack while at the same time not compromising in their party political struggle and education.¹¹⁶ Sollmann’s suggestions were met with approval, although doubts remained among his fellow editors that party functionaries would tolerate such an ‘Americanization’ of the party press.¹¹⁷ Most papers introduced women’s supplements in the mid-1920s and extended their sports coverage. Illustrations were particularly important in helping circulation figures to recover from inflation lows: photos and caricatures were introduced in the Vorwärts in 1924; the first news photo appeared on 11 August 1927.¹¹⁸ These journalistic efforts to modernize were paralleled with developments in the economic management of party papers. From the mid-1920s onwards, business managers gained an increasingly important role in socialist papers and began to demand overall leadership within the publishing enterprises.¹¹⁹ The most significant reform was the foundation of the ‘Konzentration AG’ by the SPD in March 1925 as a central procurement agency for all party newspapers and a centralized instance of business control.¹²⁰ But while all this modernization led to an increase of about 300,000 readers up to 1929, party newspapers were constantly losing money.¹²¹ Between 1925 and 1930, the Konzentration paid out credits and subsidies amounting to RM 4.2 million.¹²²

N EW S PA PE R F I N A N C E S In this, Social Democratic papers were sharing the fate of all other political papers in this period: not one of them was profitable. Because of these endemic financial difficulties, Berlin witnessed the merger and disappearance of many partisan newspapers after 1918. The reactionary Neue Preußische Kreuz-Zeitung lost money continuously and was forced to enter an alliance with the agrarian

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Deutsche Tageszeitung in 1926.¹²³ In 1929, when the Kreuz-Zeitung announced that it was cancelling one of its two daily editions, the paper complained about the difficult times for a ‘political fighting organ’ like itself: ‘[The Kreuz-Zeitung] perceives as an extraordinary threat the fact that in the hunt for ever novel information which are cajoling the audience’s craving for sensations through blatant luridness, every possibility for the serious reader to form for himself a consistent image of the events in the world is vanishing.’¹²⁴ The Deutsche Tageszeitung was struggling with falling circulation figures, too, and in 1932 the nationalist veterans’ organization, the Stahlhelm, agreed to take over the KreuzZeitung and its deficits.¹²⁵ Other papers folded even before the experience of the economic slump of 1929–32: the party organ of the DNVP, the Nationalpost, went bankrupt in June 1925 and was discontinued.¹²⁶ Berlin’s only völkisch paper, the Deutsche Tageblatt, ceased publication as a daily in July 1929.¹²⁷ Stresemann’s title, the Zeit, founded in 1923, survived only 18 months and was then merged with the Tägliche Rundschau in June 1925.¹²⁸ In fact, the Tägliche Rundschau was probably the most notable victim of financial difficulties: it was taken over in 1922 by Stinnes and merged with his Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung.¹²⁹ The DVP then started another Tägliche Rundschau which went bankrupt in June 1928.¹³⁰ In 1930, it was once more revived by the Christlich-Sozialer Volksdienst, a splinter group of the DNVP, but continued to be such a loss-maker that it was once more sold in 1932.¹³¹ Even the Nazi Völkischer Beobachter which appeared with a Berlin edition from March 1930 stopped this publication little more than a year later because its circulation never rose much above 5,000 copies.¹³² If they were able to survive, such small papers only managed through sustained subsidies, or minimizing production costs, often by understaffing the editorial office. A prestigious paper was expensive to maintain: the Catholic Centre party organ, Germania, for example, ran up a deficit of nearly RM 400,000 in 1930.¹³³ The costs of better-equipped papers were much higher still. The editorial office of Mosse’s Berliner Tageblatt alone cost around RM 3.3 million per year in 1929.¹³⁴ Over the next years, its publisher tried to reduce costs radically, but in 1932 the Mosse concern was on the brink of bankruptcy.¹³⁵ The losses of Ullstein’s Vossische Zeitung after 1923 were allegedly running into seven figures each year; by 1928 the yearly deficit was over RM 2 million, and by the beginning of 1933 it was costing the firm RM 200,000 a month to keep the paper alive.¹³⁶ Newspapers like the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung or the only prestigious non-Berlin paper, the Frankfurter Zeitung, became financially dependent on interest groups which wanted to secure industrialist influence on politics.¹³⁷ The Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung alone needed subsidies of around RM 4 million in the period 1929–31.¹³⁸ If not sustained by external subsidies, such costly newspapers would rely on cross-subsidies from within a big publishing empire. The publishers of the Vossische Zeitung and the Tag, Ullstein and Hugenberg, paid for these papers out of the income generated by the Berliner Morgenpost and the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger.


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12,000,000 10,000,000 BLA ads BLA sales calc. Tag ads Tag sales calc. NA ads NA sales calc.

8,000,000 6,000,000 4,000,000 2,000,000 1925

1926

1927

1928

1929

1930

1931

1932

Fig. 1.2. Advertising and sales income of Hugenberg papers, 1925–32 (RM) Sources: Advertising income from Scherl business reports, BArchK, N1231 Hugenberg, 269, f. 23; 270, ff. 19–20; 300, f. 14; 271, f. 13; 273, f. 19; 274, f. 8; 275, f.12. Sales income calculated from circulation figures (same as Table 1.1). Abbreviations: BLA = Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger; NA = Nachtausgabe

It is possible to reconstruct the income generated by Hugenberg’s three big newspapers from the surviving annual business reports of the Scherl firm.¹³⁹ This reconstruction (Fig. 1.2) shows the importance of the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger within Hugenberg’s enterprise: in 1928, for example, the BLA was generating about RM 20.5 million, more than five times as much as the Tag. The BLA advertisements alone were making more money than the Tag in total. But there is another, even more interesting, trend: the explosive growth of the Nachtausgabe revenue, from RM 1.3 million in 1925 to RM 7.7 million in 1930. Its share of the total revenue generated by all three papers grew from five per cent in 1925 to nearly thirty per cent in 1932. Of course, growing income cannot generally be equated with growing profitability, due to variable costs. For example, an increase in sales revenue, generated through rising circulation figures, could be offset by the concurrent increase in production costs, particularly by a rise in expenditure on paper.¹⁴⁰ But like all dailies with a high circulation, both the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger and the Nachtausgabe benefited after October 1925 from falling paper prices.¹⁴¹ The annual report for 1928 gives a gross profit of RM 3.2 million for the BLA, constituting more than half of the total gross profit of the Scherl publishing firm of RM 6 million.¹⁴² A profit-and-loss account for 1931 and 1932 shows that even during the height of recession the Scherl firm was still making a sizeable gross profit, with RM 3.6 million and RM 2.6 million, respectively.¹⁴³ It also shows that the total of production and retailing costs for all Scherl publications was lower than the income generated by BLA and Nachtausgabe alone.

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The published business reports of the Ullstein firm contain so little detail that it is impossible to reconstruct figures for the individual papers. However, the reports suggest that business developments were generally similar.¹⁴⁴ As one editor complained, the Ullstein brothers considered the BZ am Mittag more important than the Vossische Zeitung —hardly surprising in view of the finances as reconstructed for the Scherl concern.¹⁴⁵ There is also some circumstantial evidence from the Mosse publishing house indicating the importance which mass tabloids held for publishing business. Unlike Ullstein and Scherl, Mosse did not publish a tabloid until January 1927, when the publisher LachmannMosse bought the 8-Uhr-Abendblatt from Victor Hahn.¹⁴⁶ The price, about RM 4 million, was widely considered excessively high.¹⁴⁷ But in fact the 8-UhrAbendblatt carried 50 per cent more advertisement pages in 1927 than did the Nachtausgabe, sold 80,000 copies for at a subscription price of RM 1 per week, and will have generated income of over RM 4.5 million in 1927.¹⁴⁸ Compared to small loss-making political newspapers such as the reactionary Kreuz-Zeitung, Berlin’s tabloids were big business in a growing market. TA B LO I D S Even more than newspapers of the Generalanzeiger-type, so-called ‘Boulevardzeitungen’ tabloids, encountered contemptuous disdain among the political class. They were considered more unpolitical than Generalanzeiger, aimed at titillating the readership with sensations, pictures of train crashes and other catastrophes, providing crime reports, sports news, serialized novels, and other entertainment. Sex was not yet a major issue, though to some contemporary observers the occasional photo of a new swimming star in her bathing suit, or of film stars in light dress proved sufficiently upsetting. Hugenberg in particular struggled with fellow DNVP Protestant puritans who considered his Nachtausgabe an immoral enterprise aimed at titillating the masses.¹⁴⁹ But Hugenberg was unwilling to leave this field to Ullstein and Mosse. ‘The profits of this paper fund the party’, he allegedly replied to such criticism.¹⁵⁰ Hugenberg was also aware that there was a limit to the reach of his other two papers, Tag and Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger. Even the latter had a predominantly bourgeois or petit-bourgeois readership.¹⁵¹ Already in 1919, the right-wing star columnist Adolf Stein had pointed out to Hugenberger that ‘[t]hrough our nationalist newspapers we do not reach the masses who read social democratic or democratic papers’.¹⁵² Nachtausgabe, founded in 1922, was Hugenberg’s attempt at wooing a metropolitan, predominantly working-class readership. This was not simply a commercial move, but one driven by political motives, as Hugenberg defended himself in front of his nationalist colleagues in April 1930. In all big cities of the world, he explained, a tabloid relied on a particular layout and composition—it was not meant to be a traditional ‘Sonntagsblatt’: ‘Otherwise these big city folk [Großstädter] simply


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don’t buy it. They buy it because of the sensation which it carries—and they swallow the politics which is contained in between.’¹⁵³ Hugenberg’s pragmatic approach to a metropolitan mass audience was mirrored by that of the Communist Willi Münzenberg, nicknamed the ‘Red Hugenberg’.¹⁵⁴ Münzenberg’s position as the KPD’s most talented propagandistic manager had been firmly established through his organization of the Internationale Arbeiter Hilfe (IAH), initiated in 1921 to raise funds to help combat starvation in Soviet Russia, a consequence of the civil war. The IAH became a comprehensive propaganda concern with a huge publishing output. As the owner of Neuer Deutscher Verlag, Münzenberg was independent of dogmatic party conventions and could tailor his products to appeal to the taste of a metropolitan readership, as he demonstrated with the Welt am Abend. Founded in 1922, Welt am Abend was a leftist evening tabloid which had failed to acquire a larger readership: it had a circulation of 3,000 copies when sold to Münzenberg in November 1925 for a price of just RM 7,000.¹⁵⁵ Similar to Hugenberg, whose Nachtausgabe aimed at enlarging the limited audience exposed to nationalist politics, Münzenberg aimed at reaching many more readers than just Berlin’s KPD party members. He professionalized retailing, he hired non-party members as editors, and successfully avoided being seen as under Moscow’s thumb.¹⁵⁶ Already by January 1926 circulation was over 20,000; 80 per cent of the readership were allegedly non-Communists.¹⁵⁷ By 1929, circulation had grown to over 200,000, making Welt am Abend the Communist newspaper with the highest circulation in Germany. Not all Communists were equally impressed with this development, and those responsible for the successful tabloid repeatedly had to convince their colleagues in the flagging party organ, Rote Fahne, that they were not competing for the same readership. At a Reich conference of Communist editors in Berlin in September 1927, Welt am Abend’s chief editor, Otto Heller, pointed out that his paper was not run or branded as a party organ. He emphasized the difference by explaining how the presentation of the news was tailored to appeal to the petit-bourgeois attitude of many workers: Every day we monitor street sales [figures] graphically in a curve. . . . [W]e can then find out, which newspapers were of greatest interest. Also whom they interested most, according to city district and segment of the population. 20 per cent of our headlines, we openly admit, are absolutely non-serious, but they guarantee our customer pool. 30 per cent are half-serious, 50 per cent are watertight [hieb- und stichfest]. Of course, an [official] party organ cannot do the same.¹⁵⁸

Just why such sensationalism had to be untenable for a party organ remained unclear. No one reading Welt am Abend in the late 1920s and early 1930s was left in any doubt that this paper was a staunch supporter of Communism, and its mass reach was considerably greater than that of Rote Fahne. In any case, the Communists were deluding themselves about the relationship between

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Rote Fahne and Welt am Abend. By 1930, the party organ had lost over half its readership and sold only around 18,000 copies—not even a tenth of the circulation of Münzenberg’s Welt am Abend.¹⁵⁹ Even KPD party members did not always choose to buy Rote Fahne if they could have Welt am Abend, as the party publishing house complained to Berlin’s Communist district leadership.¹⁶⁰ By 1928, all tabloids were composed more or less the same way: ten to sixteen pages in total, about two pages on politics, three with local news, three to four with serialized novels and articles on film, theatre, and other cultural events, up to three pages on sports, two with business and stock market news, the rest carrying advertisements. Every edition was interspersed with many photos, drawings, and some caricatures. They all had a strong emphasis on entertainment, as evident in the space devoted to serialized novels, which would often amount to more than a page. Welt am Abend would offer ‘Jack the Ripper: Revelations on the life of the notorious sex murderer’, Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe ‘Nelly is dissapointed by men! Novel of a brunette girl’.¹⁶¹ Sales figures indicate that this was what Berliners liked to read: both the Nachtausgabe and the Welt am Abend more than doubled between December 1927 and December 1928, to about 151,000 and 174,000 copies, respectively. Party newspapers generally were on the decline, one journalist declared in 1928: The working population of Berlin is reading the lively and well-edited papers whether they are produced by the publishing houses Mosse, Ullstein, Hugenberg or Münzenberg; they don’t generally bother about the party tendency . . . The working population . . . wants a quick and precise news service, wants pictures and demands a certain tickle. It does not want to be lectured, but to be informed, and to be slightly sensationalized [sich leicht ansensationalisieren lassen]. That explains the smashing success of the ‘Boulevardblätter’ . . . ’¹⁶²

However, other commentators doubted the claim that tabloid readers did not generally distinguish between the various political backgrounds on offer.¹⁶³ According to the editors of Welt am Abend, for example, their readership overlapped with that of the BZ am Mittag, Vorwärts, Berliner Morgenpost, and 8-Uhr-Abendblatt.¹⁶⁴ In this group of liberal and left-wing publications, Hugenberg’s right-wing Nachtausgabe did not feature. The Communist reader survey of 1924 corroborates this assessment: from over sixty mainly workingclass newspaper readers, only two referred to a Hugenberg paper, while all others preferred liberal Ullstein or Mosse papers.¹⁶⁵ Apparently, Hugenberg’s papers were too openly anti-socialist to be palatable to a working-class readership with strong socialist dispositions. For traditional political papers, the increasing loss of market shares to tabloids meant that they had to adapt to the new style of metropolitan journalism in order to consolidate their existing readership. Eye-catching headlines, photos, and caricatures became increasingly common after 1925.¹⁶⁶ Shortly before the


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Reichstag elections in 1928, the SPD attempted to jump on the tabloidbandwagon and turned the evening edition of its party organ, Vorwärts, into a tabloid-style paper, called Der Abend. Some critics made fun of the attempted modernization. ‘Despite the new façade’, one Weltbühne journalist scoffed, ‘on the inside it is the same old Mief ’.¹⁶⁷ Others, particularly on the political right, exaggerated the extent of sensationalization of the Social Democratic paper. ‘As a sensationalist paper, Abend can easily compete with the worst products of sensation-journalism’, the agrarian Deutsche Tageszeitung proclaimed.¹⁶⁸ The truth lay somewhere inbetween: Abend’s lack of sensationalist coverage of nonpolitical crime, accidents, and catastrophes betrayed its origin as party organ; on the other hand, it clearly represented a considerable sensationalization of politics. And this sensationalism was not simply a question of style and packaging, but also had the potential of influencing the course of political events. In fact, the rising awareness of consumer demands on the side of newspapermen did not result in a depoliticization of content. Even tabloids, with their apparently unpolitical packaging of news, were anything but unpolitical. Like the political papers, they would serve political news according to a particular Weltanschauung, and openly support a particular grouping on election days. As the editor of Hugenberg’s Tag pointed out in 1928, tabloids held a particular function in the political ‘Meinungskampf ’ (struggle of opinions) because when making political points in decisive questions they would excel with glaring propaganda.¹⁶⁹ However, the degree of politicization of tabloids would vary greatly. Ullsteins BZ am Mittag retained a relatively neutral stance with its focus on sports for most of the 1920s, and became more radically pro-democratic only with the appointment of Franz Höllering as chief editor in 1929, whom the Ullsteins had poached from Münzenberg’s successful Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung.¹⁷⁰ Ullstein’s other tabloid, Tempo, was similarly conceived primarily as a business enterprise. It was Ullstein’s reply to Mosse’s acquisition of the 8-Uhr-Abendblatt, and their decision to enter into competition with the other two late-afternoon tabloids, Münzenberg’s Welt am Abend and Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe.¹⁷¹ Tempo was the most radical proponent of American-style tabloid journalism, with an emphasis on the latest news, up to three revised editions in one afternoon, and an abundance of sensations and catastrophes outdoing everything Berlin had read so far.¹⁷² During the first months of its existence, Tempo lacked almost any political coverage, and soon became the epitome of the Americanization of the press, decried as ‘asphalt flower’ and ‘Jewish flurry’.¹⁷³ Goebbels’s Angriff, in contrast, existed exlusively for political purposes. Founded in July 1927 in response to a ban of the NSDAP in Berlin, the paper was not aimed at appealing to what Goebbels described as the ‘educated public’: ‘Angriff was meant to be read by the masses, and the masses usually only read that which they understand.’¹⁷⁴ After the electoral breakthrough in September 1930, the Angriff became a daily on 1 November 1930. On this occasion, Goebbels explained the paper’s programme: ‘We penetrated . . . the wall of icy boycott

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erected around us. We shouted and ran riot, we fought with foil and heavy sabre, we shot with firecrackers and poisoned arrows, and so we slowly made our way up . . . One had to hear us.’¹⁷⁵ Sensationalism was a crucial ingredient in this strategy. ‘Berlin needs its sensations like a fish needs water. The city thrives on it, and all political propaganda which fails to recognize this will miss its aim’, Goebbels described his political style.¹⁷⁶ But Angriff struggled to reach the standard set by the tabloids of the big publishing houses. There was no choice but to market the inability of Angriff to compete in terms of news provision as a distinct strength of the paper. As a novel type of ‘fighting newspaper’, Goebbels explained in 1932, Angriff was not in the business of providing information but political motivation.¹⁷⁷ There were many similarities between Angriff and the rest of the Berlin press. From early on, Angriff had to offer at least to some extent content which Berlin newspaper readers had come to expect from their papers, like theatre, film, radio and book reviews, a women’s and a youth’s supplement, and the like.¹⁷⁸ Its layout, in particular, owed everything to the tabloid press.¹⁷⁹ In its early years, Angriff could not afford photo reproductions, and the bulk of its images was provided by a caricaturist from Hugenberg’s tabloid, Nachtausgabe, Hans Schweitzer. For almost five years, Hans Schweitzer provided both tabloids with caricatures.¹⁸⁰ Under his Nazi nom-de-plume ‘Mjölnir’, Schweitzer was to become the National Socialists’ most important caricaturist, illustrator, and visual propagandist, hailed after 1933 as ‘the Third Reich’s graphic artist’.¹⁸¹ Schweitzer’s Angriff ideal types of tall, blond, male Aryans, aggressive and determined, with jutting jaw lines and muscular bodies, were more openly propagandistic and his caricatures generally more anti-Semitic than most of the drawings he produced for Nachtausgabe; still, the fact that Schweitzer published anti-republican caricatures on a daily basis for Hugenberg’s tabloid demonstrates the degree of politicization of the tabloid press in this period. Less than a decade after the demise of the Weimar Republic, this fact was still widely appreciated. All tabloids prior to 1933, a German doctoral thesis from 1941 emphasized, were ‘more or less party political-oriented newspapers’.¹⁸² Goebbels certainly felt that Berlin’s tabloids with their mass circulation were a major political challenge. Attacks on the ‘Jewish press’ became a trademark of Angriff, and in a regular column devoted to Berlin’s press (‘Around the rotary machine’) mass papers and tabloids became his main targets. This was not just because these were the papers Angriff readers were most likely to encounter, but also because tabloids such as Welt am Abend, 12-Uhr-Blatt, and especially Mosse’s 8-Uhr-Abendblatt were at the forefront in writing against the National Socialists. In fact, Angriff engaged excessively in the inter-paper warfare which was so typical of the established political papers. Its style was cruder, more aggressive, and distinctly anti-Semitic, but other than that not dissimilar in nature to other openly anti-democratic papers in Berlin. Like the more ‘serious’ papers, Angriff would offer many quotations from classic German literature to embellish its


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articles.¹⁸³ What distinguished Angriff from other—more traditional—papers of the extreme right was Goebbels’s skill in combining human-interest stories with sensationalist politics. This was also obvious in his campaign against Berlin’s deputy police president, Bernhard Weiss. Continuing in the tradition of Hugenberg’s press campaigns against Erzberger and Stresemann, Goebbels brought tabloid methods to politics by chosing a local representative of the democratic system as a target, in line with the Angriff ’s strong emphasis on Berlin affairs.¹⁸⁴ The fact that there was an abundance of partisan tabloid papers in Berlin also shaped the content of those tabloids, which had originally been intended as exlusively commercial enterprises. Ullstein’s Tempo is a good case in point. In contrast to other Ullstein publications, Tempo was not an instant success. Introduced in 1928 at 100,000 copies daily, it had grown a mere 14,000 by September 1929. Within two more months, however, circulation had surpassed 140,000. There is no direct evidence which would explain this increase, but there is good reason to believe it was Tempo’s role in the course of the so-called Sklarek scandal in October-November 1929, an affair involving several high-ranking local government officials, including Berlin’s mayor Gustav Böss. Tempo established itself as one of the most vociferous prosecutors, and attracted a lot of attention by its sensationalist exposure of local corruption. Very different from its previous policy of almost abstaining from political coverage, and contrary to Ullstein’s long tradition of supporting the democratic cause, the Tempo now joined Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe and Münzenberg’s Welt am Abend in attacking Berlin’s political leadership. Although the emphasis lay on sensationalist revelations and was not driven by an anti-democratic Weltanschauung, effectively the Tempo contributed to the growing number of voices denigrating the democratic system.¹⁸⁵ Whether this was a conscious business decision is difficult to establish. But it is a fact that from 1925 anti-democratic tabloids were benefiting from better growth rates than were those supporting the parliamentary system. Unlike the political papers, where Ullstein’s Vossische Zeitung was outperforming Hugenberg’s Tag, democratic tabloids like Ullstein’s BZ am Mittag, Mosse’s 8-Uhr-Abendblatt, or the 12-Uhr-Blatt were struggling to keep up the circulation they had reached in the early 1920s, and never came close to the growth displayed by Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe or Münzenberg’s Welt am Abend after 1925. We know from the Communist readers’ survey of 1924 that a paper was not just bought for its political conviction, shared by the reader, but for the entertainment it provided. Also, a lot of circulation growth was clearly driven by non-political factors: part of the Nachtausgabe’s increase in circulation was the result of well-advertised prize draws in 1928 and 1929, the latter with a mass-participation of some 316,000 Berliners.¹⁸⁶ Circulation subsequently more than doubled between May 1928 and December 1929.¹⁸⁷ But at the same time neither the 8-Uhr-Abendblatt nor the BZ am Mittag managed to grow decisively, despite being staffed with highquality journalists and benefiting from the resources of the Mosse and Ullstein

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publishing houses. They, too, organized their own prize draws and provided a similar amount of illustrations, caricatures, and entertainment, without the success of their ‘anti-system’ opponents. P R E S S S U P P O RT A N D E L E C TO R A L B E H AV I O U R This phenomenon is significant because tabloids depended much more on street sales, rather than on subscriptions like all other German papers. As distinct from a monthly subscription to a Generalanzeiger, the potential reader had to make a daily decision about which of the tabloids on offer he would buy. Because of this form of retailing, Berlin’s tabloids were more sensitive to popular sentiments than were other papers.¹⁸⁸ It is, therefore, interesting that from 1925 to 1929–30 those tabloids championing ‘anti-system’ politics fared best. Thus, we are back to the question of the interrelation between newspapers and electoral behaviour. Any analysis of this phenomenon will encounter a problem well known in the area of media studies, that of media reception: did these papers fare better because they met the preferences of one part of the Berlin public with a strong anti-democratic disposition? Or did these papers sell well and thereby influence readers with the propagation of anti-system opinions? Of course, the two explanations are not mutually exclusive. But in Berlin the rise of ‘anti-system’ tabloids coincides with a change in political climate: there is a strong correlation between the rise in circulation of Berlin tabloids opposing parliamentary democracy and the degree of electoral hostility to the Weimar Republic, as expressed by votes for the KPD, NSDAP, and DNVP between 1925 and 1930. Admittedly, hostility to democracy increased elsewhere, too, in places which had never seen tabloids. But as a detailed electoral analysis of Berlin has shown, the radicalization of Berlin voters was constantly above the Reich average, and, with one exception, always surpassed that of other major cities in Germany.¹⁸⁹ Most accounts of the Berlin press have so far struggled to establish a connection between newspapers and electoral behaviour. This is a result largely of the dichotomy between the apparent strength of Ullstein’s and Mosse’s newspapers until 1932, and the diminishing electoral support for the democratic values they represented.¹⁹⁰ One historian engaging with circulation trends of Berlin newspapers has claimed there is ‘no clear interrelation between the political preferences of the readership on the one hand, and circulation developments of the various politically clearly defined papers on the other’.¹⁹¹ Of course, it would be oversimplifying the complex nature of the Berlin newspaper market, on the one hand, and the interaction between paper and reader, on the other, if one were to seek an unambiguous correlation between number of newspaper copies and votes cast at an election. But it would be wrong to conclude from these complexities that press support had no effect on electoral behaviour. One of the reasons why traditional studies have failed to find any apparent link between


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press support and electoral behaviour is the ignorance conventional studies have displayed towards mass papers. Almost all historians have so far adapted the dismissive view of mass and tabloid papers held by many contemporaries, and therefore ignored the enormous popularity of these papers in the second half of the Weimar Republic. Analyses of newspapers of the 1920s have almost always skimmed over the question of circulation, and concentrated on a sample of ‘representative’ papers, mostly elite political papers, with a total circulation of less than the Berliner Morgenpost.¹⁹² These could not really have much of a mass impact—for that, one must look at the mass papers. When one includes the mass papers in an analysis of the voting behaviour of Berliners between 1924 and 1930, there are numerous indications of the crucial role of the mass print media in Berlin’s political culture. One case in point is the performance of the KPD in Berlin. In the Reichstag elections of May 1928, the Communists received 10.6 per cent of all votes cast in the Reich, an increase of 1.6 per cent in real figures, or a growth of nearly 18 per cent over its result in December 1924.¹⁹³ Winkler names the greater mobilization of core voters as one reason for the success of the KPD.¹⁹⁴ This factor, however, does not suffice to explain the phenomenal success of the KPD in Berlin. Here the Communists increased their share of the votes by over 50 per cent, almost triple the average growth in the Reich. This radicalization was not simply driven by the economic or social composition of the electorate: in Braunschweig, the constituency with the highest share of workers, the KPD even lost votes in 1928.¹⁹⁵ There is good reason to believe that the performance of the KPD in Berlin was boosted by the successful Welt am Abend, which helped to mobilize voters: driven by this tabloid, the market share of the Communist press in Berlin had more than quadrupled, from 2.3 per cent in 1925 to 9.6 per cent in 1928. The success of the Münzenberg papers in Berlin helps to explain the lack of success of the Social Democratic Vorwärts, as well as the relative lack of electoral success of the SPD in Berlin. Admittedly, the results of the SPD in Berlin were better than the SPD average in the Reich, but that was mainly due to the social composition of the Berlin electorate with its high share of working-class voters. In February 1928, prior to the Reichstag elections in May, the SPD tried to improve its popular appeal by launching its own tabloid, which they did by transforming the evening edition of Vorwärts into the tabloid-style Abend. However, the Abend did not become a real tabloid separate from the party organ, but remained the evening edition of Vorwärts, just with more illustrations, which readers received as part of their Vorwärts-subscription. The market share of the Social Democratic press decreased between 1925 and 1928 from about 5 per cent to 3.7 per cent, and this relative lack of success is mirrored by the Social Democratic electoral performance. While on Reich average the SPD increased its share of votes from 26 per cent to 29.8 per cent, a relative increase of 14.6 per cent, the Berlin SPD grew by only 8.6 per cent.

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For the DNVP, too, press support proved important in garnering electoral votes in Berlin. Although not every Hugenberg paper that was sold translated into a vote cast for the DNVP, the strength of the Scherl press concern in Berlin helped to slow down the general decline of the deutschnational party. Throughout this period, the DNVP in Berlin outperformed the average Reich results. At the Reichstag elections in May 1928, for example, the DNVP was punished by the electorate, like all other government parties, for its participation in government.¹⁹⁶ In Berlin, however, the DNVP lost only 26 per cent of the share it had gained in December 1924, as opposed to 31 per cent on average in the Reich. Two years later, the difference was much more remarkable: in the Reich the DNVP literally collapsed, from 14.2 per cent in 1928 to 7 per cent at the September 1930 Reichstag elections, a loss of over 50 per cent. In Berlin, however, Hugenberg’s party managed to retain 73 per cent of its 1928 result. It is in between these two Reichstag elections that the Nachtausgabe doubled in circulation, from 100,000 copies in May 1928 to 210,000 in April 1930, rallying to the DNVP’s support.¹⁹⁷ Without Hugenberg’s papers, the DNVP would probably have fared much worse in Berlin. But this was probably little consolation to Hugenberg: already by May 1928, more Hugenberg papers were bought each day than votes cast for the DNVP at the Reichstag election. In September 1930, total circulation of the three Hugenberg papers stood at around 485,000, while only 352,000 Berliners voted for the DNVP: either Hugenberg’s political message was wasted on some of his readers or they interpreted it more freely than the press magnate had intended. Still, there is some strong evidence that Hugenberg’s papers had a decisive electoral impact. Prior to the electoral defeat in May 1928, Hugenberg had not been able not position his papers against a political system in which his own party formed part of the government. After becoming chairman of the DNVP in autumn 1928, he steered the party back on to a course of fundamental opposition to democracy, a message his papers relentlessly proclaimed over the next years. Some figures indicate that the electorate took up the message, but at election times chose from a variety of anti-system parties. This is where the Nazis come in. The NSDAP achieved its first significant breakthrough at the city council elections in 1929 in those city districts with a population composed predominantly of the lower middle-classes and better-off workers; in 1930 its growth rates were greatest in workers’ districts.¹⁹⁸ These were the most important target groups for tabloids, too, not least of Goebbels’s Angriff. There is good reason to believe that the combined onslaught of anti-democratic newspapers convinced Berliners to vote for either of the two nationalist anti-democratic parties. In 1928, the combined total of Hugenberg’s three titles, plus the two explicitly DNVP papers, the Kreuz-Zeitung and the Deutsche Zeitung, plus Goebbels’s Angriff, stood at around 480,000 copies daily, while the NSDAP and the DNVP received a total of 478,000 votes in Berlin at the Reichstag election


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in May. At the time of the city council election in November 1929, when NSDAP and DNVP garnered almost 537,000 votes, the combined total of the same papers had reached 540,000. With Stresemann’s death in October 1929 an increasing number of bourgeois–nationalist papers joined the chorus of anti-democratic voices, like the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, the Deutsche Tageszeitung, and the Berliner Börsen-Zeitung, which led to a total circulation of over 660,000 rightist anti-system copies in 1930, and 748,000 votes for DNVP and NSDAP at the Reichstag election in September 1930. Not least due to Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe, Goebbels’s Angriff did not become the commercial success Amann had jealously expected in November 1929.¹⁹⁹ But there is some evidence that supports contemporaries’ conviction that the NSDAP was reaping the fruits of Hugenberg’s labours at election times. But how does one explain the apparent might of the liberal Mosse and Ullstein houses and the abject decline in political fortunes of the DDP which they supported? Partly it was a consequence of the rather vague political message of Ullstein’s mass papers. Although generally well disposed towards the leftliberal DDP, Ullstein’s most popular newspaper, the Berliner Morgenpost, was not very explicit in its support. According to one Ullstein editor, the paper was ‘slightly coloured pink’ (the colour associated with the DDP), but in most respects ‘the political guideline was simply: consumer’s viewpoint’.²⁰⁰ Ullstein’s strength was the provision of relatively balanced news, light reading, and lots of entertainment. Apart from Vossische Zeitung, Berliner Tageblatt, and Berliner Volks-Zeitung, for most of this period Ullstein’s and Mosse’s mass papers avoided overtly partisan policies and championed a left-of-centre tendency to appeal to a mass readership from various political backgrounds. Many of the leading Berliner Morgenpost editors were, in fact, members of the SPD but without the propagandistic zeal of their counterparts at Vorwärts. This policy of moderation was commercially successful but politically fateful: as the Communists’ readers’ survey shows, workers would read Ullstein’s Berliner Morgenpost or Mosse’s Berliner Volkszeitung and then still vote for the KPD, or the SPD, as did many workers’ wives, for whom the KPD held less appeal.²⁰¹ The overlap between democratic, socialist, and Communist readers and voters becomes apparent when adding up Ullstein’s, Mosse’s, and the Communist papers for 1928 and 1930, and comparing them to votes cast for the DDP/Staatspartei, the SPD, and the KPD: 1.65 million copies in 1928 and 1.9 million in 1930 contained the electoral potential of 1.6 million voters in 1928 and 1930. Even if this is just a very rough approximation of reader movements and electoral behaviour, the figures suggest that the effects of some vague, prodemocratic writing were less distinct than the consonance caused by a barrage of overtly negative political coverage denigrating parliamentary democracy. This conclusion relies so far on numeric evidence, but it concurs with numerous findings in the area of media studies which have emphasized the greater impact of negative news on media consumers.²⁰² The fact that we have a correlating

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development of anti-democratic mass papers and increasing hostility to the parliamentary system shows there is some significant interaction between mass media and political sentiment in the population, a point already hypothetically made by those historians engaging in Weimar election analyses.²⁰³ Of course, one cannot simply go from correlation to causation. But the evidence, once one considers the full ecology of the Berlin press, is suggestive of a far stronger connection between mass papers’ political message and electoral behaviour than has hitherto been realized. C O N C LU S I O N Accelerating modernization and increasing politicization were the two defining characteristics of the German press—and specifically the Berlin press—during the existence of the Weimar Republic. The 1920s ‘information’ society in Berlin was characterized, on the one hand, by an unprecedented wealth of newspaper formats and content, and, on the other, by the existence of different, sometimes overlapping (reading) publics, partly formed by milieu and political affiliation, partly by which newspapers the consumer decided to buy. The fact that the rise of mass and tabloid papers did not result in a depolicization of content was caused by the Weltanschauungs-basis of German journalism. Editors of SPD, KPD, or NSDAP newspapers were primarily political agitators. Their bourgeois counterparts conceived of themselves as political actors, too. Often, they were also submitted to not very subtle pressures from their publishers: in 1927, a survey of employment contracts of editors throughout Germany showed that about half of these contracts stipulated the political line which they were meant to be toeing.²⁰⁴ In particular the high-profile political papers in Berlin were seen as instruments in the political struggle rather than serving as media for information. Because of the strongly politicized nature of German newspapers and the subsequent fragmentation of news networks, contemporaries often had to read more than one paper if they were interested in a broader view of daily issues.²⁰⁵ At the same time, the trend towards a mass public put fundamental strains on the traditional concept of political newspapers. Only those papers which were part of big publishing houses with sufficient resources and an elaborate retail system stood a chance of surviving. Many political papers lacked this support and were becoming the victims of the rise of the consumer society: smaller papers, like the ultra-conservative Kreuz-Zeitung, or even the main Social Democratic paper, Vorwärts, lacked resources, especially personnel. Thus, the mixture of limited human resources and the partisan spirit firing the majority of political journalists in this period resulted in a distinctly aggressive press, where editors often relied on syndicated texts or other journalists’ writings which they then spiced up with headlines, introductions, and comments. However, in an


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increasingly competitive environment, dry, moralizing politics just did not sell. Most political papers were caught in a vicious circle: with a low circulation they could not attract enough advertisers and thus could not introduce lower cover prices, with which they could have increased circulation to make advertisements more attractive. Moreover, because political papers mostly ignored local news and were, therefore, lacking in appeal to the local community, small local businesses refrained from placing advertisements in them. The lack of a sound financial basis meant that political papers were mostly unable to compete with the big papers. They could not afford modern printing technology and thus could not exploit some of the most important copy-selling features of the 1920s—pictures and photographs—on any significant scale. Most importantly, their focus on politics prevented them from embracing the provision of entertainment as a crucial element in newspaper publishing. Already limited in their reach, political newspapers mostly declined in circulation and were becoming significant financial liabilities to their proprietors. The alternative to old-fashioned political papers in Berlin were mass tabloids. Their growth in the second half of the 1920s was the most significant innovation within the German press in this period. The sensationalist presentation and the packaging of news with entertainment were exceedingly popular. The emphasis moved away from politics, but tabloids were not unpolitical. On the contrary, they sold politics in a distinctly modern style: in smaller, more concise, portions, illustrated, and populist. The modern format did not preclude radically partisan political coverage, as Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe, Münzenberg’s Welt am Abend, and Goebbels’s Angriff all demonstrated. But most political decision-makers were slow to discover the public impact of these papers, and therefore tended to focus their attention on the elite political press. This attitude was most markedly reflected in the utilitarian approach to these more traditional papers: throughout this period, parties, pressure groups, and governments all considered control over at least some newspapers as important for pursuing their interests. Ironically, the only papers such groups could afford to acquire were the lossmaking, old-fashioned, and increasingly unpopular elite political papers, which they themselves read. The fate of the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung was a manifestation of this belief in the political power of the classical press: Stinnes purchased it in 1920 to secure industrialist influence; after his death it was secretly bought up by the Prussian government in 1925; less than a year later it was taken over by the Reich government on Stresemann’s initiative, before being sold again when the affair came to light. None of the owners achieved any noticeable advantage in approaching political aims through the support of the DAZ ; in the case of Stinnes it quite often worked as an impediment.²⁰⁶ The DAZ is thus not only a prime example for the utilitarian approach of contemporaries to the press, but also for the mismatch between the contemporary perception of the power of the press and the limited direct influence newspapers actually wielded. In the

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case of the reactionary Kreuz-Zeitung, the perceived importance of the paper as expressed in the continuous reactions to it—especially by Vorwärts —stood in stark contrast to both its actual circulation figures and the little headway made in this period by the politics it championed. In a similar vein, political opponents of the Communists tended to overestimate the Rote Fahne as an influence on Communist workers. The question of the political significance of Berlin’s newspapers has many facets. Most contemporaries underestimated the political impact that mass papers had, while overestimating traditional political papers. The Welt am Abend boosted KPD support, and the DNVP was one of the parties benefiting from the anti-parliamentary stance of the Nachtausgabe and the Berliner LokalAnzeiger. The absence of a Social Democratic mass tabloid proved an important electoral disadvantage to the SPD in Berlin: Social Democrats generally failed to augment their appeal to younger voters.²⁰⁷ The correlating development of anti-democratic mass papers and increasing hostility to the parliamentary system contradicts those historians who claim there was no clear interrelation between circulation developments and political preferences of the readership.²⁰⁸ But, then, the electoral impact of newspapers is only one facet of the political influence of the press in this period. As will become clear in the following chapters, a newspaper did not need to have a large circulation to have a political impact: the agenda-setting role of newspapers like the Kreuz-Zeitung could have significant repercussions for the political climate in the Weimar Republic. Media coverage of individual politicians, and the publicity that came with it—whether negative or positive—decisively influenced individuals’ room for political manœuvre.

2 Media Personalities, 1918–24 The German believes what his paper tells him. Men to whom much space is devoted are to him great men. Georg Bernhard, ‘The German Press’, in Der Verlag Ullstein zum Welt-Reklame-Kongress 1929 (Berlin, 1929), 59.

On 9 November 1918, Reich Chancellor Prince Max von Baden decided to force events and, without consulting Wilhelm II, announced that the Kaiser had abdicated. Fifteen minutes later, newsboys of the Ullstein publishing house roamed the streets of Berlin, selling copies of BZ am Mittag announcing the sensational news. It was a scoop in which the publishers were to take pride for decades to come.¹ But not only did the abdication of Wilhelm II strip the German media of their most popular political celebrity, it also changed decisively the nature of the relationship between press and politics in Germany.² The demise of constitutional monarchy meant that there was no longer a universally acknowledged authority, a grand narrative of legitimate power, within which journalists could position their articles. Of course, the oppositional press in the Wilhelmine era had played an increasingly important role in critizing various aspects of the political system, at the level of Reich government as well as in the locality.³ But even in the most extreme cases, and despite the occasional abundance of vituperative polemics, politicians and journalists hardly ever questioned the overall legitimacy of constitutional monarchy. As is well known, even the Social Democrat Friedrich Ebert, who later became the first president of the Weimar Republic, tried until the early days of November 1918 to safeguard the monarchy as an element of political order and authority.⁴ Despite all the continuities between the Wilhelmine period and the Weimar Republic which historians have rightly emphasized in the past, in one respect the revolution of 1918 signified a crucial break: there existed no longer a consensus on what constituted legitimate power. The resulting struggle for interpretive predominance was to plague the young democracy throughout its existence. It was a struggle in which the German press played a key role. Journalists promoted a wide range of particularist readings of parliamentary democracy through the articles which they produced and through the selection of news which they relayed to their readers. And what these readers

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encountered was often not likely to endear democracy to them. But Weimar democracy did not just have a bad press, reflecting the partisan nature of German politics. Right from the beginning of the Weimar Republic, partisan press coverage itself influenced the course of political events and determined the nature of German politics. This was nowhere more obvious than in the case of certain political personalities. As newspapers constituted the only source of information about politics for the vast majority of Germans at this time, the press was able to create public images of politicians that were primarily a product of any given paper’s Weltanschauung, their politial agenda. This in turn constrained—or enlarged—the range of political options open to decision-makers. The following chapter tells the story of the revolutionary establishment of the new democracy through the media, by investigating the right-wing hate-campaign against one prominent member of the new regime, Matthias Erzberger, and the rise to stardom of a political fringe figure, Adolf Hitler. T H E PE R S O N I F I C AT I O N O F D E F E AT In early November 1918, the imperial cabinet under Prince Max von Baden appointed the Catholic Centre politician Matthias Erzberger to travel to France to negotiate an armistice deal with the Allies. It was clear that this was going to be a thankless task. While revolution was breaking out in Germany, Erzberger tried in vain to secure any significant improvements in Entente conditions. On 11 November, after three days of frustrating talks with the French commanderin-chief, Marshal Foch, Erzberger signed the armistice. After more than four years of bitter fighting, the guns finally fell silent on the Western Front. One might imagine that this would have been a big media event. Instead, in the tradition of nineteenth-century-style secret diplomacy and military censorship, the signing took place in a railway carriage in the middle of the isolated forest of Compiègne, some eighty kilometres north of Paris.⁵ In Germany, the signing of the armistice received relatively little attention in the general excitement of the emperor’s abdication, the declaration of the republic, and the turmoil of political revolution. Press reports on the signing were short and factual, rarely mentioned Erzberger, and mostly focused on the harsh armistice terms imposed by the Entente powers. Even in right-wing newspapers there was no indication that Erzberger would soon be pilloried as the man responsible for Germany’s misery.⁶ In December 1918, during the negotiations about the first prolongation of the armistice, journalists emphasized their indignation about the very severe armistice terms, but did not blame Erzberger personally.⁷ It was only in mid-January 1919, after Erzberger had negotiated the second prolongation of the armistice resulting in even harsher terms, that the nature of newspaper coverage changed completely, particularly in the right-wing press. Headlines now proclaimed the

Media Personalities, 1918–24

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‘rape of Germany’.⁸ Allied demands were labelled ‘unjust’, ‘humiliating’, and ‘degrading’, and Erzberger was heavily criticized for accepting them.⁹ According to many nationalist journalists, a more forceful negotiator could have achieved much more. ‘Why not say no!’ ran one headline, summing up the criticism.¹⁰ Within days, Erzberger was widely perceived to have betrayed vital German interests. In a rally conducted by patriotic associations in Berlin in late January 1919, one speaker’s attack on Entente demands for extradition of German ‘war heroes’ met with stormy cries of ‘Down with Erzberger!’¹¹ This sudden concentration of right-wing criticism on Erzberger had several reasons. Prior to mid-January 1919, the hate figures of the national right were the Communist leaders, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. Their revolutionary radicalism terrified the German bourgeoisie.¹² On the pages of the conservative press, and in the eyes of many nationalists, the Spartacus uprising in Berlin in early January 1919 seemed to prove the very real threat of a Russian-style revolution ending in total anarchy. The press singled out Liebknecht and Luxemburg as the chief agitators in this process. In fact, the uprising had been the result of grass-roots activism surprising an unprepared KPD leadership, which struggled in vain throughout the crisis to regain control of developments.¹³ But through the personalization in the press, the perceived threat emanating from the KPD was concentrated in the figures of the two Communist leaders. Hence, when the Social Democratic government called in right-wing army troops to quell the uprising, nationalist officers did not hesitate to arrest and then shoot Luxemburg and Liebknecht.¹⁴ The sensational news of their murder caught the attention of all newspaper readers.¹⁵ According to one editor, the streets of Berlin saw scenes of joyful excitement. The public preoccupation with this news was such that no one seemed to care about the aggravation of the armistice conditions.¹⁶ With the deaths of Liebknecht and Luxemburg, the way was now clear for nationalist editors to focus on an old opponent. During the war, Erzberger had been the driving force behind the Reichstag’s peace resolution of July 1917, and as such he had been vilified by the annexionists, who accused him of breaking the German will to victory.¹⁷ At the head of the assailants then stood the chief editor of the nationalist Tägliche Rundschau, Friedrich Hussong, who published a pamphlet in September 1917 in which he embellished an acount of Erzberger’s transformation from former annexationist to father of the peace resolution, with accusations that he was a British and Vatican agent, a draft dodger, and a war profiteer.¹⁸ All this became suddenly relevant again because of the general elections to the National Assembly, held on 19 January 1919. The Social Democrats gained 35 per cent of the vote, which meant that they needed to enter a coalition government with two bourgeois parties, the Liberal Democrats and the Catholic Centre party.¹⁹ This combination of forces was identical to that which had seen through the peace resolution in July 1917. The architect of the peace resolution, Erzberger, was now a key figure

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within the new governing coalition, and described as ‘the bond between Centre and Social Democrats’.²⁰ According to the Centre party organ, Germania, the proliferation of right-wing attacks on Erzberger in 1919 had one objective: to discredit the Centre party and thus to lure conservative Catholics into the nationalist fold.²¹ But there was more to the right-wing attacks on Erzberger than just party political strategy. At the heart of the campaign was the issue of responsibility for the German defeat, and the legitimation of the post-revolutionary political system. In November 1918, even die-hard monarchists had little choice but to accept the new situation.²² Within weeks, however, the nationalist Right came to identify the revolution as the decisive factor in weakening Germany’s position towards its enemies. Military collapse, they argued, would not have occurred without domestic forces undermining German fighting morale. Rightwing newspapers played a crucial role in the construction of this argument. They provided a first draft of history, an attractive narrative of military heroism, supported by an eclectic range of detailed evidence. The image of an undefeated military front ‘stabbed in the back’ by civilian forces—allegedly the statement of a British general—was a journalistic invention first published in Germany in mid-December 1918 by the nationalist Deutsche Tageszeitung.²³ One year later, this right-wing press narrative served as blueprint for Hindenburg’s infamous statement about the alleged backstab to the National Assembly’s investigation committee researching the causes of the German defeat.²⁴ By early February 1919, press criticism of Erzberger’s armistice negotiations concentrated on the fact that he had agreed to specific Entente conditions—like the handing over of the German merchant fleet—without consulting relevant experts. Even left-wing democratic observers became increasingly sceptical about Erzberger’s suitability as Germany’s chief negotiator.²⁵ Flagships of the liberal press, like the Frankfurter Zeitung and Ullstein’s Vossische Zeitung, declared him unfit for the task.²⁶ In the debate on the armistice conditions in the National Assembly in Weimar in mid-February, the spokesman of the German Nationalist Party referred explicitly to these press attacks to strengthen his own case against Erzberger.²⁷ Erzberger responded by launching a counter-attack: German steel industrialists had allegedly refused to provide expert advice as long as Erzberger was banning the industrialist Hugo Stinnes from the German delegation. Many left-wing and liberal commentators were shocked by this industrialist attempt at blackmailing the government, and described Erzberger’s speech as a decisive blow to the nationalist Right.²⁸ Over the following days, however, it turned out that Erzberger had misrepresented the situation. Readers of Social Democratic or liberal newspapers learned about this only if they perused the small print of the daily protocols of the National Assembly meetings.²⁹ In right-wing newspapers, on the other hand, articles accusing Erzberger of lying to the Assembly abounded.³⁰ Reactionary newspapers delighted in reprinting an open letter to Erzberger by a conservative Catholic priest, who stated that ‘the better


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part of the German people would welcome the day when you vanish from the political stage’.³¹ By spring 1919, this kind of press attack had turned Erzberger into Germany’s most controversial politician. Outward appearance played a role, too. ‘Many people confess an unconquerable aversion to the physical figure of [Erzberger], although they cannot give reasons for their aversion’, one journalist noted in early March 1919.³² As a small, chubby man with a very full, round face, always good-humoured and smiling, Erzberger was the least likely representative of a nation suffering the consequences of food shortages due to the Allied blockade.³³ Erzberger always ‘looks like someone who has just had a good meal and is now giving [the waiter] a tip’, Harry Graf Kessler noted in his diaries.³⁴ Although photos were still limited to the weekly illustrated supplements which only occasionally showed politicians, Erzberger’s features were well known to Germans by a multitude of caricatures in satirical magazines and supplements. Erzberger’s round, smiling face made him an easy target.³⁵ Like all German politics, right-wing antagonism against Erzberger was further radicalized by the actual peace treaty hammered out at Versailles. The severity of the peace terms received in May 1919 shocked politicians and journalists in equal measures. In Weimar, Germany’s prime minister, the Social Democrat Scheidemann expressed an almost unanimous sentiment when declaring the terms ‘unacceptable’.³⁶ Erzberger, however, did not flinch from his pragmatic line, insisting that outright refusal was a recipe for disaster. Within the Reich cabinet and in his own party, Erzberger was the driving force arguing for a constructive approach towards the Allies.³⁷ None of his activities found their way into the German press in any detail. However, the fact that Erzberger was somehow working against foreign minister Brockdorff-Rantzau, an ardent opponent of the Allied proposal, soon became public knowledge, not least through news on French press reports describing Erzberger as the German politician most willing to sign the peace treaty.³⁸ Even liberal commentators accused him of breaking up the unified ranks against the peace stipulations. ‘Every time over these last weeks after having explained to an Entente envoy that the German government could and would not sign unbearable terms, he would . . . mention the name Erzberger at the end of the conversation, as counterevidence’, noted Theodor Wolff, the chief editor of the liberal Berliner Tageblatt. ‘For all these gentlemen Erzberger was the dagger in the robe, the trump card which one cannot beat.’³⁹ After the resignation of the Scheidemann government on 19 June 1919, Erzberg took the initiative to form a majority coalition willing to sign the peace treaty. Within the new cabinet headed by the Social Democrat Gustav Bauer, Erzberger remained finance minister and vice-chancellor, and was widely perceived as the dominant personality: ‘Cabinet Erzberger, called Bauer’, ran one typical headline.⁴⁰ On 22 June, the National Assembly voted in favour of conditional acceptance. Press commentators from Left to Right blamed Erzberger.

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The nationalist Deutsche Tageszeitung demanded that Erzberger should sign it and that the peace be called ‘Erzberger peace’.⁴¹ Bitterness about Erzberger’s role extended far beyond right-wing circles. One Social Democratic secretary of state told Harry Graf Kessler ‘that if [Erzberger] cannot be removed by other means, he himself would go to him and beat him to death with a club; no jury court would sentence him for such a deed’.⁴² Kessler himself feared that Erzberger would share Liebknecht’s fate, adding in his diary the telling sentence: ‘But not like Liebknecht undeservedly, but self-inflicted by his baneful activity.’⁴³ Kessler’s fears nearly materialized the following day when a group of angry soldiers incited by press agitation very nearly killed Erzberger.⁴⁴ T H E P R E S S C A M PA I G N AG A I N S T E R Z B E RG E R Over the following weeks, newspaper attacks on Erzberger presented him as the personification of defeat, revolution, armistice, Versailles, and democracy. The person primarily responsible for this press campaign was Karl Helfferich, state secretary in the Treasury during the early years of the war, then interior minister and vice-chancellor until November 1917. His antagonism towards Erzberger reached back to 1905–6, when the two had clashed during a campaign against colonial mismanagement directed by Erzberger.⁴⁵ After the ratification of the Versailles peace treaty, Helfferich decided to attack his old opponent personally. As Helfferich was not a member of the National Assembly, the obvious forum for his assaults was the press. He published his articles in Germany’s most elitist newspaper, the staunchly conservative and monarchical Neue Preussische (Kreuz-)Zeitung. Helfferich’s choice of newspaper makes clear that he did not aim to reach a mass audience: the Kreuz-Zeitung, as it was called, had a low circulation of less than ten thousand copies and was predominantly read by the aristocracy, senior civil servants, East Elbian landowners, and conservative politicians. This readership did not need convincing that Erzberger was a stain on Germany’s national honour. But by publishing in one of the capital’s high-profile political papers, Helfferich was able to reach two constituencies of professional newspaper readers which he wanted to provide with argumentative ammunition: journalists and politicians. He knew his attacks would thus be carried into other newspapers and into parliament. In his first article Helfferich explained what he was setting out to do: to reconstruct the events which led to the moral collapse during the war which ‘destroyed our power of resistance, brought us the disarmament which was wrongly called ‘‘armistice’’, which ultimately led to the misery and disgrace of the ‘‘peace’’ of Versailles’.⁴⁶ According to Helfferich, the German disaster originated with the July resolution of 1917. Just when German unrestricted submarine warfare was beginning to yield results and the Entente was getting ready to enter negotiations, Erzberger’s peace initiative conveyed the impression


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of German weakness, strengthened Allied fighting morale, and undermined the German home front. On top of all this, Erzberger’s initiative had allegedly been triggered by the demoralized Austrian foreign minister, Count Czernin. ‘Herr Erzberger stooped to manage the affairs of Vienna politics against his own government’, was Helfferich’s damning conclusion.⁴⁷ Erzberger immediately responded with an article in the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, in which he accused Helfferich of falsifying history. According to his version, the July resolution had been the final opportunity to avert catastrophe. It had been organized in full consultation with the then Reich government, and had not been initiated by Vienna.⁴⁸ Helfferich, in turn, replied in the Kreuz-Zeitung, ending his article by claiming that his intention was to prevent the fatherland from perishing from the ‘cancer Erzberger’.⁴⁹ This was a slogan eagerly picked up by other right-wing newspapers, which now started reprinting Helfferich’s attacks.⁵⁰ It was also the beginning of a press war between Helfferich and Erzberger. Over the next days and weeks, the two sides published numerous articles accusing the other of lying, misrepresenting facts, or obfuscating personal responsibility.⁵¹ Helfferich also attacked Erzberger in his speech at the first party convention of the DNVP, the German Nationalist Party in Berlin, in mid-July 1919, calling him ‘the personification of the evil spirit of the German people’.⁵² His audience responded enthusiastically; there were even voices calling for Erzberger’s hanging. The depth of the anti-Erzberger feeling at the convention was not lost on other senior DNVP politicians. The speaker after Helfferich pronounced it a disgrace to all political parties that Erzberger had so far not been ‘hunted down’ and reaped long and noisy applause for this remark.⁵³ Count Westarp brought down the house by labelling Erzberger a ‘Volksverderber’. Press reports noted ‘several minutes of boisterous applause’ and ‘stormy cries: Dog! Traitor! Scoundrel!’ Encouraged by this response, Westarp called to eliminate Erzberger from the government. Journalists turned his call ‘Away with this person!’ into the more catchy slogan ‘Away with Erzberger!’⁵⁴ Erzberger was convinced that the press attacks on him in mid-July 1919 were at least partly motivated by opposition to his tax reforms which he was presenting to the National Assembly, especially the steep, one-off tax on wealth, the so-called Reichsnotopfer. In his eyes, Helfferich’s recent accusation that he had enriched himself and was guilty of corruption was simply the attempt to discredit the minister responsible for the implementation of these tax proposals.⁵⁵ But he was aware that his personal credibility was at stake. At the end of July, he suffered a major set-back when the right-wing Hamburger Nachrichten published an account by the former German ambassador to Vienna, Wedel, of Erzberger’s trip to Vienna in 1917 which seemed to confirm Helfferich’s accusation of treason. Journalists who had been following the Helfferich–Erzberger press feud over the preceding weeks saw Wedel’s article as a decisive blow to Erzberger, and either reprinted the entire piece or quoted lengthy passages under headlines like ‘Wedel’s accusation against Erzberger’ or ‘Erzberger—the Reich vermin’.⁵⁶

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The next day, these press reports were discussed in the cabinet. They were also taken up in the National Assembly when the German Nationalist Count Graefe launched a furious attack on the revolution and on Erzberger, whom he accused of having acted as if paid by the enemy.⁵⁷ Graefe’s speech relied heavily on a whole variety of newspaper reports which he quoted as evidence for the points he was making. The speech left a great impression; even some left-wing observers considered it a ‘rhetorical success’.⁵⁸ But Erzberger managed to win the debate, not least by his sensational revelation that the Right had prevented an earlier peace by sabotaging a previously undisclosed British peace initiative in late summer 1917. The German collapse was not the result of the revolution, Erzberger proclaimed, but the outcome of the incompetence in foreign and domestic policy of the Conservatives and the Supreme Army Command.⁵⁹ The clash between Graefe and Erzberger in the National Assembly was given front-page treatment throughout the German press. It was not just the personalization of the conflict which attracted media attention. The issues under debate were the reasons for Germany’s defeat and the role of the revolution at the end of the war. But depending on the political orientation of their newspapers, readers in Berlin and in the rest of Germany were given completely different interpretations. The liberal press which had previously been highly sceptical of Erzberger now realized that right-wing attacks on his person were inextricably linked to a wholesale condemnation of the new republic.⁶⁰ They now reported on the parliamentary debate with headlines announcing ‘Erzberger’s indictment speech’ or ‘Erzberger’s victory over the German Nationalists’.⁶¹ Leftwing newspapers, too, interpreted Erzberger’s speech as an effective assault on the nationalist camp, and considered his revelations a comprehensive indictment of the old elites.⁶² This was not the view of the right-wing press. ‘Herr Erzberger and the government press declare unanimously that the revolution was the daughter of defeat, not its mother’, a right-wing commentary summarized the ideological differences.⁶³ In the Kreuz-Zeitung, Helfferich scoffed at Erzberger’s ‘revelation’ and claimed that his opponent had made up the British peace initiative in order to divert attention from the disastrous effect of his 1917 July peace resolution. In reality, the British peace initiative was nothing but the British reply to the failed papal peace initiative of August 1917.⁶⁴ Over the following days, press coverage of the debate triggered reactions from those involved in German foreign policy in 1917 which again contradicted Erzberger’s account and confirmed Helfferich’s position. Articles about Erzberger’s duplicity and lying abounded in the right-wing press, and the Tägliche Rundschau demanded that Erzberger be put on trial before a state court.⁶⁵ The people most aware of this clash of interpretations were journalists themselves. ‘The right-wing press which consists of many papers in Berlin with few readers seeks by all means to obfuscate the devastating effect of Erzberger’s revelations’, commented the Social Democratic Vorwärts. ‘It clings to rehashing quotes from Graefe’s speech and thereby tries by lying to turn the assault


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on Pan Germans into a confrontation with Erzberger, the government or the revolution.’⁶⁶ The nationalist Deutsche Tageszeitung presented the opposite case by criticizing what it called a left-wing ‘deception of the people’: ‘Vorwärts and the majority of the left-wing press are publishing victory articles about the [recent] debate. The defeat of the ‘‘Pan Germans’’ is said to be a devastating one . . . The ‘‘people’’ will believe this, of course, because their newspapers say so, their account of parliamentary discussions is fragmentary and misleading, and in any case, only a very small part of the readership of the left-wing press is reading through and following the entire debates, or even tries to get to know the statements of oppositional parliamentarians by reading their complete accounts in other newspapers.’⁶⁷ Politicians, too, were aware of the limited readership and the biased nature of parliamentary reports reprinted in the daily press. This was one of the reasons why the Social Democrats pushed a motion through the National Assembly to have Erzberger’s speech publicized by the government in the form of millions of posters throughout Germany.⁶⁸ Right-wing politicians demanded that Graefe’s speech should be added in order to allow citizens to make up their own minds. When this failed, the DNVP placed advertisements in the provincial press proclaiming that the statements in Erzberger’s speech had been proven wrong.⁶⁹ In Berlin, the nationalist Tägliche Rundschau advertised reprints of Graefe’s speech to counter the government initiative.⁷⁰ Helfferich, too, continued to publish articles against Erzberger. He picked up the idea of the Tägliche Rundschau of putting Erzberger on trial, by declaring that he considered him guilty of high treason. He announced that through his personal attacks he was hoping to trigger a court case by which Erzberger would be forced to give evidence under oath.⁷¹ Encouraged by the press resonance, Helfferich repeated his intention of bringing Erzberger to trial in various articles in early August 1919, and he challenged the government to take legal actions against his claim that Erzberger was a typical example of the new political-parliamentary corruption.⁷² This challenge was widely reported throughout the German press. Helfferich increased the pressure by having his entire article series collected in a brochure entitled Fort mit Erzberger!, ‘Away with Erzberger!’ It was published by Hugenberg’s Scherl publishing house, in a series which provided a right-wing view of the end of the war, the home front, and the revolution.⁷³ Helfferich sent the brochure to Reich President Ebert, accompanied by an open letter published by many newspapers in which he explained that he thereby wanted to force legal action against himself.⁷⁴ The cabinet now decided to react and opened criminal procedures. News of this decision was greeted in the Kreuz-Zeitung with the headline ‘Finally’.⁷⁵ It is impossible to establish just how closely the average German newspaper reader followed events around the Erzberger controversy. There can be no doubt, however, that anyone taking the slightest interest in politics at this time was aware of the conflict. Many caricatures visualized Erzberger as the villain in the story. In early August 1919, Kladderadatsch showed the finance minister

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Fig. 2.1. The right-wing satirical magazine Kladderadatsch was at the forefront of the press campaign against Erzberger. In 31, 3 August 1919 it presented him as the person who had encaged the German eagle, with the caption ‘Mr. Erzbergère’ labelling him as the representative of Anglo-French interests.


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smiling and rubbing his hands, standing next to a cage with the Reich eagle in chains, under the heading ‘Mr. Erzbergère.’⁷⁶ Many nationalist journalists now followed Helfferich’s example and published anti-Erzberger brochures, reworking material from their own newspaper clipping collections.⁷⁷ Liberal and left-wing newspapers spoke of a ‘witch hunt’ against Erzberger initiated by right-wing parties and newspapers.⁷⁸ Reports of political rallies in right-wing newspapers provide an idea of the extent to which Erzberger had become an easy target for oppositional orators throughout Germany.⁷⁹ When Helfferich gave a speech at a DNVP rally in Paderborn later that month, attendance was such that hundreds of people were unable to find seats.⁸⁰ In Upper Bavaria, the Tägliche Rundschau enthusiastically reported to its readers, a mock ‘people’s court’ had sentenced Erzberger to death for high treason and burned his effigy at a giant stake.⁸¹ E R Z B E RG E R O N T R I A L Wherever an anti-Erzberger report appeared anywhere in the far-flung reaches of the German press, nationalist journalists could be relied upon to reprint it in their own papers.⁸² By summer 1919, this right-wing focus on Erzberger had succeeded in constructing a scapegoat responsible for all major national ills. Erzberger was the negative symbol of integration for an imagined community of nationalist newspaper readers convinced that defeat in war had not been inevitable. Long before Hindenburg made his appearance in the parliamentary investigation committee in November 1919, the right-wing press had worked out a detailed and not implausible history of the ‘stab in the back’. Hindenburg’s statement mainly helped to coin and popularize a catchy right-wing slogan to sell this storyline to a mass audience. It also heightened expectations regarding Erzberger’s libel action against Helfferich. After the furious debate caused by Hindenburg’s pronouncement, it was widely expected that the court case would finally establish the validity of the ‘stab-in-the back’ argument by investigating the moral credibility of Erzberger. Indeed, when the court convened in January 1920, the popular view was that it was not Helfferich but Erzberger who was on trial, a view which right-wing newspapers tried to encourage through their choice of headlines.⁸³ Helfferich’s strategy further reinforced this view: in the first session he declared he would deliver proof of the truth for the accusations that he made in his brochure Fort mit Erzberger! which allowed him to take an active and aggressive role throughout the trial. His first speech at the trial was published as a pamphlet by the DNVP and distributed to the press in advance.⁸⁴ Throughout the trial Helfferich briefed nationalist journalists prior to the individual sessions, to make sure his main points would receive maximum press attention.⁸⁵ Court reporting on the Erzberger–Helfferich trial dominated press coverage of domestic politics from mid-January to mid-March 1920, until the pronouncement of the judgement. To some extent, this media preoccupation was

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the result of a long press tradition which had taken shape over the course of the nineteenth century. At a time of limited parliamentary representation, law courts had emerged as one of the main constituents of the public sphere. Also, the drama, conflict, and human-interest potential inherent in crime and legal retribution had turned police news and court reporting into one of the major selling points of the emerging mass press.⁸⁶ Although it is impossible in the case of the Erzberger–Helfferich trial to ascertain how many readers perused the many columns of trial proceedings, general interest seems to have been great. Court sessions were public, and both auditorium and gallery were regularly ‘very crowded’, as the Kreuz-Zeitung noted.⁸⁷ There was no doubt that the sessions had a significant entertainment value. Already in the first few days, Helfferich presented numerous witnesses who testified on Erzberger’s rapid conversion in 1917 from enthusiastic annexationist as a member of the Thyssen supervisory board, to ardent opponent of the annexationist Pan Germans once he had left Thyssen’s service. More compromising still, Helfferich presented evidence that in July 1917, when Erzberger had initiated the anti-annexationist peace resolution, he was at the same time organizing—still an employee of Thyssen—a press campaign calling for the annexation of the Belgian iron ore basin of LongwyBriey. At first glance, Helfferich’s argument that some of Erzberger’s activities were directly linked to his own financial interests appeared plausible, especially to those who were eager to have their prejudice confirmed that Erzberger was, indeed, corrupt.⁸⁸ At the end of the fourth day of hearings, one of the spectators went up to Erzberger’s car and shot him twice. Erzberger was lucky to survive: one bullet was deflected by his golden watch chain, the other only wounded his right shoulder. The assassin, Oltwig von Hirschfeld, was a 20-year-old demobilized officer candidate, a subscriber of Hugenberg’s right-wing Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, and an avid newspaper-reader.⁸⁹ In a first reaction, the Reich government declared that the bloody deed would have been impossible ‘without the senseless and irresponsible baiting which has been carried out against the Reich Finance Minister over the last months and especially these last days.’⁹⁰ Catholic, left-wing, and liberal newspapers were equally quick to accuse the right-wing press of having incited to murder.⁹¹ They had no trouble quoting from a multitude of articles from Deutsche Zeitung, Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, Tägliche Rundschau, Deutsche Tageszeitung, and Post —incidentally all Berlinbased papers—to provide evidence for the ‘Erzberger baiting’ that had prepared the ground for the assassination attempt.⁹² Unsurprisingly, most nationalist journalists rejected the charge and pointed out that the Right had a great interest in keeping Erzberger alive so that he would have to live through the entire trial.⁹³ The Kreuz-Zeitung was the only major paper to admit that without the right-wing press campaign against Erzberger the crime would probably not have happened.⁹⁴ Commentaries in the provincial press were often more straightforward. ‘Among many who hate this man with a passion, news of the


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assassination attempt on Erzberger will have triggered if not a happy, than at least a hopeful interest: is he dead?’, wrote the Arnswalder Anzeiger, a nationalist district paper in Pommerania. ‘And an expression of . . . undisguised disappointment will have appeared on many faces upon the report that apparently the injury is only slight and there is no fear for the life of the Minister.’⁹⁵ This was an accurate observation. In his diaries, the linguist Victor Klemperer noted an encounter with a young female student who was enthusiastic about the attempt on Erzberger’s life. She only regretted the fact that he had survived.⁹⁶ The trial of Hirschfeld highlighted the extent to which right-wing press publications had motivated the young assassin. Erzberger had been working against the welfare of the people, Hirschfeld declared, he had participated in stabbing the German Front in the back, and he was corrupt. When asked by the judge about his sources for these claims Hirschfeld referred to newspapers and Helfferich’s brochure, Fort mit Erzberger!⁹⁷ He was not the only one whose negative image of Erzberger had been shaped by the press. His mother testified that the family had received numerous letters praising her son for his deed.⁹⁸ Hirschfeld eventually received a light sentence, eighteen months in prison, because the jury believed his claim that he had only wanted to injure Erzberger to force him to lay down his political offices. The outcome of the Hirschfeld trial in late February 1920 was overshadowed by a new anti-Erzberger initiative. An editor of the right-wing Deutsche Zeitung had somehow obtained copies of Erzberger’s tax file, which he tried to publish as a brochure. When the police intervened and confiscated the manuscript prior to publication, he passed on the material to the right-wing Hamburger Nachrichten. That paper was then able to publish extracts from Erzberger’s private tax declaration which it contrasted with information about his income which had come to light during the Helfferich trial. At first glance, there seemed little doubt that the Reich finance minister had been evading income tax for several years.⁹⁹ Many other right-wing newspapers, both in Berlin and in the provinces, had been provided with advance information so that they were able to quote extensively from the Hamburg article in their Sunday editions.¹⁰⁰ It was a thoroughly planned press attack meant to bolster Helfferich’s position in the ongoing libel trial. It caused a major sensation: Erzberger, who had preached the strictest tax morals ever since he had become finance minister, was apparently exposed as a fraud and a hypocrite. Two days later, Erzberger took the only possible action left to him: he asked Reich President Ebert for leave from his office as finance minister, and at the same time demanded a comprehensive investigation of his personal tax affairs.¹⁰¹ In early March 1920, the Helfferich trial ended with a resounding defeat for Erzberger. Although Helfferich was found guilty in some minor cases of formal slander and sentenced to a fine of RM 300, the judge declared Helfferich’s attempt to provide evidence to support his accusations as largely successful. Erzberger was found responsible in a number of cases of improper acts, the incorrect fusion of

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political activities with personal financial interests, and of lying under oath. The judge summarized his view of Erzberger in a widely quoted statement: ‘[Erzberger] is a man of undoubted talent, exemplary industriousness, admirable memory, great energy and extraordinary activism, but on the other hand of deplorable lack of judgement and an almost surprising incorrectness in all things.’¹⁰² The next day Erzberger resigned from government. Not surprisingly, right-wing journalists were jubilant. Hugenberg’s Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger celebrated the ‘liberation from Erzberger’; the Tägliche Rundschau declared on its front page that Erzberger had been sentenced to political death, but also expressed its concern that Erzberger may yet come back: ‘One cannot beat to death an Erzberger in one go.’¹⁰³ These were to prove prophetic words. In fact, Erzberger immediately set out to rehabilitate himself. He instigated proceedings against himself to counter the judge’s statement that he had lied in court. In summer 1921, the investigation was terminated with the result that the available evidence did not suffice for a trial for perjury. Similarly, a thorough examination of Erzberger’s income tax declarations concluded in August 1921 that, apart from minor mistakes owing to the complicated tax system during the war, there was no evidence for systematic tax evasion.¹⁰⁴ These findings were to be of little benefit to Erzberger. His reputation was thoroughly ruined by the press coverage of the Helfferich trial. Even the sympathetic Social Democratic Vorwärts noted on the day of the judgement that ‘the trial has been followed by millions of people, and they have formed their own opinion on the issues that have been brought up. . . . Public opinion concerning Erzberger after this trial is unfavourable, this much has to be openly admitted.’¹⁰⁵ The right-wing star columnist Adolf Stein exploited the prevalent anti-Erzberger sentiment by publishing the entire set of his tendentious trial reports for the Tägliche Rundschau as a book.¹⁰⁶ Among nationalists, Erzberger was now firmly established as Germany’s bête noire. One Heinrich Schulz, member of a Free Corps unit during the right-wing Kapp putsch, described the mood of contempt in a statement made many years later. ‘During my membership to the Navy Brigade Ehrhardt . . . whenever I talked to a comrade we often railed against Erzberger. In our circles he was the best-hated person.’¹⁰⁷ Schulz also recalled the proliferation of anti-Erzberger information available, through the massive press coverage of the libel trial in the right-wing press and through numerous pamphlets distributed at völkisch rallies in late 1920. ‘[A]fter everything that I had heard about Erzberger’, Schulz concluded, ‘I considered him a very dodgy personality, yes even a first-class enemy of the people.’¹⁰⁸ Schulz’s view was eventually to have lethal consequences for Erzberger. However, public condemnation of Erzberger was far from unanimous. Catholic newspapers, like the Centre party organ, Germania, staunchly defended Erzberger against right-wing attacks, a fact repeatedly noted and criticized by journalists on the political Right. The audacity of the press campaign against Erzberger reminded Catholic journalists of Bismarck’s anti-Catholic campaign during the


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Fig. 2.2. The fact that the Catholic Centre party organ, Germania, kept defending Erzberger even after his resounding defeat at the Helfferich libel trial attracted a great deal of right-wing polemics. In this caricature in Kladderadatsch from 7 March 1920, entitled ‘A good soul’, a Catholic nun clad in newsaper issues of Germania comforts the crying Erzberger after the beating he has received. The caption reads: ‘This child, no angel is as pure . . . ’.

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1870s and 1880s, and they instinctively closed ranks. Grass-root support in his home region, Swabia, was equally strong. In May 1920 he received an overwhelming endorsement by delegates at the Wurttembergian Centre party convention to lead the regional party into the imminent Reichstag elections.¹⁰⁹ They had no reason to regret this decision. At the elections in June 1920, the Centre party in Wurttemberg managed to improve on its 1919 performance, against the Reich trend, to achieve its best result during the years of the Weimar Republic.¹¹⁰ By contrast, in Berlin, the centre of the anti-Erzberger press campaign, every third voter who had backed the Centre party in 1919 now switched to another party.¹¹¹ Of course, this was not simply the result of the right-wing smear campaign, but part of a wider rejection of liberal and republican parties by the German middle classes in the wake of the Versailles Treaty and Ruhr uprising. But for a considerable number of voters the nationalist depiction of Erzberger, the scapegoat, was plausible enough to opt for one of the right-wing parties. C L I M AT E O F H AT E In summer 1921, when investigations declared Erzberger innocent of tax evasion and perjury, Erzberger prepared his comeback onto the political stage.¹¹² Rightwing newspapers responded immediately with new anti-Erzberger headlines.¹¹³ ‘Today, no name triggers reactions as quickly and as violently like the name Erzberger’, observed the official Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. ‘On both sides, the name Erzberger has become a fighting slogan.’¹¹⁴ Indeed, by mid-August, the struggle against Erzberger once more dominated the pages of the nationalist press. ‘So the fight against Erzberger continues’, the Deutsche Tageszeitung declared in a front-page commentary. ‘[I]t is a duty of the German people, now more than ever. Because Erzberger’s aims . . . are the undoing of Germany. They are: the surrender of Reich and Prussia to the Social Democrats and the Independent [Socialists], i.e. the eternalization of our disorganization, our weakness and disgrace . . . Killing of any national self-determination, total submission to France . . . [H]e is the enemy of the new ascent and renaissance of the entire German people.’¹¹⁵ It was this kind of press attack which was to cost Erzberger his life. One of his murderers, Heinrich Tillessen, referred to an anti-Erzberger article in the National Socialist Völkischer Beobachter when describing Erzberger as a ‘disgusting traitor of the fatherland’ in March 1921.¹¹⁶ Like Tillessen, the exFree Corps member, Schulz also considered Erzberger ‘the most dangereous enemy of the German people’, a view which he based on his reading of the rightwing daily press.¹¹⁷ Both Tillessen and Schulz were members of a right-wing terrorist group, the so-called ‘Organisation Consul’. ‘Beat Erzberger to death’, was the summary of another member of that group of the general sentiment within extremist circles.¹¹⁸ The order to eliminate Erzberger which Tillessen and


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Schulz received in early August 1921 was later described by them as the ‘vital spark’ which allowed them to release their pent-up anger and aggression against Erzberger.¹¹⁹ On 26 August 1921, they sought out Erzberger in a small village in the Black Forest where he was spending his holiday with his family and shot him dead.¹²⁰ The perpetrators managed to escape abroad, and the background to the murder was only solved after the Second World War. Among republicans at the time, however, there was no doubt as to the cause of the murder. The Centre party organ, Germania, described Erzberger as a victim of the right-wing press campaign: ‘Over these last years, whatever misfortune and sorry events there were for the German people, the papers of the [political] Right, [like] the Kreuzzeitung, the Deutsche Zeitung, the Deutsche Tageszeitung and whatever the names of these scandal sheets of DNVP propaganda may be, masterfully managed to associate all this with the name Erzberger.’¹²¹ The Social Democratic Vorwärts, too, accused the two right-wing parties DVP and DNVP and their press as morally responsible. ‘Against no man in Germany has there been a more indecent and sordid campaign than against the murdered Erzberger’, the SPD organ wrote. ‘The evil trustee [of German defeat] became the scapegoat: rather than despising Ludendorff and his clique, the misled German bourgeoisie clamoured that Erzberger was ‘‘the traitor’’.’¹²² The liberal Vossische Zeitung focused its criticism on Helfferich and other right-wing journalists: ‘Whoever browses through the newspaper volumes of the last years is shocked by the extent with which energy and unscrupulousness were spent to ruin one individual person . . . Never before did anything similar happen in [the history of] the German Reich.’¹²³ And in Mosse’s Berliner Volks-Zeitung, Carl von Ossietzky described Erzberger as a ‘martyr testifying to the dreadful influence of the press, a warning to every German journalist not to abuse the power which they have in their hands’.¹²⁴ Right-wing journalists in Berlin rejected all these accusations, distanced themselves from political murder, and criticized what they considered the partypolitical exploitation of the crime.¹²⁵ Only the völkisch Deutsches Tageblatt voiced sympathy for the deed under the headline ‘Mitigating circumstances’: ‘This man was a real traitor, one of those responsible for the stab in the back of 1918 and ever since . . . The state’s legal system failed in his respect. It is no excuse, but from a historical perspective it is just natural that the judge Lynch appeared on the stage.’¹²⁶ In the provinces, right-wing journalists were equally outspoken. Many editors voiced their relief that Erzberger was now unable to cause further harm. The Oletzkoer Zeitung in East Prussia, for example, stated that Erzberger had met the fate ‘which most nationalist-minded Germans wished for him’, and that he had received the punishment which he deserved as a traitor of the fatherland.¹²⁷ The anti-Semitic Volksstimme in Nuremberg was even more damning. ‘To devote a word of regret to the end of this unprincipled adventurer would constitute the basest hypocrisy . . . To be dragged on a cow hide to the place of execution, there to be branded with a red-hot iron and hanged from the

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highest gallows: that would have been the death which Erzberger deserved.’¹²⁸ These views were shared among many nationalists. Reading an extra-edition announcing Erzberger’s death, put up on a wall on Unter den Linden in Berlin, the Social Democratic Reichstag President Paul Löbe overheard the following comments: ‘That’s it, he won’t cause further damage anymore.’ To which a woman replied: ‘That’s what ought to happen to all revolutionaries.’¹²⁹ Liberal and democratic newspapers reported of numerous similar expressions of bourgeois approval. Of course, these sentiments were far from universal. Erzberger’s murder also triggered vast articulations of republican solidarity. Throughout Germany, Social Democrats and Communists staged huge and sometimes violent demonstrations against what they saw as the first step towards a reactionary coup d’état.¹³⁰ Polemics against right-wing parties in the socialist press reached fever pitch and were described by the nationalist Tägliche Rundschau as a ‘prelude to civil war’.¹³¹ Partly in response to these demonstrations and press polemics, but mainly as a reaction to the Erzberger murder, President Friedrich Ebert declared a state of emergency, and issued a decree against the ‘boundless instigation and the brutalization of the public mores’.¹³² Yet government efforts to combat anti-republican propaganda soon ran out of steam.¹³³ The state of emergency was lifted in December 1921. It was only after the assassination of the foreign minister, Walther Rathenau, in summer 1922 that a Law for the Protection of the Republic was finally passed. With this law, republicans hoped to be able to reign in the destructive power of the press. Not only did this prove to be largely unsuccessful, it also established a dangerous precedent of press censorship which was to have bitter consequences in the early 1930s. The stipulations of the Law for the Protection of the Republic regarding press publications make clear that the government was primarily worried about articles which might result in physical attacks on individual members of the cabinet. This reflected politicians’ sense of vulnerability in the face of a partisan and violently polemical press. Their solution was ultimately a return to an old instrument of state control, namely censorship. But outright press incitement to murder or to topple the current government by means of violence continued to be the exception rather than the rule. Partisan journalists had numerous ways in which politics and politicians could be framed and presented which allowed readers to draw their own, more radical, conclusions. The Law for the Protection of the Republic was unable to control the real political influence of the press, namely its agenda-setting role and the biased provision (or keeping back) of ‘news’. As a tool of press politics, the Law for the Protection of the Republic was ultimately inadequate because it underestimated the complexity of press dynamics. The press campaigns against Erzberger and later Rathenau convinced democrats that the primary task was to restrain individual journalists and editors. But excessive and violent polemics was not the main problem. Even if the


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Law for the Protection of the Republic had been in place from 1919 onwards, Erzberger would still have been turned into a negative symbol of integration for the nationalist Right. It was the collective partisan focus on certain aspects of his political activities, in a multitude of local and regional newspapers, which gave Erzberger the prominence—and the reputation—which was to cost him his life. Erzberger knew that anything he initiated as Reich finance minister would be presented by a significant part of the German press as the work of the individual allegedly responsible for the German defeat, the humiliating terms of the armistice, and the acceptance of the Treaty of Versailles. Erzberger’s decision to sue Helfferich for libel was an action of last resort, a desperate attempt to safeguard the bare minimum of political legitimacy needed for public office. He probably thought that a ruling in his favour would forestall the worst excesses of press polemics regarding his personality. Instead, the trial proceedings allowed his opponent Helfferich to exploit the mechanisms inherent in the media machine. The trial’s production of ‘news’, the confrontational nature of the proceedings, the apparent attempt at revealing closely guarded and controversial ‘secrets’, the in-built tension between accusations, denials, and the promise of resolution in form of the ultimate judgement—in other words, the spectacle inherent in the judicial process—guaranteed that Erzberger stayed at the centre of public scrutiny for a significant amount of time.¹³⁴ For Erzberger, the combination of right-wing press attacks and a conservative judiciary unsympathetic to the new political regime resulted in a public relations fiasco. Erzberger’s political career was destroyed, and when he managed to extricate himself from the legal implications of the trial’s outcome, and was about to re-enter Reich politics, he fell victim to the political climate created by press narratives which portrayed him as Germany’s greatest evil. R I S I N G F RO M O B S C U R I T Y Yet Erzberger’s fate should not be taken as evidence that the political significance of the press was based primarily on its potential to destroy political careers. Media prominence gained through a political trial did not necessarily have to be of a negative nature. The sudden concentration of press interest on one particular political player could equally well result in the creation of a new national appeal. Adolf Hitler is a good case in point. The press played a crucial role in transforming him into a right-wing celebrity. But not only did press coverage transform him into a leading national figure, it also changed his self-perception and ambitions. When and how did this extremist rise out of obscurity, and what was the public image constructed by the press? Ironically, Erzberger played an important part in Hitler’s very early career. Hitler joined the extremist Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (German Workers’ Party), the precursor of the

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NSDAP, in September 1919.¹³⁵ He quickly established himself as the party’s most effective orator, not least by passionate speeches against the Versailles Peace Treaty in which ‘Erzberger, the Jew’ served as the main culprit.¹³⁶ Throughout 1920 and 1921, Erzberger featured in numerous of Hitler’s speeches as ‘scoundrel’, ‘national criminal’, and ‘traitor’, always to the delight of the assembled crowd.¹³⁷ From surviving notes for his speeches, as well as police and newspaper reports, it is clear that Hitler’s attacks on Erzberger were more or less directly modelled on the right-wing press campaign.¹³⁸ After Erzberger’s murder, Hitler caused a small scandal in Munich by staging a big anti-Erzberger rally in the Hofbräuhaus beer hall. Posters advertising the event claimed that Hitler would talk about Erzberger with ‘appropriate reverence’; in fact, as the Völkischer Beobachter noted with satisfaction, Hitler spoke ‘in a drastic manner’ about Erzberger’s career, ‘his ‘‘parliamentary’’ activities, his ‘‘business sense’’, his dishonourable behaviour in Compiègne, [and] his treason of the German people . . . ’.¹³⁹ The event attracted a large crowd, including many tourists.¹⁴⁰ At this point in time, Hitler was able to draw and entertain audiences of several thousand people in Munich. But outside Bavaria he was still completely unknown. This lack of media presence decisively shaped Hitler’s political strategy. In summer 1922, he rejected a parliamentary strategy because he realized that the National Socialists stood not the slightest prospect of success at the Reichstag elections anywhere outside Munich.¹⁴¹ Even if some National Socialists were able to make it into parliament, the lack of press coverage would render them ineffective. There was no justification for parliamentary opposition in its own right, Hitler claimed: ‘The effectiveness of critique is only given the moment when this critique is presented in the forum of the public sphere. In our case that is entirely impossible.’ It was ‘childish’ to expect the enemy press which ‘constitutes public opinion these days’ to cover National Socialist parliamentary activity: ‘After all we have experienced how in a city like Munich the entire press from left to right keeps a deadly silence about our enormous mass rallies which are unrivalled by any other party.’¹⁴² Hitler’s complaint about being ignored by journalists was not entirely justified. At least in Munich, the Social Democratic Münchner Post regularly commented on, and attacked, the National Socialist movement.¹⁴³ But outside Munich most Germans at this time were blissfully unaware of Hitler’s existence. In Berlin, the two bestselling newspapers, the liberal Berliner Morgenpost and the right-wing Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, contained no news of Hitler’s National Socialists throughout most of 1922. Even the Nazi propaganda highlight of 1922, the ‘German Day’ in Coburg where hundreds of SA men clashed with socialist opponents in mid-October, found no mention in Berlin’s mass papers. News of the negotiations about reparations payments, the partition of Upper Silesia, the resignations of the French government under Briand in January, and of the British prime minister, Lloyd


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George, in October, all this was of considerably greater interest to the average German newspaper reader than the activities of an extremist Bavarian splinter party. P U TS C H S TO R I E S In fact, it was through foreign political developments that the National Socialists first moved into the limelight. At the end of October 1922, Mussolini ordered 40,000 of his paramilitary followers, the so-called ‘Blackshirts’, to march on Rome. Faced with this fascist uprising, the Italian king appointed Mussolini prime minister. These events constituted front-page news and received extraordinary coverage in the German press. After their own experience of a failed right-wing coup in 1920, German editors took a keen interest in these Italian developments. For days, newspapers reported of the progress of the uprising, Mussolini’s arrival in Rome, his meeting with the king, the composition of his government, and the victory parade in early November.¹⁴⁴ The existence of a successful anti-socialist mass movement had an intrinsic news value particularly for nationalist journalists. ‘Fascism—what is it?’ opened a typical article giving background information on the novel movement in the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger.¹⁴⁵ Dissatisfaction with the perceived inefficiency of parliamentary democracy in Germany was evident in the way in which the right-wing press treated the emergence of a strong leader in Italy. The Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger devoted a front-page leader to Mussolini’s first government speech, under the headline ‘Dictator and parliament’.¹⁴⁶ There was not the slightest doubt that the correspondent sympathized with Mussolini and that he considered parliamentarism an outdated political system. Hitler and his movement benefited enormously from the media interest in these Italian events. Certain parallels between fascists and National Socialists were immediately obvious even to the most cursory observer. National Socialists themselves began to recommend a fascist-style march on Berlin, and compared Hitler with Mussolini.¹⁴⁷ In Munich, an increasing number of people were now curious to experience Hitler in action. National Socialist rallies in November and December 1922 were overflowing with participants; parallel rallies had to be staged to accommodate the crowds.¹⁴⁸ This sudden popular appeal resulted in a great deal of media interest, which in turn further increased Hitler’s popularity. ‘There are a lot of people who believe him to be the German Mussolini’, noted the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger in its first front-page commentary on Hitler. ‘Even those who have never heard him [speak] get to know so much about him that he has become the subject of conversations in all classes.’¹⁴⁹ The first article about Hitler in the Ullstein tabloid BZ am Mittag made fun of his rabid anti-Semitism, but also carried the suggestive headline ‘Hitler–Mussolini’.¹⁵⁰

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Politicians now started to take Hitler serious, too. On 15 November 1922, the Prussian interior minister banned the NSDAP in Prussia.¹⁵¹ The following week, Social Democrats initiated a discussion in the Bavarian state parliament about the increasing National Socialist violence, a fact now deemed newsworthy even by Berlin’s mass papers.¹⁵² Mussolini’s coup d’état put Hitler on the map of German politics. But right from the beginning, his public image was very controversial. Journalistic presentation of Hitler was decisively shaped by the partisan approach to politics which prevailed in the German press. One liberal correspondent in Munich peppered his first account of the National Socialists and Hitler with terms which left no doubt as to his personal views: these ‘Fascistolini’ were a ‘bunch of thieves’ characterized by ‘cowardly violence’ and a ‘pronounced dislike of any kind of thinking’; Hitler a ‘cockalorum’ with the popularity of a ‘provincial actor whose gimmicks delight the female theatre subscribers every time anew’.¹⁵³ That same week, the right-wing Kreuz-Zeitung devoted its first front-page article to the National Socialist movement and praised Hitler’s ‘extraordinary eloquence and the intoxicating drive of his personality’, the ‘fanatical love for his fatherland, his glowing idealism, his rock-solid belief in his ideas, his ruthless spirit of the offensive against everything halfhearted and tepid, in short the peculiar mixture of apostolic and soldierly nature’.¹⁵⁴ The degree of politicization of a newspaper did not only determine the quality of coverage, but also the quantity. The bestselling Berliner Morgenpost, for example, with its emphasis on local news and entertainment, paid little attention to Hitler. In January 1923 the high drama of the French occupation of the Ruhr area dominated its political section. A Nazi mass rally in Munich at which Hitler railed against the present government and the so-called ‘November criminals’ in front of a crowd of over 10,000 was left unreported. In contrast, other Berlin papers like the liberal Berliner Tageblatt called the meeting a ‘public scandal’, and the official Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung drew its readers’ attention to it with the headline ‘Hitler’s song of hate’.¹⁵⁵ In mid-January Hitler’s increasing radicalism caused rumours in Munich that the National Socialists were preparing a putsch. The Social Democratic Vorwärts, sensitized by the local SPD paper Münchener Post, devoted several articles to these rumours; as did several other left-liberal newspapers.¹⁵⁶ Readers of Ullstein’s Berliner Morgenpost, on the other hand, were left uninformed. Only in late January, when the Bavarian government declared a state of emergency two days before the first National Socialist Reich party rally did the threat of a Nazi coup in Munich make front-page news in this mass paper, too.¹⁵⁷ Hugenberg’s nationalist Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger also chose to ignore the putsch rumours, though primarily out of right-wing sympathy. When the National Socialists were unexpectedly given permission to hold their rallies despite the state of emergency, the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger concentrated its sparse coverage on the fact that the Nazi events took place without any incidents.¹⁵⁸ Newspapers more critical towards the National Socialists devoted considerably


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more space to what they considered a scandalous turn of events, not least in view of the fact that Social Democratic demonstrations remained forbidden under the state of emergency.¹⁵⁹ This pattern of coverage remained constant throughout most of 1923. Those newspapers which had covered the putsch rumours in mid-January also reported of Nazi provocations in mid-July and the subsequent debate about a pending civil war; those who had refrained from doing so in January also ignored the news in July.¹⁶⁰ Socialist and Communist newspapers devoted most coverage to the National Socialists, always with a negative slant.¹⁶¹ In the eyes of right-wing observers, this only added to Hitler’s appeal. ‘By now, Adolf Hitler is surrounded by legends, and people who come to Munich from outside are burning to see this famous or notorious man, depending on the position of their favourite newspaper’, declared one right-wing publication in summer 1923.¹⁶² According to the anti-Semitic Deutsches Tageblatt, Hitler was ‘loved fanatically by hundreds of thousands, and passionately hated by millions’.¹⁶³ This was undoubtedly an exaggeration aimed at glorifying Hitler. In fact, most Germans, especially those reading provincial newspapers, knew very little about Hitler and probably cared even less. From February 1923, a number of articles appeared throughout the provincial press carrying headlines like ‘Who is Adolf Hitler?’, but it is rather unlikely that these stirred up any great emotions.¹⁶⁴ Seen in relation to the political context of Ruhr occupation and hyper-inflation, the occasional article on the National Socialists can hardly have left a deep impression. Only within Communist propaganda did the Nazis establish a permanent presence because from winter 1922–23 the KPD leadership began to concentrate on what it called the ‘fascist threat’.¹⁶⁵ At the end of September 1923 Hitler made front-page news briefly, again based on rumours of a pending National Socialist putsch. The Bavarian government responded by declaring a state of emergency and by appointing the monarchist Gustav von Kahr as general state commissar, turning him into the ‘Bavarian dictator’, as the Berliner Morgenpost announced in its headlines.¹⁶⁶ Press attention quickly turned away from Hitler when tensions rose between Munich and Berlin because Kahr refused to submit to the national state of emergency declared by the Reich government. Throughout October, relations between Bavaria and the Reich became increasingly hostile and seemed on the brink of an armed confrontation at the end of the month. Kahr and the commander of the Bavarian military, Lossow, actively prepared a Mussolini-style ‘march on Berlin’.¹⁶⁷ In early November, Berlin newspapers were full of reports of right-wing paramilitary troops gathering at the Bavarian–Thuringian border ready to strike under the direction of the former Free Corps commander Ehrhardt.¹⁶⁸ Despite the general awareness that a right-wing coup was in the offing, Hitler’s decision to force Kahr’s hand by launching a putsch on 8 November still came as a surprise to most observers. Over the preceding weeks, Hitler had completely receded into the background of Bavarian politics. With his action in

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the Bürgerbräu beer hall in Munich, Hitler forced himself onto the front page of every German newspaper on 9 November 1923.¹⁶⁹ Later that day, special and evening editions in Berlin reported the sensational news that Kahr and Lossow, who first appeared to be part of the coup, had switched sides and were now opposing Hitler and Ludendorff.¹⁷⁰ The following day, readers learned that both Hitler and Ludendorff had been arrested and the putsch put down by the military. In their first reactions, commentators from left to right dismissed the coup as a laughable event; Hugenberg’s Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger spoke of a ‘spook’, the Berliner Tageblatt called it a ‘buffonery’, and the Berliner Volk-Zeitung described it as a ‘carnival’.¹⁷¹ The background to the coup, however, remained murky, especially the extent of collusion between Kahr and Hitler prior to the putsch. Readers in Berlin did not have a chance of finding out more because on 10 November the printers’ union went on strike, leaving the city without newspapers for one week. By the time this newsless period was over, other events competed for attention, like the currency reform, the crisis and eventual downfall of the Stresemann government, and international developments regarding the reparation issue.¹⁷² C R E AT I O N O F A M E D I A PE R S O N A L I T Y Although Hitler became known throughout Germany through his failed putsch in early November 1923, it was the extensive press coverage of his trial in February and March 1924 that turned him into a household name. Already weeks before it started, expectations among journalists were very high. They quoted the state prosecution that this was going to be ‘the greatest political trial of the post-war period’.¹⁷³ Numerous articles reported on trial preparations, security concerns, and the latest news on Kahr, whose role during the putsch was increasingly criticized especially by his former supporters, and who stepped down as general state commissar a week before the beginning of the trial. Media interest in the trial far exceeded the limited seating capacity in the courtroom, and thereby became a news item itself.¹⁷⁴ Press coverage of the opening day of the trial on 26 February 1924 significantly exceeded that of the putsch on 9 November 1923. For the next five weeks, news of the Hitler trial became the daily bread of almost all newspaper readers in Berlin. Mass papers as different in political orientation as Hugenberg’s right-wing Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger and Ullstein’s liberal Berliner Morgenpost regularly devoted front pages to the proceedings. As far as it is possible to tell, newspaper readers took a keen interest.¹⁷⁵ Historians have often accused the presiding judge of allowing Hitler to turn the courtroom into a stage for his own propaganda.¹⁷⁶ Both Hitler’s testimony on the first day of the trial and his closing speech at the trial’s end lasted for several hours, and were stuffed with derogatory comments concerning the November revolution, the Reich government, and parliamentary


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democracy more generally.¹⁷⁷ These speeches had a powerful impact on many of those present in the courtroom. Right-wing journalists enthused about Hitler’s oratory skills; the editor-in-chief of Hugenberg’s Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger witnessed ‘some unconcealed tears and some bashful blowing of noses’ after Hitler had ended.¹⁷⁸ In fact, some of Hugenberg’s journalists present later joined the National Socialist Party, especially the young artist Hans Schweitzer, who produced the Nachtausgabe’s illustrations to the trial, and who became the Nazi’s most important caricaturist.¹⁷⁹ But it would be wrong to attribute too much importance to Hitler’s rhetorical performance in court. The overwhelming majority of Germans learned about the trial from their reading of newspapers, and therefore encountered Hitler’s statements in a much abridged and significantly less impressive form. Even a nationalist newspaper like the agrarian Deutsche Tageszeitung which was fundamentally sympathetic to Hitler condensed his four-hour testimony into just two columns.¹⁸⁰ At the end of the trial, the Deutsche Tageszeitung did not even publish excerpts of Hitler’s closing speech, although it commented favourably on it.¹⁸¹ The real star of the trial was the ‘hero’ Ludendorff (Deutsche Tageszeitung), the ‘best loved and best hated man’ as the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger put it.¹⁸² Ludendorff’s statements at the beginning and at the end of the trial received far more coverage than did Hitler’s in most right-wing newspapers.¹⁸³ When the trial ended in early April 1924, news of Ludendorff’s acquittal always preceded comments on Hitler’s lenient sentence.¹⁸⁴ Just like in 1922 when Hitler had benefited from media interest in Mussolini, he now benefited from Ludendorff ’s star status. In an attempt to keep Ludendorff out of the line of fire, right-wing newspapers insisted on the label ‘Hitler trial’ in their newspaper coverage. Even if readers did not actually read the trial reports, Hitler’s name stared them in the face in numerous headlines throughout the five weeks of the trial. Left-wing and liberal editors mostly prefered the term ‘Hitler–Ludendorff trial’, not least in order to compromise their old wartime opponent. The unintentional consequence was that Hitler appeared on the same footing as one of the greatest heroes of the nationalist right. Reports of Ludendorff’s devotion to Hitler and his undisguised admiration of the young man’s abilities contributed further to hightening Hitler’s standing within nationalist circles.¹⁸⁵ Already during the trial critical observers commented on the extent to which Hitler was gaining in attraction. The Social Democratic Vorwärts even published a psychological analysis of Hitler’s appeal to the extremist Right under the ironic title ‘The German Messiah’.¹⁸⁶ The verdict of 1 April 1924 was spectacularly lenient. Ludendorff was acquitted and Hitler was sentenced to a mere five years’ imprisonment for high treason. In fact, the lay judges had only been prepared to accept a ‘guilty’ verdict on condition that Hitler received the lightest possible sentence, with the prospect of early release after six months. Already by the end of the year, Hitler was

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out of prison.¹⁸⁷ For Hitler the sentence was better even than an acquittal would have been. He was handed a martyr’s crown which he did not have to wear for very long, but which further enhanced his reputation among rightwing groups. ‘All the accused in the trial had shared a common, great idealist objective: to save Germany from her great misfortune’, the conservative KreuzZeitung commented on the judgement.¹⁸⁸ Other right-wing papers were equally approving.¹⁸⁹ Meanwhile, liberal and left-wing editors vented their frustration with the sentence. ‘Judicial bankruptcy’, ‘Leniency for high traitors’, ‘Germany’s judicial scandal’ ran the headlines in their papers.¹⁹⁰ All newspapers reported on the jubilant reception of the verdict by National Socialist supporters in Munich. Ludendorff was given an enthusiastic welcome outside the court building, and Hitler repeatedly had to show himself at a window to respond to the euphoric masses.¹⁹¹ The trial in early 1924 was the decisive boost to Hitler’s political career. Many historians have remarked on the fact that up to spring 1924 Hitler still considered himself merely to be the ‘drummer’ of the National Socialist movement, preparing the stage for a great national dictator to take charge at a later point—someone like Ludendorff.¹⁹² It was only after his trial, during his imprisonment in Landsberg, that Hitler began to conceive of himself as Germany’s future leader, the political messiah who would turn around the country’s fate eventually, a vision which he formulated over the summer of 1924 when writing his political autobiography, Mein Kampf. This transformation of Hitler’s self-conception was not just the result of his experiences in the courtroom and his enthusiastic reception by crowds in the streets of Munich. Nor was it simply the pragmatic lesson drawn from the failed putsch that he needed the greatest possible freedom from external dependencies to achieve his political aims.¹⁹³ It was the fact that the trial had turned into a national media event which dramatically changed Hitler’s perception of himself and of his political future. Reading his own name in all of the major German papers at the time undoubtedly gave him a new sense of importance and self-respect: as a political actor, he was now playing on the national stage. Some journalists at the time were aware of the psychological impact that media coverage could have. ‘If one talks about a cockalorum he will appear even greater to other people, and as a giant to himself’, one Munich correspondent justified his silence on the Nazi movement in late 1922.¹⁹⁴ In early 1924, Hitler was no longer a news item that journalists could chose to ignore. And Hitler could hardly fail to notice the impact that the extensive press coverage had on his national image. During the trial and after, he received an avalanche of letters and telegrams from all over Germany expressing support and encouragement.¹⁹⁵ The fan mail which teemed into Landsberg was visible proof of his new status as right-wing media celebrity.¹⁹⁶ The media presence of National Socialists generally, and Hitler’s name particularly, also changed the options available to the extremist movement. Two


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years previously, in summer 1922, Hitler had still ruled out a parliamentary strategy because he thought that the National Socialists would stand no chance at elections in view of the deadly silence with which they were treated in the press. Now the Nazis benefited from the amount of press coverage devoted to them through the Munich trial. Five days after the verdict, elections to the Bavarian state parliament saw landslide gains for the extremist Right. The so-called Völkischer Block, the electoral alliance of members of the various racist movements, not least from the banned NSDAP, received a spectacular 17 per cent of the vote, overtaking the German Nationalists and giving them as many parliamentary seats as the SPD.¹⁹⁷ In a secret report from mid-April 1924, the Reichskommissar for the supervision of internal order explained the election result as a direct outcome of the Hitler trial.¹⁹⁸ Some weeks later, at the Reichstag elections in early May, the National Socialist electoral alliance received nearly two million votes, or over 6 per cent, more than the liberal DDP. In certain regions, like in Middle Franconia, on the Baltic coast around Rostock, or in the border region of Posen-West Prussia, the Nazis even received more than 40 per cent of the popular vote.¹⁹⁹ Compared to the situation in the early 1920s, this was a spectacular achievement. Although Hitler himself was still sceptical about pursuing a parliamentary strategy, he was not reluctant to take credit for the electoral upswing.²⁰⁰ The media attention that was lavished on ‘his’ trial, the fact that his name was now universally known throughout Germany suggested to him that his personality was at the heart of the recent successes. It was an impression reinforced by the never-ending flow of visitors who were keen to meet up with the new star of the extreme Right in his Landsberg prison. In fact, popular demand to meet the now famous man eye-to-eye was such that Hitler had to issue repeated press statements asking his fans to abstain from visits unless they had received confirmation from him that he would be able to see them.²⁰¹ Press reports also told him that a völkisch celebration of his birthday in the Bürgerbräu beer hall drew such crowds that the police had to intervene to prevent a mass panic.²⁰² Of course, not all media reports were sympathetic to Hitler. He was well aware of the scathing comments in the left-wing and liberal press. Indeed, in his preface to Mein Kampf, Hitler explained that writing his autobiography was an opportunity ‘to destroy the foul legends about my person dished up in the Jewish press’.²⁰³ Mein Kampf was thus both an attempt at setting the record straight and to reconceive his own life in a more heroic light, as appropriate for someone who had been in the limelight of the national media. The initial suggestion to write the book probably came from Max Amann, the publisher of the party newspaper Völkischer Beobachter, who persuaded Hitler to cash in on the publicity stirred up by the trial.²⁰⁴ In Hitler’s eyes, the media attention which he had won in early 1924 totally transformed the chances of the Nazi movement under his own leadership. ‘I’m no longer an unknown, and that provides us with the best basis for a new start’, he declared full of conviction after his release in December 1924.²⁰⁵

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C O N C LU S I O N Press campaigns against politicians were not an exclusive characteristic of Weimar Germany, and Erzberger’s libel trial was not a unique event in Germany’s political culture. Even Bismarck had suffered from right-wing newspaper attacks in the mid-1870s. Famously, a judge in a libel case initiated by Bismarck acknowledged extensively in his reasoning the severity of the public insults against the chancellor, but justified the imposition of a minimal fine with the explanation that Bismarck was truly an evil minister.²⁰⁶ What was new in the case of Erzberger was the rapid proliferation of derogatory discourse throughout society, shaped and amplified by a partisan mass press. This particular discourse, however, was not the dominant one in Germany: it was strongly disputed by voices from within the Communist, socialist, liberal, and not least Catholic Centre milieux. The resulting polyphony of press discourses contributed decisively to the polarization of German politics. ‘Depending on whether Wurttembergian lawyers are readers of Stuttgart’s Deutsche Volksblatt or Stuttgart’s Süddeutsche Zeitung, they are either friends or deadly enemies of Erzberger’, one commentator noted in his book on the political influence of the press, written in 1920.²⁰⁷ What is interesting in this remark is not only the term ‘deadly enemies’ (‘Todfeinde’ in German) one year prior to Erzberger’s murder, but even more so the causal relationship implied in this sentence. According to this contemporary observer, it was the newspaper that ultimately determined the political views of its readers. There was no realization of the fact that readers were not just passive, hollow forms that could be filled at journalists’ will with any ideology. In fact, a reader’s decision to subscribe to either the Catholic Centre newspaper Deutsche Volksblatt or the DNVP-oriented Süddeutsche Zeitung —to revert to the example given above—depended among other things on that reader’s pre-existing political sympathies. Only very few writers at the time questioned the concept of a powerful top-down press influence. The publication of Ferdinand Tönnies’s Kritik der o¨ffentlichen Meinung in 1922 started a debate of the question whether there was such a thing as a (single) public opinion, and, if so, whether newspapers were creating or simply reflecting it.²⁰⁸ But this debate was very much limited to scholarly circles. Most journalists and politicians, although very conscious of the polarized and fragmented nature of the German public sphere, continued to subscribe to the idea that newspapers exerted great political influence on the masses. While they considered themselves media savvy, aware of manipulative intentions and misrepresentations, and therefore relatively immune to press influence, in their view the average newspaper reader was a helpless victim and passive consumer of such press manipulations. Ironically, it was exactly this elite belief in the omnipotence of the press (the ‘third person’ effect, as media scientists have labelled it) which enabled newspapers to influence German politicians.


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Erzberger sued Helfferich because he thought that Helfferich’s press attacks and his brochure Away with Erzberger! actually mattered, because they influenced the ‘general reader’ to adapt an anti-Erzberger stance. In fact, those readers who adopted Helfferich’s specific accusations prior to the libel trial needed little convincing, and they constituted only a small fraction of Germany’s newspaperreading public. Although one can only speculate, it is very likely that Erzberger’s electoral support would not have been gravely affected if he had chosen to ignore the attacks. It was only the much greater publicity generated by the trial, and the ‘facts’ created by it and amplified by the press, that seriously undermined Erzberger’s trustworthiness—though, as mentioned above, not necessarily in the eyes of his core supporters. Although the press was not as directly influential and potent a political weapon as contemporaries thought, this is not to say it was inconsequential. On the contrary, press coverage and press campaigning were crucial in personalizing political conflict, and certainly contributed to intensifying political feelings. While right-wing newspapers could not determine what their readers should think, through the amount of coverage devoted to Erzberger they could easily influence what they should think about, and thereby identify Erzberger as a plausible target for nationalist recriminations. But it was not just through agenda-setting that the right-wing press campaign affected the popular perception of politics. Individuals within right-wing milieux, like his assassins Oltwig von Hirschfeld and Heinrich Schulz, could easily draw inspiration from the aggression of press polemics and translate it into justification for direct, violent action. Even if these were extreme cases, the fact that many nationalist Germans were prepared to voice publicly the depth of their anti-Erzberger sentiments, calling him a criminial, using biological metaphors of disease when describing his role within the German polity, or indeed wishing him dead, seems to suggest that it was not just quantity of coverage which mattered but also quality. Erzberger, in other words, was framed by opinion leaders within the right-wing press in a way that allowed other individuals—other editors, parliamentarians, local dignitaries, pub regulars, political activists (like Hitler)—to use these press narratives both as affirmation of their own views and as a toolkit for the construction their own political pronouncements. The working of these media effects, of agenda-setting and framing, are also apparent in Hitler’s rise to prominence. Mussolini’s coup d’état provided Hitler with a frame of reference which made him into national news material, as well as shaping his followers’ expectations. Although Hitler’s own putsch attempt was a miserable failure, and initially dismissed by newspapers of all political persuasions as a pitiful event, the subsequent trial significantly boosted his national standing. Whether called ‘Hitler trial’ or ‘Hitler–Ludendorff trial’, the label used helped to construct a political personality with a much higher profile than his previous regional incarnation had enjoyed. The presentation of Hitler and his followers in the nationalist press as youthful, idealistic, upright nationalists who had tragically

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been betrayed by their wavering conservative co-conspirators allowed Hitler to take on a new gravitas in the eyes of right-wing Germans, and resulted in an outpouring of adulation during and after the trial. But this right-wing media image not only framed the perception of Hitler among a significant number of frustrated nationalists, it also decisively influenced Hitler’s own self-conception. To understand why, it is worth noting Hitler’s views on the power of the press as expressed in his book, Mein Kampf, in 1924. Historians conventionally emphasize Hitler’s insistence on the fact that, in propaganda, the spoken word was more powerful than the written word.²⁰⁹ But in fact, still savouring his sudden rise to stardom, and repeating cultural commonplaces of the time, he left no doubt in Mein Kampf that the press was extremely powerful. Its ‘importance really is immense’, he claimed, it ‘cannot be overestimated, for the press really continues education in adulthood’.²¹⁰ Readers fell into three groups, he argued: those who believed everything they read; those who ceased to believe anything; and those with a critical mind to examine what they read and pass their own judgement. The first group was by far the largest, Hitler proclaimed, and consisted ‘of the great mass of the people’ and ‘the simplest-minded part of the nation’.²¹¹ Like many other politicians at the time, Hitler greatly overestimated the power of press influence, and was therefore able to imagine a reading public as bowled over by the amount and quality of press coverage as he was himself. It is no surprise that he now ceased to conceive of himself merely as the movement’s ‘drummer’ and instead described himself self-confidently as the ‘leader’, or Führer, in Mein Kampf. Hitler was indeed ‘no longer an unknown’ at the end of 1924. The prominence gained earlier that year helped him to consolidate his hold over the völkisch movement in the following years. Of course, his celebrity status did not automatically translate into electoral support: at the Reichstag elections in 1928, the Nazis were unable to mobilize large numbers of dissatisfied voters. In Berlin, less than 40,000 people cast their vote for the NSDAP. But Hitler’s fame was undiminished, as was evident during his first trip to the Reich capital after the Prussian government had lifted its speaking ban. Hitler’s first public appearance in Berlin, on 16 November 1928, drew an enormous crowd. Police were still turning people away once 16,000 punters had filled the Sportpalast to capacity. And those coming to witness the famous man’s oratory were also willing to be enthused. ‘Again and again [the speech is] interrupted by thundering applause’, Goebbels noted in his diary afterwards. ‘At the end, a hurricane. Everyone rises. Deutschland u¨ ber alles.’²¹² The Nazis were still a long way from enjoying the kind of mass support from which they benefited in the early 1930s. But at a time of quickly changing Reich governments and a confusing array of special interest splinter parties, sporting a recognizable figurehead—a nationalist brand name—as leader of the party was eventually to prove an invaluable political asset.

3 Competing Stories, 1924–5 The character of political life everywhere is determined largely by the character of the press . . . Bernhard Guttmann, Berlin correspondent of Frankfurter Zeitung, ‘Die Presse im demokratischen Staate’, in Deutsche Presse, 22–3 (1927).

Driven by the political will and skill of two of Weimar’s most able politicians, Friedrich Ebert and Gustav Stresemann, and based on the American willingness to provide financial support under the terms of the Dawes reparation plan, 1924 saw the gradual consolidation of the Weimar Republic. Yet the intensity of political struggle did not abate: on the contrary, 40 per cent of all deputies voted into the Reichstag in May 1924 were members of anti-republican parties. And everyone involved in German politics knew that the following year would see the first democratic election of the Reich president, an event of decisive importance for the future course of German politics. On the extreme Left and Right, efforts now concentrated on discrediting the major political force safeguarding the democratic achievements of the revolutionary period, the Social Democratic party, and its most likely candidate for Germany’s highest public office, the present incumbent, Friedrich Ebert. By May 1925, Ebert was dead and the former General Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg installed as Germany’s new president. Although his election contributed significantly to the short-term stabilization of Germany’s democracy, Hindenburg was to turn out to be one of the grave-diggers of the Weimar Republic. As in the area of economics, where it was not so much inflation but the conditions of stabilization that really damaged the republic, the stabilization of Weimar democracy brought about by Hindenburg’s election came at a huge political cost. How could this happen? How could a convinced monarchist, responsible for directing the German war effort that resulted in defeat and the deaths of nearly two million German soldiers, be a credible and even popular candidate for the presidency? In order to understand the choice of those who elected Hindenburg in April 1925, it is crucial to delve into the hot-house of German politics in the months preceding the presidential elections. These months were dominated by two major media events: the libel trial of Friedrich Ebert in Magdeburg; and a corruption scandal involving several high-ranking politicians connected to the

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Barmat business. At issue was the role of Social Democracy in the military defeat of 1918, and the trustworthiness of representatives of the new democratic system. Partisan coverage of these events inspired political spitefulness both inside and outside parliament. More importantly, the unsavoury spectacle which unfolded on the pages of the daily press helped to discredit parliamentary democracy. Parliamentary committees proved not to be organs of the objective investigation of truth, but instruments of party-political ‘bickering’; trust in the judicial authorities was seriously undermined; numerous commentators repeatedly criticized the unreliability of the media. For many a German newspaper-reader, casting a vote for ‘the saviour’ who allegedly stood above democratic partisan politics seemed an attractive option in spring 1925. P R E S S P O L I T I C S A N D S C A N D A L - M O N G E R IN G Three weeks before the elections to the Reichstag and the Prussian Landtag on 7 December 1924, a local corruption scandal made headlines in the Berlin press. The head of the political police in Berlin, Bartels, had just been arrested for corruption. He had been paid by a Russian businessman, Holzmann, to collect incriminating material against another Berlin-based Russian businessman, Iwan Kutisker. Holzmann had then blackmailed Kutisker and threatened him with deportation, on the strength of his influence with Bartels.¹ Kutisker filed a suit against Holzmann and Bartels; however, no sooner were they in prison than Kutisker, too, was arrested for fraud. He had managed to accumulate loans for more than RM 14 million from Prussia’s state-owned central bank, the Preußische Staatsbank (Seehandlung), by bribing bank officials. Eighteen months later, Kutisker was to be sentenced to four years in prison for credit fraud. In late November 1924, however, journalists were somewhat confused as to the identity of the villain in the piece. All that seemed clear was that there was suddenly a daily menu of corruption cases.² Electoral strategies determined the press coverage of these stories. Communists used the corruption case in the Berlin police to denigrate conditions in SPDruled Prussia, even though the official in question, Bartels, was known to be a national-conservative.³ Bartels’s offence had nothing to do with Kutisker’s credit fraud, but the presentation of the news in the Communist Rote Fahne consciously blurred the distinction between the various offences in order to accuse the SPD of bad governance.⁴ At the other end of the political spectrum, nationalist papers chose to focus on the foreigners involved. The Pan-German Deutsche Zeitung, for example, pointed out that it was typical that both Holzmann and Kutisker were Jewish. They stood for the perceived influx of foreigners into the German economy, a ‘typical’ side-effect of the turmoil of revolution, inflation, and deflation. Hence, when the Deutsche Zeitung singled out Kutisker, it really aimed at the post-revolutionary political system.⁵ Once set on its anti-Semitic

Competing Stories, 1924–5

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course, the Deutsche Zeitung dug for more dirt, and came up with the Barmat business. The Russian Barmat brothers had also received Staatsbank loans, the paper declared.⁶ It presented a series of grossly distorted half-truths that was to become typical of the Barmat coverage. The business, the paper stated, was run by seven Jewish brothers—in fact there were four, two of whom ran it—and the eldest, Julius Barmat, had bragged about his close friendship with Berlin’s Social Democratic police president Richter. The Deutsche Zeitung considered this link sufficiently incriminating to justify clamouring for the intervention of the state prosecutor.⁷ The Communists immediately recognized the potential for attacking the Social Democrats through the Barmats, and took up the lead provided by the PanGerman paper. The Rote Fahne researched the relationship between the Barmats and the Staatsbank, and produced a front-page story alleging the ‘corruption’ of the Weimar coalition parties, by pointing out the involvement of Social Democrats and Centre party politicians in the Barmats’ business. One Reichstag deputy of the Centre party sat on their supervisory board, as did the leader of the Social Democratic faction in the Prussian Landtag, Ernst Heilmann.⁸ Even a former Reich chancellor, Gustav Bauer of the SPD, was at that time a member of the supervisory board of one of Barmat’s enterprises. Over the next days, the Communist party paper claimed that the ‘affair SeehandlungKutisker-Bartels-Barmat’ was growing into the ‘Panama Scandal of the German Republic’.⁹ The violent polemic against the SPD did not fail to impress at least the right-wing press, which quoted extensively from the Rote Fahne articles.¹⁰ The Social Democratic Vorwärts dismissed the whole issue as Communist ‘election swindle’, not even mentioning the name Barmat.¹¹ The Rote Fahne, in turn, took the silence of Vorwärts and other democratic newspapers in Berlin as proof that there was something to conceal. The Communists were fighting to win the struggle for the workers’ votes, and the question of influence over public opinion loomed large in editors’ minds. The Rote Fahne was convinced that the policy of slander was paying off.¹² Five days before the elections, editors of the Social Democratic Vorwärts were finally worried enough about the potential impact of this news story that they tackled the Barmat issue head on, denying the main charges. Ernst Heilmann wrote a lengthy declaration stating that he was a close friend of Julius Barmat, that he had accepted membership on various boards within the business out of friendship without deriving material advantages from them, and that he had no knowledge of any loans whatsoever.¹³ Vorwärts also commented on the formation of a hostile network of newspapers against the SPD, highlighting in particular the ‘co-operation’ of Hugenberg’s right-wing Tag and the Communist Rote Fahne.¹⁴ The Rote Fahne relayed this communication to its readers as a ‘full confession’ on the part of Social Democracy.¹⁵ No honest worker, according to the Communist paper, could vote for ‘corrupted Barmat-socialists’.¹⁶ Denigration of the SPD went hand in hand with anti-republican rhetoric: ‘Does the never-ending

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corruption era within this Republic not stink to high heaven? Do we need ever new scandals and trials to open the eyes of Social Democratic workers, too? . . . Can he [the worker] cast his vote for these men, who are striking deals with these dirty upstarts who stick at nothing?’¹⁷ The right-wing agrarian Deutsche Tageszeitung quoted extensively from the Rote Fahne, but differed in its conclusion from the original: only if the nationalist Right won at the upcoming election, would socialist corruption come to an end.¹⁸ Two days before election day, the nationalists regained the initiative in the press campaign from the Communists. The Bergisch-Märkische Zeitung, a small regional paper in the west of Germany, published by the DNVP Reichstag deputy Walter Bacmeister, alleged that during the revolution of 1918–19, the Barmats had been granted a monopoly on fat imports by Ebert’s personal assistant, by agreeing to pay a certain percentage of their proceeds into the SPD party coffers. Since the Bergisch-Märkische Zeitung was part of the Hugenberg group, these allegations quickly passed through right-wing information channels and papers churned out another spate of polemical articles.¹⁹ Again Vorwärts rejected the story in a small notice as a ‘Nationalist-Communist election lie’.²⁰ But this did not keep the story from spreading through the editorial offices.²¹ The heavily anti-republican rhetoric of Communist and nationalist newspapers stood in stark contrast to the actual facts: at this point, all that the Social Democrats had been accused of was the fact that some of their functionaries were sitting on the supervisory boards of various Barmat enterprises. The Barmat business had received some large loans from the Prussian Staatsbank, and the Social Democrats were suspected to have derived financial benefits from their connections to the Barmats. Only some of it was true, most of it was grossly exaggerated, and none of it amounted to an illegal action, but it served well as a target for polemic. Every allegation that the Communist press raised against the Social Democrats and the democratic system more generally, the nationalist press amplified, and vice versa.²² On election day, 7 December 1924, Vorwärts commented on these press attacks and stated that the election campaign had been dominated by political slander: ‘All of Germany is reeking of lies! Never before has Germany experienced something as nasty and sordid like the methods of our jointly operating opponents from left and right in this [election] struggle.’²³ The SPD, however, emerged the victor from the elections. The KPD lost nearly a million votes, while the SPD increased its share by nearly two million. At the other end of the political spectrum, the Nazis and other völkisch parties lost more than a million votes, while the DNVP gained half a million.²⁴ Still, as always in the 1920s, there was no clear-cut winner. In the Prussian Landtag election on the same day, the SPD lost twenty-two of its 136 seats, while the KPD gained thirteen, and the DNVP even as many as thirty-three to reach a total of 109.²⁵ But the Barmat story did not seem to have had much of an impact on voting behaviour. In Berlin, which had provided the major part of the Barmat


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news readership, the SPD gains were most impressive: an increase of over 50 per cent from its May results made it the strongest party in the city, overtaking the DNVP which had only increased its share by 10 per cent.²⁶ One reason for the ineffectiveness of the anti-SPD Barmat propaganda was its limited public impact. In early December, the Berlin public at large was not aware of the alleged Barmat scandal. The public profile of the Barmat brothers in 1924 was so low that all those papers that gave them coverage felt the need to introduce them to their readers first.²⁷ But the number of papers that took to providing their readership with information about the Barmats remained very limited. While the Rote Fahne considered the Barmats proof of the corruption of Social Democracy by bourgeois society, most editors seemed not to be convinced that the Barmats could be convicted of any wrongdoing.²⁸ In fact, the highly polemical anti-SPD nature of the Barmat story limited its news value for the majority of Berlin newspapers. Only those papers involved in partisan campaigning used the ‘information’ available—and those were papers with very low circulation. For the great majority of the Berlin and Prussian newspaper readership, however, the Barmats did not become an issue. Neither mass papers like Ullstein’s Berliner Morgenpost and Hugenberg’s Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, nor any of the high-circulation tabloids had given coverage to the emerging Barmat story.²⁹ Regional and local papers in the rest of Prussia never mentioned the name Barmat. In Berlin, depending on which newspaper the Berliners read, they would ‘know’ a great deal about the Barmats—or nothing at all. Considering the very small circulation figures of the partisan papers, the majority of the public will have belonged to the latter category in December 1924. Politicians, however, were avid newspaper readers, and consumed particularly those partisan political papers that gave coverage to the Barmats. In fact, these papers were an important source of substantiation for political attacks, and many parties and political pressure groups had their own newspaper-clipping collections to supply functionaries with an archive of politically relevant material. The agrarian Reichslandbund, for example, kept files exclusively devoted to clippings about ‘SPD and finance’, drawn exclusively from partisan papers.³⁰ Politicians thus operated in different information networks from the majority of the public: to some of them, the amount of coverage devoted to the Barmats in the partisan papers seemed to indicate that this issue loomed large in the public’s mind. Just before the elections, the DNVP submitted a parliamentary question in the Prussian Landtag, demanding to know the role that the bank’s management and officials had played in Barmat affair which had caused such ‘immense excitement’.³¹ The liberal Berliner Tageblatt and the Vossische Zeitung, which had not given any coverage to the Barmat issue, commented on the apparent exaggeration of the phrasing ‘immense excitement’.³² However, it was less a question of distortion than of misconception. Unlike politicians, the great majority of the reading public had simply remained unaffected by the ‘revelations’ because they had not been exposed to them.

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Also among the limited readership of elite political papers were civil servants, whose decision-making was influenced by the negative coverage to which the Barmat business had suddenly been exposed. This was crucial for the further development of the firm, because the Barmats were particularly dependent on the goodwill of the Preussische Staatsbank. After the stabilization of the currency in 1924, the Barmats repeatedly needed big loans to keep solvent. By early September 1924, they owed the Staatsbank over eight million RM. After some management anxiety over these large sums, the bank scrutinized the economic viability of these loans, and prolonged them until mid-December 1924, with a promise to extend the deadline a further three months.³³ However, by early December the Barmats had failed to pay back some hundred thousand Mark in interest and short-term credit, and needed another five million. But this time the officials of the Staatsbank refused to grant a further loan, and, worse still, withdrew its promise to prolong the existing loans, which threatened the survival of the business. On Julius Barmat’s request, the Social Democrat Ernst Heilmann contacted the Prussian minister of finance, von Richter, of the right-wing DVP. Von Richter explained that the bankers considered the loans economically justified and secured with sufficient collateral: ‘But they reject categorically an increase in credits not least in consideration of the public attacks . . .’.³⁴ Up to this point in early December 1924, Staatsbank officials had considered the Barmat group, with some forty companies and about 13,000 employees, a respectable business partner. What proved lethal to the Barmats was the untimely coincidence of increasing financial needs in a time of economic downturn, and a poisonous volley of press attacks accusing them of improper business dealings. It is ironic that those civil servants who should have known the Barmat finances best were impressed by what was clearly grossly distorted press coverage: the actual debt was less than a third of the sum which partisan papers claimed the Barmats had received. The question of whether the Barmats would have managed to save their business if the loans had been prolonged is open to speculation: even bigger firms, like that of the recently deceased Hugo Stinnes, came crashing down as a consequence of stabilization in 1925.³⁵ In the case of the Barmats, hostile press attacks unquestionably led to the denial of the promised extension of the much-needed loans, forcing the firm into liquidation within a few months. T H E M AG D E BU RG T R I A L It became clear after the elections that the Barmat story had been primarily driven by electoral strategies: as suddenly as it had appeared in the newspapers, it vanished again after 7 December. Other stories dominated the news in December 1924. Papers were claiming electoral victory or disguising defeat, and devoted their pages to the incipient cabinet crisis and ensuing coalition negotiations.³⁶ Political commentators were also preoccupied with the news that France and Britain


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were unwilling to respect the evacuation schedule according to which Cologne would have returned to German administration in January 1925. On a less political note, the beginning of the trial of the mass-murderer Fritz Haarmann in Hanover provided the readership with extensive coverage of this ‘blood-dripping ‘‘sensation’’ ’.³⁷ But despite its juicy detail and stirring revelations, the Haarmann trial was only second-rate news. The press, and particularly opponents of Social Democracy, turned their attention to Magdeburg, where on 9 December 1924 a trial began against Erwin Rothard, editor of the Mitteldeutsche Presse, a small völkisch paper in the Prussian province of Saxony, who had accused Friedrich Ebert of high treason. The Reich president had taken him to court for libel, but the proceedings turned into a judicial assessment of the veracity of the ‘stabin-the-back’ legend. With a government crisis as a backdrop and presidential elections looming on the political horizon, the Magdeburg trial provided ample propagandistic potential.³⁸ From 1919, Ebert had been a prime target for journalistic slander. One photo became particularly notorious. Taken in summer 1919, it showed Ebert and the then Reichswehr minister Noske standing in the Baltic Sea, in bathing trunks. The photographer sold it to Ullstein’s Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, the only German weekly magazine with a circulation of well over one million copies. There it was published on the front cover on 24 August 1919—three days after the swearing-in of Ebert as Reich president in Weimar. The liberal-democratic Ullstein publishing house had probably not intended to ridicule Ebert. It had simply used the occasion of the new Reich constitution to present the new president tongue-in-cheek as a normal citizen, presenting an entertaining photo that combined two popular magazine themes: the holiday and summer features, which traditionally dominated issues in July and August; and the presentation of the private life of a famous personality. The photo, however, turned into a sensation: the public was shocked at this display of nudity, which stood in stark contrast to the pomp and circumstance of the late Wilhelmine era. The photo soon became part of the anti-republican iconography: the agrarian Deutsche Tageszeitung turned it into a postcard with the title ‘Past and Present’, framing Ebert and Noske with photos of William II and Hindenburg in their dress uniforms. Over the next years, opponents of the new Republic continued to use, and refer to, the bathing photo to denigrate Ebert and democracy. At first, Ebert took it in good humour: when, on his second presidential visit to Munich in June 1922, a student greeted him waving a red bathing suit, he laughed and waved back. After the assassination of Walter Rathenau, Ebert changed his policy towards defamation and insults, using libel proceedings as a weapon to defend the Republic’s standing. During his five years in office, he started a total of around 200 criminal prosecutions.³⁹ During his visit to Munich in June 1922, Ebert had also been greeted by the völkisch editor, Dr Emil Gansser, local politician and Hitler supporter, who yelled ‘Landesverräter’, traitor to the fatherland, at him. During the subsequent trial in Munich in February 1924, Gansser claimed that Ebert had committed

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high treason by his participation in the munition workers’ strike in Berlin in January 1918. The pre-trial proceedings clarified the matter: all the witnesses stated that the Social Democrats had been taken by surprise by the outbreak of the strike, and that the only reason for their participation in the strike committee had been the intention of terminating the strike as quickly as possible. Still, the trial went ahead, and when the Munich court subpoenaed Ebert, it became clear that the trial was to be exploited politically. Ebert’s lawyer advised the Reich president to withdraw his suit to prevent further insults in court.⁴⁰ Officially, Ebert’s lawyer claimed that the hearing of evidence had proven Gansser wrong and that they thereby let the matter rest.⁴¹ But Gansser did not relent. In an open letter published by many Bavarian newspapers he repeated his claims, denied that Ebert had cleared himself, and demanded that someone shouldering ‘the charge of high treason’ should resign as Reich president.⁴² The völkisch Right was delighted and took up the call. In February and March 1924 alone Ebert instigated five court actions on the basis of the libel of treason. Gansser took flight and only returned when protected by the immunity of the National Socialist Reichstag mandate that he won in the general elections in May 1924.⁴³ One of the right-wing newspapers which reprinted Gansser’s open letter was the small Saxon Mitteldeutsche Presse, edited by Erwin Rothard. Rothard published the letter on 23 February 1924 under the heading ‘A bitter pill for Fritze Ebert’, adding the following paragraph: ‘Will Ebert swallow this pill, or will he . . . appear in court in Munich after all? Go on, Herr Ebert, and prove that you are not a traitor. You need not be afraid of the red bathing trunks which will greet you upon your arrival in Munich.’⁴⁴ Ebert filed a suit; the trial against Rothard eventually started on 9 December 1924. Rothard, 28 years old at this point, was a provincial lightweight with a criminal record.⁴⁵ The first two interrogations after his article had appeared showed he was anything but a fearless fighter for the nationalist cause. Rather surprisingly, he stated that Gansser’s attack was probably unfounded, he himself certainly did not have any proof: he was sorry if his article conveyed the impression of embracing Gansser’s thesis. Rothard was subdued, repentant, and intimidated.⁴⁶ But when his lawyers served their documents it became obvious that in the meantime he had been encouraged to take up Gansser’s cause. He now insisted that he would prove that Ebert had committed treason. The support that he received from the DNVP was probably the crucial factor in this change of heart.⁴⁷ Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe devoted its entire front page to the opening of the trial, full of polemic anticipation, promising that for the first time the history of 1918 was to be written ‘under oath’.⁴⁸ The ‘stab-in-the-back’ legend had played a major role in the nationalist campaign leading up to the Reichstag elections of 7 December. Thus, the Magdeburg trial offered an ideal opportunity for nationalists to substantiate their interpretation of 1918 and to smear the Reich president well in advance of the presidential elections due in spring 1925.⁴⁹ Social Democratic and liberal journalists were acutely aware of the trial’s


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political thrust: the intention, they claimed, was to falsify history through the proceedings and amass propaganda material against Ebert.⁵⁰ The presentation of the news certainly indicated that the trial was being used for propagandistic ends. Newspapers tried to sell their particular political interpretation of events, with headlines a focal point of political polemic. In its very first article, the Social Democratic Vorwärts made a point of specifying Ebert’s role as plaintiff in the headline.⁵¹ This did not keep right-wing newspapers from calling the proceedings ‘Ebert trial’, insinuating that the person on trial was Ebert.⁵² Headlines played a particularly important role in the political interpretation of the trial, since most of the partisan newspapers, Left and Right, subscribed to the same news-agency reports on the proceedings.⁵³ These minutes were reprinted after being edited to provide the required political thrust: particular parts of witness statements were printed in bold as eye-catchers, some parts were left out, and the whole text was interspersed with smaller striking headlines. One witness statement particularly damaging to Ebert may serve as an example of the competing accounts of the trial proceedings. The question of how to deal with the draft notices that all strikers received was of particular importance. On the first day of the trial, a witness of Ebert’s speech to the strike rally in Treptower Park on 31 January 1918, a worker named Syrig, claimed he had seen Ebert receive a note from a member of the audience, presumably with a question concerning the draft, whereupon Ebert told workers to ignore such orders. For the right-wing Deutsche Zeitung, it was most important to highlight this statement: Someone gave him a note. Upon this, Herr Ebert said: Strike only serves to shorten the war. He who receives his induction orders ought not present himself. Chair[man]: Are you not erring in this statement?—Witness: Impossible, I have heard it entirely clearly.⁵⁴

Readers of the extremist Deutsche Zeitung could thus conclude that here was an independent worker testifying against Ebert. The paper’s evening edition reinforced this impression with a smaller headline, placed somewhat arbitrarily in the report on the proceedings: ‘Call to Refuse Military Service’.⁵⁵ The Social Democratic Vorwärts, although using the same news agency, presented a totally different picture. It introduced this part of the proceedings under the small headline ‘A strange witness’. Syrig’s statement was reprinted in normal typeset. Bold letters were, however, applied to the cross-questioning of Syrig by Ebert’s lawyers, Heine, the part left out by the Deutsche Zeitung: R.-A. [Rechts-Anwalt] Heine: Rothardt has employed someone who has received considerable funds to organize witnesses against Herr Ebert. R.-A. Martin: One cannot after all refuse the defendant to search for witnesses. . . . R.-A. Bindewald: I can here provide the intelligence that the witness has been ordered by his past regimental commander . . . to contact the German Nationalist State Parliamentarian Koch, who was looking for witnesses of the events in Treptower Park.⁵⁶

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Here, readers learned that the DNVP parliamentarian Pfarrer Koch had used party rallies to ask for potential witnesses against Ebert to come forward. Although Syrig denied having received money, doubts about him remained. Vorwärts highlighted the nationalist involvement in the trial and declared Syrig’s statement proof of the ongoing ‘slander of the Reich President’.⁵⁷ Berlin’s liberal-democratic press, which had at first refrained from using polemical headlines, now sided with Vorwärts.⁵⁸ This change in tone was immediately noticed by right-wing papers, which broadened their attack to include all the democratic papers. Kreuz-Zeitung quoted the polemical headlines of the Berliner Volkszeitung, Vossische Zeitung, and Vorwärts to prove the existence of a leftist press alliance that was allegedly siding against Rothardt in a ‘scandalous’ way in an attempt to influence the proceedings.⁵⁹ Polemic was the newspapers’ weapon in a struggle for opinion-leadership, and both sides closely observed each other. With no new proceedings to report on 11 December, right-wing newspapers published articles solely dealing with the opposing press’s coverage of the trial, pointing at all apparent inconsistencies and quoting extensively from what they called an attempt to influence public opinion.⁶⁰ Vorwärts, in turn, closely observed right-wing coverage, quoting Hugenberg’s Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger and Tag and denigrating their special correspondent’s coverage. Among the rank of nationalist ‘stink bomb hurlers’ Vorwärts singled out the Deutsche Zeitung as ‘particularly repulsive’ because it claimed that Ebert had once served a prison sentence: ‘Abuse, slander and baiting are having real orgies’, it concluded.⁶¹ Deutsche Zeitung retorted in similar style, labelling Vorwärts ‘the Jewish libel paper’.⁶² This preoccupation with the writing of other elite political papers, resulting in polemical self-reference, was a characteristic feature of the partisan press in Weimar Germany, adding considerably to the climate of political antagonism. The media war fought over Magdeburg also affected the court proceedings. The lawyers were very aware of the news value of their position.⁶³ The day following Vorwärts’ attack on Deutsche Zeitung, Ebert’s lawyer Landsberg picked up the complaints and remonstrated against the way some right-wing papers reported on the trial in an attempt to ‘poison’ the court. Rothardt’s lawyers, in turn, complained about the Vossische Zeitung’s accusation that the defence had ‘fabricated’ witnesses. The presiding judge stated that the court too considered ‘such news reporting and the distortion in leading articles’ completely unacceptable.⁶⁴ But the criticism of the press in court only helped to provoke journalistic tempers and led to increasing antagonism in the coverage. Kreuz-Zeitung and Deutsche Zeitung, for example, devoted considerable space over the following two days to attacking Vorwärts and Ullstein’s Vossische Zeitung, explaining that they were only trying to refute the ‘lies and falsifications’ emanating from the ‘left-wing press’.⁶⁵ This, in turn, inspired Rothard’s lawyer to complain about the local SPD newspaper, the Magdeburger Volksstimme. His complaint was couched in almost exactly the same terms as the nationalist Kreuz-Zeitung’s attack on Ullstein’s


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Vossische Zeitung.⁶⁶ In response, the presiding judge requested the lawyers to keep discussions of the press out of the proceedings. This served only as an incentive to editors to reinforce their attacks.⁶⁷ The hearing in the second week concentrated on Ebert’s speech to the Berlin workers during the strike in Treptow, and his intentions in joining the strike committee. All the witnesses heard on Tuesday 16 December stated that Ebert had entered the strike with the firm intention of stopping it as soon as possible. Regarding his Treptow speech, witnesses agreed it was impossible for Ebert to have encouraged draft-dodging since that would have meant overturning a firmly established SPD policy of supporting the draft, a political sensation that would have caused Ebert’s immediate arrest, as a former officer of Berlin’s political police confirmed.⁶⁸ His speech, the witnesses stated, had been without fire, his calling for calm and restraint had been met with cries like ‘strike breaker’ and ‘traitor of workers’. However, one witness by the name of Lehnhoff stated that Ebert had indeed made an ambiguous appeal. Not least because his speech had met with so very little approval, Ebert had allegedly proclaimed towards the end: ‘Just hold on. Your working brothers . . . are standing by you.’⁶⁹ Lehnhoff was unsure if this had been meant as a call to continue striking or as a call for moderation. This was what the right-wing press had been waiting for: ‘Sensational turn in Ebert trial’ the Nachtausgabe titled on its front page. This, it proclaimed, was proof of Ebert’s true face, and the incident was skilfully dramatized: ‘No boot is creaking and no clearing of throats is audible. Everyone knows: this is the decisive hours. Everyone feels: now the fog is lifting. The genius of truth is right in the middle of the room. . . . The truth breaks the lie about the patriotism of all Scheidemänner.’⁷⁰ The fact that Lehnhoff had explicitly contradicted Syrig’s account concerning Ebert’s stance on induction orders was ignored by Hugenberg’s special correspondent. More importantly, Nachtausgabe readers were kept ignorant of the discrediting of Syrig, the main witness against Ebert so far. A colleague who was supposed to back up Syrig’s statement now stated he would not dream of helping Syrig to commit perjury. Syrig had told him that he was ‘being looked after’. Vorwärts took this as evidence of the alleged fabrication of witness statements by the nationalists and focused its headlines on this fact.⁷¹ Readers of Berlin newspapers were thus presented with two opposing versions of the Magdeburg trial: while the Nachtausgabe triumphantly declared the hearing a victory for truth and a proof of treason, Vorwärts described it as a ‘black day’ for Rothardt’s defence which had been revealed as a ‘German Nationalist witness factory’.⁷² If they reported on Syrig’s collapse at all, the right-wing press smoothed over it to a greater or lesser extent.⁷³ For Vorwärts, this was yet again proof of the nationalist distortion of reality.⁷⁴ The following day, on the last day of the hearing, one more witness appeared unannounced. A worker named Gobert claimed that it was he who had asked Ebert about draft orders at the rally, upon which Ebert had clearly proclaimed

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that the orders were to be ignored.⁷⁵ He stuck to this testimony despite intense cross-questioning. Apart from Syrig, he was thus the only witness to claim Ebert had encouraged workers to refuse the drafting, contradicting the statements of at least a dozen other witnesses. Coincidentally, he was also the last witness to be heard. Thus, for the right-wing press the hearing ended on a high note.⁷⁶ Since there was no court session the following day in order to give lawyers time to prepare their speeches, Vorwärts set out to destroy Gobert’s credibility: it revealed that Gobert had eight previous convictions for fraud, and highlighted his political background as a former member of the counter-revolutionary Erhardt Freikorps in Berlin.⁷⁷ These revelations were quickly taken up by Berlin’s liberal press.⁷⁸ The right-wing press, on the other hand, bridged the days without courtroom news with commentaries on the SPD’s wartime policy and munitions shortages during the war.⁷⁹ If they commented on the Gobert revelations at all, they did so by accusing the ‘Linkspresse’ of attempting to influence a pending judgement.⁸⁰ The judgement on 23 December 1924 was a sensation. Whilst condemning the editor to three months in jail, the judge stated in his verdict that Rothardt’s accusation that Ebert was a ‘traitor’ (a Landesverräter) was—legally speaking—correct. Rothardt’s form of address, ‘Fritze’, the term ‘bitter pill’, the mentioning of the bathing trunks, and, most importantly, the sentence ‘Go on, prove that you are not a traitor’ were clearly meant as an insult under §185, the judge acknowledged. But the term ‘traitor’ could not be considered libel under §186. The judge decided that Ebert’s participation in the strike committee, and particularly the exhortation ‘Just hold on!’ in Ebert’s Treptow speech constituted treason.⁸¹ The judgement was highly ambiguous: Rothardt’s usage of the term ‘traitor’ was considered a serious insult, since, although legally justified, he had not held any proof of his claim at the time of writing the article. All Berlin newspapers ran the judgement as front-page news. Vorwärts considered it shocking: the judge had acknowledged that Ebert’s motivation for joining the strike was his intention of terminating it as quickly as possible, and yet he claimed that Ebert had committed treason.⁸² Liberal papers joined Vorwärts in expressing their surprise at the judge’s argument.⁸³ They attacked the nationalist press for its hounding of the president, and claimed that Ebert’s case had been thoroughly vindicated through the trial.⁸⁴ This was wishful thinking. Nationalist newspapers considered the judgement a triumph for ‘truth’ and an important step towards establishing the veracity of the ‘stab-in-the-back’.⁸⁵ Headlines announced ‘Landesverrat’ in extra-bold letters over the front page.⁸⁶ Since nationalist commentators had ceased to expect this outcome, they were jubilant, none more so than the Deutsche Zeitung. Ebert, the right-wing paper concluded, ‘has been finished politically for all times’: the German people now had to decide if it wanted to tolerate ‘the rule of the ammunition strikers’ any longer.⁸⁷ Editors tried violently to promote their interpretation of the judgement, so that the press polemics that had accompanied and influenced the trial continued


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for some days after 23 December 1924. Because of the deeply divided landscape of the political media in Berlin, newspapers tried to establish some kind of ‘public’ opinion mirroring their own views by collecting other newspapers’ published opinion, creating articles called ‘Judgement on the judgement’ or ‘The echo of the Magdeburg judgement’.⁸⁸ Berliner Tageblatt, for example, quoted Berliner Volks-Zeitung, Vossische Zeitung, Berliner Börsen-Courier, and Germania, concluding that there was ‘no doubt anywhere that the Magdeburg judgement with its reasoning constitutes a misjudgement . . . of the worst order’.⁸⁹ This again induced Kreuz-Zeitung, buoyed by the judgement, to attack the ‘Linkspresse’ once more for lies and falsifications, and for obfuscating the true situation.⁹⁰ Deutsche Zeitung did likewise and published a vitriolic attack on Vorwärts that was only restrained, as it ironically admitted, by its ‘sincere respect of the State Supreme Court and the Law for the Protection of the Republic’.⁹¹ In fact, without that law the polemics would have been even more poisonous. Right-wing journalists openly deplored the fact that the ‘patriotic press’ had had to be very careful and restrained in its support of Rothardt since Ebert was protected by the law.⁹² Many politicians considered the judgement and press polemics harmful to Germany’s political culture. In the Reich cabinet meeting on 23 December1924 the DVP vice-chancellor Jarres called the judgement’s reasoning ‘horrendous’, and asked his colleagues for a joint statement in support of Ebert. Foreign minister Stresemann, who had come under heavy attack from Hugenberg’s papers at the beginning of 1924, pointed out that all that had happened to Ebert now could happen to any of them tomorrow.⁹³ A statement was drawn up in which the cabinet assured Ebert that it was unanimous in its conviction that his activities had always been aimed at serving the good of the German fatherland.⁹⁴ The following day cabinet ministers jointly visited Ebert to deliver the statement. This public show of confidence by the bourgeois cabinet was seen by many as a validation of the criticism aimed at the judgement.⁹⁵ The right-wing press mocked the visit. Deutsche Zeitung considered it a touching move fitting for Christmas day, labelling it a ‘visit of condolence’ on its front page.⁹⁶ On this note, the Pan-German paper ended its ‘Magdeburg’ coverage. Over the course of the trial it had devoted a total of sixteen out of twenty-six front pages to the story. Throughout the trial the presentation of the news was determined by the competition between right-wing and left-liberal interpretations of the events of 1918.⁹⁷ It would be wrong to assume that the editing of trial proceedings led to a complete distortion of what happened in Magdeburg. But the impression all newspapers conveyed was that the ‘opposite’ press lied, distorted, and falsified throughout the trial.⁹⁸ The reader, editors claimed, was thus led to construct his own version of the story: ‘Something always tends to stick—and one’s own reader does not get to learn the truth, but instead . . . is continuously being lied to.’⁹⁹ However, although the proceedings were regularly presented in a way that supported the newspaper’s political stance on 1918, it was the

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extent to which journalists criticized each other’s reporting that aggravated the increasing antagonism, which again determined the presentation of the news. Any attack by the correspondent ‘Fdes’ of the Kreuz-Zeitung on the Vossische Zeitung automatically drew a reply in kind.¹⁰⁰ A few individuals like ‘Fdes’ could thus function as amplifiers of polemics within Berlin’s political discourse, provoking a response that was out of all proportion to the low circulation figures of the Kreuz-Zeitung. Probably the most important ‘amplifier’ was Adolf Stein, who provided the Hugenberg papers with commentaries under his nom de plume ‘A’ or ‘Job Zimmermann’. Stein considered himself a ‘politician and . . . an old expert in the area of influencing public opinion’; as such he had come into contact with Hugenberg in 1919 when he had asked him for money to fund pamphlets against Social Democracy.¹⁰¹ Hugenberg had soon realized Stein’s talent and poached him from Hugo Stinnes’s Tägliche Rundschau to write for his newly founded Tag.¹⁰² Stein knew his worth to Hugenberg, repeatedly asking for pay rises, until he was paid four times the standard wage of a senior editor and twice as much as Friedrich Hussong, chief editor of Hugenberg’s Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger.¹⁰³ In the Magdeburg courtroom, Stein demonstratively positioned himself right behind Rothardt, next to Gansser.¹⁰⁴ His commentaries always made the front page, and were always combined with a heartfelt hatred of Social Democracy and the new political system. ‘This trial is one big lesson for the German people’, he wrote at one point, ‘an educational film against Social Democracy. . . . The pending judgement here is—at least seen politically—no longer relevant. Much more important . . . is [the fact] that finally the party of revolution parasites is reduced to its true nature.’¹⁰⁵ His commentaries were one continuous onslaught on the legitimacy of the Republic, and his polemics reached a big audience since his articles were published in all three Berlin papers of Hugenberg’s Scherl publishing house, with a total circulation of nearly 350,000 in 1925.¹⁰⁶ Compared with Adolf Stein, the hapless Rothardt was only a minor ‘amplifier’ of polemical discourse. But his original article that had started the trial was a symptom of the low-level hostility that parliamentary democracy was continuously exposed to through the media: Rothardt had just picked up the rampant anti-republican rhetoric of his time. Liberal observers blamed the DNVP and its press for this poisoning of political culture, and pointed at the similarities to the hate-campaigns of the past which had resulted in the murders of Erzberger and Rathenau.¹⁰⁷ At the same time, Rothardt, through his trial, was a conduit for even more nationalist attacks on the Republic. Ernst Feder, deputy chief-editor of the Berliner Tageblatt, highlighted in his comment on the judgement the dangerous synthesis of partisan politics, a manipulated legal system, and nationalist press coverage.¹⁰⁸ The Centre party organ in Berlin, Germania, also pointed at the obvious partisan interest of the DNVP in this ‘crusade’ against Ebert: the next elections would be fought on a ‘nationalist’ ticket ‘against the ‘‘traitor’’, against the ‘‘back-stabbing brothers’’, against the ‘‘November criminals’’ ’.¹⁰⁹ It


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took only two weeks of such coverage to establish ‘Magdeburg’ as a leitmotiv of right-wing anti-republican rhetoric. A week after the Magdeburg judgement, another synthesis of deutschnational press campaign and anti-republican judiciary spawned a further leitmotiv: after Ebert had left the stage, the Barmats were suddenly moved back into the spotlight. S TAG I N G B A R M AT: T H E J U D I C I A RY A S C ATA LY S T The contested transgressions of the Barmat scandal seem quite harmless, at least to the present-day observer. Several politicians were members of various supervisory boards, and had exercised their influence to help the enterprises in their business. Hugenberg, in comparison, sat on the boards of forty-seven companies without this being considered scandalous. There was, however, some truth in the rightwing claim that Barmat had profited from political patronage. The success of Julius Barmat’s business had, to some extent, depended on his ability to make political connections work in his favour. At the beginning of his business carreer in the Netherlands, he had joined the Dutch Social Democrats in 1908, and when after the war Dutch and German Social Democrats began to co-operate closely, he moved to exploit these links, offering the Social Democratic Second International temporary office space in his Amsterdam house. For the owner of an export–import business, this must have seemed a natural means of extending his international contacts.¹¹⁰ He was introduced to some of the leading German Social Democrats, and these connections proved useful in acquiring business with state-run enterprises which dealt with foodstuffs.¹¹¹ Ernst Heilmann, leader of the SPD in the Prussian parliament, and Gustav Bauer, a former Reich chancellor, came to support his activities on a regular basis. Heilmann became a close friend of Barmat and joined the supervisory boards of six of Barmat’s enterprises. As such, he had written several letters of recommendation on behalf of Barmat, but was always careful not to accept any emoluments or other financial advantages.¹¹² This distinguished him from another prominent Social Democrat, Wilhelm Richter, the president of the Berlin police, who received numerous presents and repeatedly dined out at Barmat’s expense.¹¹³ Barmat also became acquainted with Otto Wels, chairman of the SPD, and Friedrich Ebert in 1919, and repeatedly bragged about his influential connections.¹¹⁴ In the distorted accounts of the right-wing press, he kept a photo of Ebert in his office, onto which he himself had allegedly copied a dedication by Ebert and his signature.¹¹⁵ None of this was illegal. But when recounted by right-wing papers prior to the elections in December 1924, it certainly seemed so. And this press coverage proved consequential. It intimidated bank officials, so that they denied the Barmats the promised prolongation of their credit, thus forcing the business into illiquidity. It also impressed the judiciary, which formed a large part of the

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readership of right-wing newspapers. It was a young state prosecutor from the unit working on the Kutisker case, Kussmann, who turned the press allegations against Barmat into what subsequently became the Barmat scandal. Kussmann saw his own anti-socialist views confirmed by press rumours concerning Barmat in late 1924. In December 1924, fired up by the Magdeburg trial and the onslaught of the right-wing press on Social Democracy, Kussmann decided to embark on a political crusade of his own, in close co-operation with the right-wing press, in particular with Hugenberg’s mass circulation Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, that became the main platform for the Barmat story, provided with a generous flow of leaks by Kussmann.¹¹⁶ The fact that the Lokal-Anzeiger was clearly better informed than the official Prussian news agency, the Amtliche Preußische Pressedienst, did not escape the attention of contemporaries. It led to repeated accusations that the state prosecution office was leaking information to certain papers that it was withholding from the official state news service.¹¹⁷ In fact, Kussmann’s efforts in media management far exceeded the traditional practice of leaking confidential information, as became evident in summer 1925. By this point, the Prussian Ministry of Justice had already taken Kussmann off the Barmat case.¹¹⁸ In late July, Kussmann’s house was searched and material was found which proved that he had enjoyed close contacts with a nationalist news agency, led by a close friend, Ernst Knoll. Knoll’s office had been partly financed by a DNVP Reichstag deputy, and was co-operating closely with a DNVP office set up in order to exploit the Barmat affair.¹¹⁹ Kussmann admitted that he had conceived of the Barmat affair as an act of political cleansing directed against ‘parties which propagated socialism whilst secretly enriching themselves’.¹²⁰ Among the correspondence found in Knoll’s DNVP-affiliated news agency were letters to editors of all those right-wing media that played a prominent role in fanning the Barmat scandal, among them Hugenberg’s news agency, the Telegraphen-Union.¹²¹ The letters showed the careful orchestration of the nationalist media hype. For example, when material was made available to the Berliner Börsen-Zeitung, Knoll followed it up with several letters of guidance to various other editors, like to those of the Deutsche Zeitung: ‘I have enclosed the copy of an article by the Bergisch-Märkische Zeitung, which in turn makes references to [an article in] Berliner Börsen-Zeitung of Saturday afternoon No. 204. On its part, Berliner Börsen-Zeitung will react to [the article in] Bergisch-Märkische Zeitung tomorrow morning, and it would be very desirable for achieving the said goal if you, too, would take up the issue and comment on it appropriately in the following issue.’¹²² In one of his private letters, Knoll highlighted the extent to which his orchestration was just assisting a news practice that was already operating very smoothly.¹²³ In the early hours of 31 December 1924, Kussmann launched a grand police action against the Barmats, staged in such a way as to guarantee maximum media attention.¹²⁴ The villa of Julius Barmat on the Schwanenwerder peninsula was surrounded, and a police boat cruised offshore to prevent any attempt to


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escape. Simultaneously about 100 police officers all over Berlin arrested the other three brothers and raided the various offices of the Barmat group. As intended, this highly theatrical coup made front-page news in almost all the papers in Berlin. Reports spoke of 300 or even 400 police officers and a flotilla of police boats involved in the operation.¹²⁵ Barmat became the topic talk of the day at every regular’s table, noted Adolf Stein with satisfaction in his column in the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger.¹²⁶ This highly successful media launch of the Barmat story immediately attracted the criticism of the Social Democratic Vorwärts which accused the state prosecution of staging the arrests ‘in the form of a sensational film’.¹²⁷ Liberal papers also remarked on the co-operation of State Prosecution Office and media in creating highly marketable news.¹²⁸ Rather unusually, the state prosecution office refrained from giving an official account of the accusations against the Barmats.¹²⁹ The Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, on the other hand, was able to tell its readers that the arrest was because party-political connections had been used to secure loans from state-owned financial institutes, as well as enabling the Barmats to make very profitable deals with Reich offices and Reich companies. These were the exact claims that had been voiced against the SPD in the first round of the Barmat affair in the pre-election period.¹³⁰ The partisan press that had then engaged in the anti-SPD campaign simply recycled its articles and accusations.¹³¹ Many editors of papers that had not reported on the story earlier in 1924 now took up the theme.¹³² The scale of the operation initiated by the state prosecution office now gave credibility to these press claims. SCANDAL AS A POLITICAL WEAPON Although sensational in nature, the dramatic arrests of the Barmats would not have resulted in one of the Weimar Republic’s biggest media scandals had it not coincided with the up-coming election campaign for the Reich presidency in spring 1925.¹³³ Despite the damage to his reputation caused by the Magdeburg trial, Friedrich Ebert still constituted a formidable challenge to all those who were dissatisfied with the outcome of the revolution of 1918. The opportunity of smearing Social Democracy generally, and Ebert in particular, loomed large on journalists’ minds.¹³⁴ Again, as during the Magdeburg trial, the labelling in headlines became a focal point of political point-scoring. The agrarian Deutsche Tageszeitung announced the arrest of several more Staatsbank officials under the headline ‘Giant expansion of Barmat scandal—Several Eastern Jews arrested’.¹³⁵ In contrast, the Social Democratic Vorwärts declared it a continuation of the ‘Staatsbank-Skandal’, highlighting the responsibility of the Staatsbank management.¹³⁶ Ullstein’s liberal Vossische Zeitung used the less polemical term ‘Barmat-Affäre’, while Berlin’s other renowned liberal daily, Mosse’s Berliner Tageblatt called it ‘Die Affäre Kutisker-Barmat’.¹³⁷ The struggle over the political interpretation of the events manifested in these various labels

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was itself newsworthy: ‘What is the name of the case?’ was the headline used by Georg Bernhard, the chief editor of the Vossische Zeitung, for his first front-page commentary on the affair.¹³⁸ He called it ‘The Seehandlung case’, putting it into the general context of business funding during the inflation period, and drawing parallels with the Stinnes business, which, in turn, led to violent polemics in the right-wing press.¹³⁹ With the arrest of the Barmat brothers, the affair had ceased to inhabit exclusively the pages of the party-political press. Editors all over Berlin knew—or had heard rumours—of the allegations made in the run-up to the December elections. They were, therefore, aware of the politically explosive potential of this affair, and their need to take a position in the wider spectrum of possible viewpoints. Ullstein’s liberal Berliner Morgenpost, for example, which in early December 1924 had ignored all ‘corruption’ charges against the SPD and the Barmats, reported of the arrests of Staatsbank officials on 30 December 1924 under the headline ‘Korruption!’; but in view of the right-wing rhetoric it continued the headline with the otherwise inexplicable ‘How it was in the past—The Monarchy covered up, the Republic overhauls’, with numerous examples of cases of corruption in the Wilhelmine Kaiserreich in the article itself.¹⁴⁰ On the other end of the political spectrum, the amount of coverage given to the Barmat story in Hugenberg’s newspapers was an interpretation in itself of the perceived gravity of the affair. Within the limited space of Scherl’s tabloid paper, the Nachtausgabe, the Barmat story loomed large, in contrast with the minor coverage given to the events by its competitor, Ullstein’s BZ am Mittag. The identity of the villain of the piece and the question of political responsibility became hotly contested issues. The right-wing press immediately defined the affair a ‘political scandal’ and fulminated against the perceived attempts of other papers ‘to pass on the blame from the main protagonists with the poetical foreign first and familiy names to the currently quite innocuous-appearing officials of the Prussian Seehandlung’.¹⁴¹ Vorwärts was indeed selling the affair as an ‘oldPrussian finance scandal’, explicitly countering the agitorial and anti-republican character of right-wing coverage. ‘For the German Nationalists, it is fact that the Seehandlungs scandal could only happen under the new regime and as a consequence of the republican constitution’, Vorwärts declared. ‘The diffusion of such false rumours through the right-wing press serves partly agitatorial ends against Social Democracy, partly it means to distract attention from the core of the scandal, the Staatsbank.’¹⁴² Within this context of general scandal-mongering by antagonistic newspapers, and conflicting accounts of what was at issue, editors recognized the need to place events within a story that would make a convincing political case. The right-wing Nationalpost believed this to be a service to the readership: ‘Increasingly, the Barmat scandal reveals itself to be a scandal of Social Democracy. Already now it has reached such dimensions and is constantly expanding further, that the startled newspaper reader is completely


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at a loss faced with the impact of the daily revelation avalanche. So what is the issue in essence? In a few words the following: . . .’¹⁴³ Then followed the accusation that leading Social Democrats had used their influence to secure state funds for the Barmats while benefiting financially from these transactions, both individually and as a party. The Social Democratic Vorwärts considered this article scandalous, but could not for the moment present an alternative version of events for lack of information. Whilst the attacks had mostly been led by the Communist Rote Fahne before the December elections, the Social Democrats now perceived themselves as victims of a distinctly right-wing attack.¹⁴⁴ It soon transpired, however, that the arrests of the Barmat brothers had been premature, and based on no factual evidence.¹⁴⁵ In the little time the state prosecution had spent on the Barmat files prior to the arrests, it was impossible to identify irregularities that would have justified these unprecedented steps.¹⁴⁶ In fact, it took the state prosecution office until December 1925 to define its charges against the Barmats.¹⁴⁷ When in March 1928 Julius Barmat was eventually sentenced to eleven months in prison, it was not for fraud but for bribery: Julius and Henry Barmat had met the head of the Reich postal ministry, Anton Höfle, in June 1924, who then received some RM 120,000 over the course of the next few months from them. In September 1924 the Barmats then applied for a loan from the Reich postal ministry, and Höfle agreed to grant them RM 14.5 million.¹⁴⁸ Giving the lie to the accusations voiced in the right-wing press, Höfle and another parliamentarian bribed by the Barmats were not Social Democrats but members of the Catholic Centre party. Overeager to fight Social Democracy, Kussmann had been looking for the wrong culprits. Rumours about substantial loans to the Barmats by the Reich postal ministry emerged shortly after the Barmats’ arrests. Höfle felt compelled to issue a statement through Wolff’s news agency: in order to avoid job losses in the Barmat business, he had granted them RM 14.5 million in October 1924, on the normal terms and conditions.¹⁴⁹ However, the Hugenberg papers claimed he had given the Barmats RM 45 million, paid out on explicit command of the minister, bypassing normal departmental procedure for reasons of secrecy.¹⁵⁰ They also reported that Höfle had authorized several loans which went towards enterprises in which a couple of his party colleagues were sitting on the supervisory board.¹⁵¹ On 9 January 1925, the Lokal-Anzeiger announced that the state prosecution was extending its investigation to include Höfle.¹⁵² Although Höfle denied the accusations, he tendered his resignation in view of the pending legal investigation. Even after his resignation, Höfle kept denying the exaggerated accusations voiced against him, but his resignation gave these claims a credibility that the right-wing media skilfully exploited.¹⁵³ The exact circumstances of Höfle’s misdemeanours only became known much later, over the course of the trial of the Barmats in 1927.

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The fact that Höfle was a member of the Catholic Centre party did not deflect the thrust of the right-wing attacks in early 1925: the lead commentary of Hugenberg’s tabloid, the Nachtausgabe, following Höfle’s resignation carried the headline ‘Social Democracy in Barmat-Quagmire’.¹⁵⁴ The Centre party was spared the wholesale condemnation by the right-wing press from which Social Democrats suffered, primarily because of the complex negotiations under way to form a coalition which followed the resignation of Marx and his cabinet after the December Reichstag elections.¹⁵⁵ Although theoretically a Grand Coalition of SPD, Centre party, DDP, and DVP would have been possible, the DVP categorically rejected such an option and demanded the formation of a bourgeois ‘Rechtsblock’, which included both the Centre party and the DNVP. Negotiations took more than a month before Hans Luther could finally announce his cabinet on 15 January 1925. It was an openly bourgeois coalition of the Right. The SPD almost relished its relegation to the role of main opposition party, promising the new government a ‘ruthless fight’.¹⁵⁶ Within the framework of this newly defined politics of confrontation, the SPD constituted a prime target in the Barmat affair. In Prussia, the situation was different. Here the DVP had left the coalition with SPD, DDP, and Zentrum after the December elections. This left Otto Braun with a minority government. The subsequent government crisis lasted until April 1925.¹⁵⁷ This crisis not only provided good headlines; right-wing journalists also hoped to bring down the government—perhaps even the whole democratic system.¹⁵⁸ The involvement of SPD and Centre politicians in the Barmat affair enabled their political opponents to apply the term ‘Barmat-Block’ to the Prussian coalition.¹⁵⁹ The different roles of the Catholic Centre party at the Reich and Prussian levels also explained the difference in tone and style of the investigation of the affair in the Reichstag and Prussian Landtag parliamentary committees. The former was of practically no significance, whilst in the latter the political conflict was carried to extremes.¹⁶⁰ When in January 1925 the Prussian Landtag reconvened for the first time after its Christmas break, the DNVP tabled the motion for an investigating committee to look into the affair. Over the following months, it was press accusations that set the agenda for the investigating committee which needed a total of fifty-two sessions to distinguish between fact and fiction.¹⁶¹ Its final report was issued only on 12 October 1925, and its apparently arbitrary preoccupation with inconsequential facts cannot easily be understood without a knowledge of the gross media hype that surrounded the affair. Although the official subject of the investigation was supposed to be the question of the Staatsbank loans to the Barmats, it hardly featured in the committee’s deliberations.¹⁶² On innumerable occasions, parliamentarians tabled motions to hear further evidence on the basis of press allegations.¹⁶³ So blatant did this become that during the tenth session of the committee, the agenda-setting role of the press was brought into question: ‘Tomorrow some


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journalist publishes any odd story. Immediately, someone in the committee will thereupon table a motion,’ criticized one SPD member, and a DDP member pointed out that if the committee continued to react to all press allegations they would have to extend the hearings until 1950.¹⁶⁴ For the DNVP deputy chairman of the committee, however, there was no longer any distinction between published and public opinion; he considered it his duty ‘to investigate rumours, certain assertions, which appear in the press in public’.¹⁶⁵ He was no examining magistrate, nor a detective, he complained: ‘From where am I meant to get leads? What has been claimed in the press, in the public at large, has to be investigated, in order to cleanse the atmosphere completely.’¹⁶⁶ Ironically, therefore, the press became the prime force in the alleged attempt to cleanse the political atmosphere which journalists had almost single-handedly poisoned themselves. The willingness of politicians to let the press dominate the agenda was remarkable, particularly considering the many complaints individual members made about their treatment at its hands.¹⁶⁷ After one of these complaints, the committee’s chairman called on the press to refrain from mudslinging, but added: ‘I am not saying that it ought to be objective, because it would then become boring.’¹⁶⁸ According to the minutes, this remark met with ‘great amusement’ on the side of other committee members. The situation was no different in the Reichstag, where the first debate on the affair also showed politicians to be under the influence of the first phase of newspaper coverage. The Communist Stoecker demanded an immediate discussion of the ‘stinking corruption scandals’ which he said engrossed all the press and the public.¹⁶⁹ Like Deerberg, Stoecker and probably most other politicians, derived their concept of ¨ ‘Offentlichkeit’ from the press. The activities of the Prussian investigation committee reached a first climax at the end of January 1925, when it invited Gustav Bauer to give evidence. Bauer, SPD member of the Reichstag and, between May 1921 and November 1922, Reich chancellor as well as minister of finance, had helped Barmat to win food import contracts from various Reich offices. He had also entered into business relations with Barmat upon leaving office, though only once, when helping with one scrap-metal deal for which he received a commission. Their relationship came to an end in late 1923, when Bauer and Barmat fell out over the amount of money that Bauer was to receive for that deal.¹⁷⁰ Bauer’s ventures into the business world did not receive the wholehearted support of his party, ‘because the opinion prevailed that what might be a matter of course for bourgeois members of parliament was not suitable for a Social Democrat’, as Vorwärts later explained.¹⁷¹ Some of this unease about his relations with Barmat was evident in Bauer’s own behaviour. In early December 1924, when press reports first mentioned that he was a board member of one of the Barmat enterprises, he kept silent; in early January 1925, after the arrest of the Barmats, he issued a denial.¹⁷²

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Consequently, he did not cut a convincing figure when being cross-examined by the Prussian investigation committee. It transpired that he had exercised his influence on behalf of Barmat much more frequently than his earlier denials had suggested.¹⁷³ Even more damaging for Bauer was his concession that, contrary to his earlier denials (which right-wing papers had been forced to publish under the threat of the press law), he had indeed been sitting on the supervisory board of one of Barmat’s enterprises. However, repeatedly pressed on this issue, he denied having received any financial renumeration from Barmat.¹⁷⁴ Only a few days later, in early February 1925, however, the Lokal-Anzeiger published an article in which it reprinted a letter from Barmat’s company to Bauer during the time of their dispute in late 1923, which listed the various occasions on which Bauer had allegedly received money from Barmat.¹⁷⁵ The SPD promptly asked Bauer to resign his Reichstag seat. Bauer’s resignation, like Höfle’s, was widely portrayed as proof of most of the previous allegations.¹⁷⁶ T H E P RO L I F E R AT I O N O F S C A N D A L ‘Day after day a mud current of suspicions and accusations and invectives is emanating from the right-wing press against men who hold public office’, complained the chief editor of Mosse’s Berliner Volks-Zeitung, the DDP politician Otto Nuschke in January 1925.¹⁷⁷ Whilst Nuschke’s paper was itself highly critical of Barmat and his connections to Social Democratic politicians, it deplored the way the affair played into the hands of the DNVP. Nuschke therefore attempted to neutralize the political capital made out of the ‘Barmat-Ausschuß ’, as the investigating committee of the Prussian parliament was widely called. On 29 January 1925—the same day that saw Bauer give testimony to the investigation committee—Nuschke tabled a motion to broaden the investigation to include events at the Prussian Landespfandbriefanstalt where the director had just resigned: rather than providing funds for house building right-wing officials had apparently lost millions in real-estate speculations. Significantly, Nuschke explicitly based his motion on information he taken from the press.¹⁷⁸ Nuschke obviously hoped this would damage the DNVP. The Social Democrats considered it more profitable to demand a separate investigating committee, in which the events surrounding the Landespfandbriefanstalt would be given undivided attention. Ullstein’s BZ am Mittag deemed all this sufficiently sensational to devote a front page to it, declaring it ‘The new scandal in the Landespfandbriefamt’.¹⁷⁹ By chance, the Reichstag provided the Social Democrats with a much more spectacular topic on the same day that the right-wing press concentrated on Bauer’s testimony. In the Reichstag budgetary committee the newly appointed DNVP finance minister von Schlieben had been forced to reveal that the government was paying out over RM 700 million to the Ruhr industry in


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compensation for losses suffered in 1923. The Ruhr industrialists had complained that they were carrying the main financial burden of the declaration of a general strike after the occupation of the Ruhr by the French in January 1923. The decision to reimburse them for the losses incurred was based on an informal pledge of the then Reich chancellor Stresemann, and had been finally taken by the outgoing Marx government in December 1924. As the Social Democrats now pointed out, there had been no law authorizing the government to take such action, nor had the government made the decision public. It had merely published an announcement in the Reichsanzeiger which stated an unlimited ‘duty of recompensation’. The fact that the money had not even been accounted for in the Reich budget constituted a clear violation of parliamentary budgetary obligations. Vorwärts turned it into a front page story, declaring: ‘Is this not a much greater scandal than anything which has been revealed in connection to Kutisker, Barmat and Michael? In the one case nonfeasances or misdoings of subordinate officials, here decisions of the highest authorities, if not even of the entire Reich government . . .’.¹⁸⁰ The Ullstein press followed suit, devoting the front page of the Berliner Morgenpost to this issue.¹⁸¹ The right-wing press, on the other hand, barely touched upon the disclosure. The government that had taken the decision originally, Hugenberg’s Tag pointed out, had enjoyed the support of the SPD, too. The issue of the Ruhr money, the Scherl papers declared, was Vorwärts’ failed attempt to create a scandal; the Landespfandbriefanstalt affair equally a failure of the democratic press.¹⁸² In the case of the Landespfandbriefanstalt none of the officials involved had benefited from their decisions in any way. According to the Tag, the whole affair was without public interest. Just what was of interest to the public was difficult to determine in the days following Bauer’s testimony to the Prussian investigation committee in late January 1925, the disclosure of the Ruhr compensation and the loans of the Landespfandbriefanstalt. News coverage was neither balanced nor complete. Indeed, the news policy of the various papers became once again subject to fierce criticism from other papers. ‘Whilst in the investigation committee on the Barmat affair the most terrible source of corruption is being revealed blow by blow, the united marxist democratic press manages to keep secret all those conclusions through coarsest hypocrisy’, commented the völkisch Deutsche Tageblatt. ‘Instead they construct a ‘‘finance scandal of the right-wing bloc’’ by means of mendacity, distortion and with scarce material.’¹⁸³ Even a paper like the Berliner Börsen-Zeitung, which focused on economic and financial issues, ignored the Ruhr payments and the Landespfandbriefanstalt. Instead, it published a series of extended front-page stories with ‘inside’ information on the Barmat’s ‘corruption machine’.¹⁸⁴ Vorwärts accused BBZ of sensationalism, but itself published a letter which showed that Höfle had intervened on Barmat’s behalf with his fellow ministers.¹⁸⁵ The Ruhr payments, in comparison, held little excitement: the present Reich government was only executing directives

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that a former government had formulated, and it had promised an official memorandum which would account for the decision. The Barmat affair was excellent news material not only because of the constant stream of revelations that it provided but also because its consequences were so spectacular. On Friday 6 February, Bauer resigned his parliamentary seat because of the Barmat letter published by the Lokal-Anzeiger. Three days later, Höfle, further to his resignation as minister, also resigned his parliamentary seat; the day after that he was arrested. On 13 February, the Prussian interior minister Severing sent police president Richter on leave; the following week the Amtliche Preußische Pressedienst announced that the Prussian Staatsministerium had decided to send Richter into interim retirement.¹⁸⁶ Only Ernst Heilmann, leader of the Social Democratic faction in the Prussian Landtag, survived the affair, despite his well-known friendship to Barmat. His statement to the investigating committee in early February 1925 revealed no compromising information, and gave the right-wing press only little further ammunition: Barmat had only contributed a total of around RM 50,000 to the Social Democratic cause over the last six years, a figure which fell considerably short of the sums that had been alleged in the press.¹⁸⁷ Heilmann also reported that he had intervened with the Prussian finance minister on 8 December 1924 to support Barmat’s request for further funds. Although many commentators did consider this intervention questionable, Heilmann could not be accused of any improper acts.¹⁸⁸ Encouraged by the list of prominent casualties, German Nationalists now switched their attention to the ultimate prize, Friedrich Ebert. In early February 1925, the DNVP tabled a motion in the Prussian investigating committee demanding to hear evidence on Ebert’s knowledge of his office’s dealings with Barmat. The session on 23 February of the investigating committee established that Barmat had indeed received letters of recommendation with the letterhead of the presidential office from one of the office’s employees. Eight months later, in the final sitting of the Barmat-Ausschuß, Ebert was acquitted of any sort of wrongdoing.¹⁸⁹ On 23 February, however, the Ebert–Barmat connection made provocative front-page headlines, while the non-existence of alleged monopoly contracts and profit participation was considered less interesting. Vorwärts and the Catholic Germania were united in their distaste of such artificial generation of scandal by the ‘Rechtspresse’: ‘For weeks this motion has been published by the German Nationalist press, and the virtuous German Nationalist readers were naturally convinced because of the respectability of their party that where there is so much smoke there is also fire.’¹⁹⁰ T H E C O N S E QU E N C E S O F S C A N D A L Although Ebert would easily have survived the attacks aimed at him politically in 1924 and 1925, he did not survive them physically. According to Ebert’s


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friend, Gustav Noske, the president was hounded to death through ‘shameful baiting that an abysmally despiteful press had long been engaging in until the final days’.¹⁹¹ Ebert refused to undergo medical treatment to stand up to the political attacks. ‘Because he was exposed to new accusation in the Barmat investigation committee every day, he remained—tortured by pain—in office’, Noske recalled later. ‘On Monday, 23 February, I was again . . . with him, this time for the last time. . . . While he was bending over with pain, he talked with deep bitterness how he was suffering from the baiting that had been organized against him for years.’¹⁹² On 26 February, his doctors diagnosed acute appendicitis and peritonitis, and Ebert underwent an emergency operation. He died on 28 February 1925. With Ebert dead, Höfle arrested, Bauer out of office, and Richter sent into retirement, the Barmat affair had spent itself.¹⁹³ Although Heilmann remained subject to repeated attacks due to his relationship with Barmat, scandal-mongering newspapers found no proof of personal gains.¹⁹⁴ By mid-March, most of the people initially arrested at the same time as the Barmats had had to be released by the state prosecution office, which had altered its charges against the Barmats three times in as many months.¹⁹⁵ The death of Friedrich Ebert, followed by his state burial and then by the nomination by each party of its candidate for the presidential elections, completely dominated the news in early March 1925. The sessions of the Prussian Barmat committee lumbered on until October, but they received considerably less coverage than before Ebert’s death, and by mid-March several newspapers had declared the Barmat scandal dead.¹⁹⁶ The name ‘Barmat’, however, did continue to haunt the political discourse of the following months; the affair was repeatedly brought up in party political propaganda. Ebert had only just been buried when the DNVP produced leaflets highlighting his responsibility for letting the Barmats into Germany.¹⁹⁷ In the Reichstag, the Communist Remmele interrupted the eulogies to the deceased Reich president by declaring that the six years of his presidency had consisted of ‘six years of corruption . . . six years of Barmatism, six years of robbery of public money by notorious profiteers and frauds . . .’.¹⁹⁸ Already in early February, the Communists had published a brochure, Barmat und seine Partei, which summarized the allegations of corruption that the Rote Fahne had printed.¹⁹⁹ The DNVP followed suit in early March, with ‘The Kustiker–Barmat scandal—According to the publications of the press up to now’.²⁰⁰ ‘The press’, in this case, was the Pan-German Deutsche Zeitung, from which all excerpts had been taken—a fact kept hidden from the reader. The right-wing parties eventually nominated the former Reich interior minister and mayor of Duisburg, Karl Jarres, as their candidate. Otto Braun, for the SPD, and Wilhelm Marx, former Reich chancellor of the Catholic Centre, stood little chance of gaining more votes than Jarres.²⁰¹ The right-wing contingent behind Jarres, the Reichsblock, used the Barmat affair extensively in its election

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campaign. When Vorwärts polemicized against this ‘scandal campaign’ it was attacked by Hugenberg’s Tag, which proclaimed that the Social Democrats had good reason to be afraid of the upcoming ‘Barmat elections’.²⁰² The Barmats were also a popular topic at election rallies. In his description of a rally in the Berlin Sportpalast, Carl von Ossietzky emphasized the importance of the Barmat affair as a common rhetorical denomination that united the Reichsblock in its opposition to Social Democracy: ‘Four speakers perform, four speakers from different political groupings, but they all operate consistently with the Barmat–Kutisker-scandal. One gentleman from the Vaterländische Vereine has the gall to ask why the Social Democrats have not nominated Herr Barmat instead of Herr Braun, and minutes of jubilations reward this effrontery.’²⁰³ None of the candidates received the necessary absolute majority in the first round of the presidential election, necessitating a second round in which a relative majority would suffice for victory. Since both Braun and Marx were candidates for the presidential office and potential candidates for the post of Prussian minister-president, the two parties struck a deal: Braun withdrew from the presidental election and was elected in Prussia with the support of the Catholic Centre on 3 April; in return, the SPD supported Marx, who also received the support of the liberals, for the presidency.²⁰⁴ Against Marx as the candidate of the so-called Volksblock Jarres was likely to lose, so the Reichsblock exchanged him for Paul von Hindenburg. The nomination of the old field marshal sent shock-waves through the German political system. The vote for the president looked likely to turn into a vote on the Republic. The SPD executive saw the republic in danger, and pointed in particular at the efforts of its political opponents to mobilize non-voters: ‘every libel is played out anew, all lies newly lied . . .’.²⁰⁵ Indeed, the Reichsblock heightened its anti-republican rhetoric and encouraged the German electorate to vote for ‘Schwarz-Weiß-Rot’, the colours of the old Kaiserreich, and against the republican ‘Schwarz-Rot-Gold’. The union of Social Democrats and Catholic Centre lent itself to the label ‘Barmatblock’. The rightwing agrarian Reichs-Landbund drew on the anti-Social Democratic files in its extensive newspaper-clippings collection to produce leaflets on Barmat that were distributed throughout the countryside.²⁰⁶ A spate of right-wing pamphlets in late March and in April aimed to highlight the corruption inherent in the republican system in general, and in Social Democracy in particular: Barmat and his Friends by Hugenberg’s star columnist Adolf Stein; From Rathenau to Barmat, by the anti-Semitic writer Otto Armin; and, most controversially, The Barmat Quagmire, by Dr Kaufhold.²⁰⁷ Kaufhold was a member of the Prussian Barmat committee. The pamphlet contained numerous inaccuracies and polemically distorted the findings of the committee. It became a hotly contested issue within the investigating committee on 4 April, when the committee voted to distance itself publicly from the publication.²⁰⁸ Newspaper coverage of this session mostly ignored the vote, whilst often using the title of the publication for headlines.²⁰⁹


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The decision to call Julius Barmat as a witness before the investigating committee a few days before the elections was also influenced by election strategies. The fact that nothing incriminating was revealed by questioning Barmat was withheld from the public.²¹⁰ Six days before the decisive second round of the election, former Reich Post minister Höfle died in custody from an overdose of medication. His death intensified the existing antagonism in the press. The Catholic Centre party, unnerved by the constant barrage of propaganda against its presidential candidate, Marx, reacted strongly. On its front page, Germania raged against the political opponents: ‘For months they, the organs of the right-wing bloc, have fumed and fulminated against Barmat and Barmat comrades. They hoped to hit a political system, and they only hit a poor ill human.’²¹¹ Germania harshly criticized the state prosecution office, which had kept Höfle in custody despite his deteriorating condition. The reasons for Höfle’s sudden arrest came under scrutiny, and again it transpired that the the press had provoked his premature arrest and the subsequent strict detention: the state prosecution had acted on the basis of an article anonymously published by a DNVP member of the Prussian parliament in the Deutsche Zeitung, which had—wrongly—accused Höfle of secretly destroying official files after his resignation.²¹² Vorwärts declared his death cold-blooded ‘Justizmord ’, pointing at the state prosecution’s decision to have Höfle pumped full with narcotics to keep him available for questioning.²¹³ The right-wing press claimed it had been suicide, interpreting it as an admission of guilt on Höfle’s part.²¹⁴ The autopsy seemed to indicate that death had not been self-inflicted; but there was room for doubt.²¹⁵ The investigation committee set up to clarify this issue did not deliver a conclusive verdict. In July 1925, after twenty-six sessions, the committee announced that the state prosecution office had lacked proper judgement and tact in the Höfle case, and self-determined suicide could not be proven.²¹⁶ For Social Democrats, however, it was clear that the Barmat press campaign was to blame. ‘There would be no Höfle case if there had not existed a German Nationalist and Communist campaign against this man’, explained the Social Democrat Ernst Kuttner during the final session of the Höfle investigation committee. ‘The German Nationalists created a mood of pogrom within the population; . . . the concurrent terror affected civil servants. The indirect cause of death of Höfle is: baiting and slander.’²¹⁷ In the plenary discussion of the findings in October, many members of the coalition parties joined Kuttner in blaming Höfle’s death on the malicious press campaign of their political opponents: they had created a ‘Barmat psychosis, to which unfortunately also judges, state prosecutors, civil servants and doctors fell prey’.²¹⁸ The presidential election of 26 April 1925 demonstrated that the Barmat press campaign had influenced more than just a few judges, civil servants, and professionals. The damage done to the credibility of SPD and Centre party

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was such that Hindenburg was elected president, with a small majority of just 900,000 votes over Marx. One of the main reasons for Hindenburg’s narrow victory was the Reichsblock’s success in mobilizing former non-voters. Six years after the foundation of the Republic, the promise offered by a former Prussian general and convinced monarchist to restore social harmony and guarantee non-partisanship in the president’s office struck a chord with the German electorate.²¹⁹ Hindenburg’s election could have meant the ultimate demise of the Barmat affair, yet the revelation of Kussmann’s press connections in summer 1925 revived media interest shortly. The belated discovery that Barmat’s spectacular arrest and the judicial proceedings against him had been based on political motives and designed to produce a media scandal in the run-up to the presidential elections did not result in a dramatic reversal of published opinion. On the contrary, the media response to these revelations was indicative of the partisan coverage that had accompanied the Barmat affair from the beginning. Vorwärts, Germania, and the liberal papers considered the events scandalous;²²⁰ the right-wing press described the raid on Kussmann’s appartment as a result of political pressure on the state prosecution;²²¹ the Communists labelled it both ‘judicial corruption’ and ‘Barmat relief campaign’.²²² Where the Barmats were concerned, the Communist paper pointed out, it was not the origins of the incriminating material but their authenticity that mattered.²²³ Many papers, however, just noted the initial house-search, and gave coverage to Kussmann’s denial.²²⁴ Headlines like ‘Echo of the Barmat scandal’ reaffirmed the political interpretation of earlier coverage.²²⁵ Kussmann’s testimony to the Barmat committee in September was often completely ignored. He was later put on trial for the malfeasance of leaking official material in pending proceedings. Ironically, however, before the court could reach a verdict, his case was dropped under the general amnesty that Hindenburg declared on political offenders late in 1925.²²⁶ On 14 October 1925, the Vorwärts reported the conclusions of the Barmat committee in a small note headlined ‘End of the scandal’. The committee had established that the loans given to the Barmats by the Staatsbank had not resulted in a direct or indirect financial advantage to any of the politicians involved, even if some of them—in particular Bauer and Richter—could be reproached for careless behaviour and insufficient caution in their private relations with the family. Ebert, the committee explicitly stated, had maintained a spotless reputation. Vorwärts editor Kuttner, who was a member of the committee, blamed the apparent discrepancy between accusations and findings on the press: ‘If the findings of the committee diverge so completely from that which a sensation-craving baiting press has led the population to believe for months, this is not caused by the attempt to hush up or cover up something, but by the unscrupulousness of this muckraking.’²²⁷ However, interest in the affair had by this stage completely evaporated. Moreover, the unspectacular findings of the committee were no match for the big news-story


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of mid-October, Stresemann’s negotiations in Locarno, widely depicted as a sequel to the Versailles negotiations. While Stresemann performed his balancing act in the limelight of public attention, the Barmats faded out of view. What remained of them was the memory of a huge, unsavoury spectacle which had tarnished the reputation of Germany’s new parliamentary democracy. C O N C LU S I O N During the Magdeburg trial, the Social Democratic Vorwärts hoped that revelations about the DNVP manipulation of witnesses and the press would help to improve the political culture in Weimar Germany: ‘Their manœuvres will repel all those still numerous members in all parties in the country who slowly want to lift our people out of the atmosphere of poisoned struggle to more dignified forms of political competition.’²²⁸ The opposite was the case: this atmosphere of vicious polemics, accusations, and counter-accusations rife through the media inspired state prosecutor Kussmann to set out on further political crusades—in co-operation with right-wing newspapers. The individual action of this one judicial official triggered off what would otherwise not have become a political scandal. In the long term, the combination of a predominantly anti-republican judiciary enabling and ‘protecting’ anti-republican press polemics proved lethal to the legitimacy of Weimar democracy.²²⁹ Certainly, the Barmat scandal in 1925 had none of the legitimizing effects that some theorists attribute to political scandal.²³⁰ The whole affair allowed commentators to embark on anti-Semitic, anti-socialist, and anti-democratic polemics which intensified existing political antagonism. The impression was created that the reputation of parliamentarism had seriously suffered. Völkisch commentators gloated that ‘the so-called Republic could hardly lose any more of its reputation’.²³¹ Democratic observers, too, were worried about the effects of the hostile press campaign. One Austrian correspondent in Berlin considered it more dangerous than previous military coups: ‘There is no denying the fact that of all reactionary initiatives against the Republic the scandal campaign is the most dangerous.’²³² This was an accurate observation. Friedrich Ebert was destroyed: first by Magdeburg, after which he made up his mind not to stand again; then by the Barmat committee, which he accorded higher priority than his health—a lethal calculation, as it turned out. It was a political atmosphere in which former Reichs minister Höfle died in prison, pumped up with narcotics to allow further interrogation by the state prosecution. Gustav Bauer died, too, if only politically. He struggled long to re-establish his reputation; it took him until May 1926 to be readmitted to his party.²³³ Newspapers relayed stories like Magdeburg and Barmat to a wider audience in the country that had neither alternative sources of knowledge nor

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immediate access to information about Reich politics: to the great majority of German citizens, politics in the Republic were exactly as the newspapers depicted them. Of course, it is difficult to determine the exact impact of the polemics which accompanied the Magdeburg trial and the Barmat scandal. There are numerous levels of audiences. A few indications suggest that ‘the man on the street’ constituted a very receptive audience: immediately after the Magdeburg trial, Stein published his collected commentaries as a pamphlet, Ebert’s Trial, which sold 100,000 copies within a few weeks.²³⁴ He repeated this feat with another conglomerate of his articles, Barmat and his Friends, shortly before the second round of the presidential elections.²³⁵ Recently published recollections of Weimar Germany also indicate the extent to which the presentation of the Magdeburg trial in the media shaped especially young people’s perception of Ebert, 1918, and the Republic.²³⁶ Members of the Prussian investigating committee complained about the formidable load of daily correspondence concerning the Barmat affair they received from members of the public.²³⁷ On another level, politicians and their preoccupation with political news provided another audience. Here, circumstancial evidence for the effects of newspaper coverage can be found in the terminology of parliamentary discourse. ‘Quagmire’, ‘furuncle’, and ‘stench’, on the one hand, ‘dirt’, ‘rubbish’, and ‘dung’, on the other, were terms which consistently pervaded commentaries, to the extent that their ubiquity was considered poisonous to political culture. ‘Let us do away with all this disgusting corruption-muckraking’, one left-liberal journalist appealed in March 1925. ‘It only serves to poison the atmosphere . . .’.²³⁸ The terminology of the Barmat scandal spread by the media affected the political atmosphere significantly in 1925. Politicians who were exposed to this press coverage over several weeks and months reacted to the strong language that they encountered in the papers, either by picking it up or by dismissing it in equally strong terms, which again gave the press something to report on. This interaction of politicians and journalists led to an increasingly vicious circle of opprobrious discourse, which influenced the way parliament worked. It was not really surprising that there was genuine dissatisfaction with the way the investigating committee functioned. ‘[Here] the different party directions collide with unrestrained passion and drastic terminology’, noted one journalist in March 1925.²³⁹ The partisan spirit inherent in all polemics triumphed over objective fact-finding, and the parliamentary system seemed unable to clarify the contested issues.²⁴⁰ More generally, newspapers were crucial in constructing and maintaining competing perceptions of reality. The Barmat scandal was thus confirmation of nationalists’ long-held views of the present, which compared unfavourably with the allegedly more glorious past.²⁴¹ The ‘non-republicans’, as Tag labelled itself, claimed they wanted to depict present conditions to show the German population the nature of the system of which it needed to rid itself.²⁴² Political corruption, the


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right-wing media claimed, was an exclusive feature of democracy, and a hitherto unknown phenomenon in German and Prussian history.²⁴³ Thus, the narrative combination of the Magdeburg trial and the Barmat scandal served as a means to win over the reading public to a world-view in which Barmat stood for the ‘corruption economy which has prevailed in the post-November-revolutionary epoch in Germany . . . when Social Democracy took up political leadership in the German Reich’.²⁴⁴ Their liberal and left-wing colleagues could not win: if they ignored the charges, their opponents declared them to be true; if they pointed out that corruption had already existed in the Kaiserreich, their opponents gleefully interpreted that as an admission that in the present affair one was indeed dealing with corruption.²⁴⁵ Similarly, any rejection of the exaggerated charges levelled at the Barmats was interpreted as a sign of complicity, and therefore proof of the charges. Hostility to the new political system found a suitable target in what some contemptuously labelled ‘a black-red-yellow scandal’.²⁴⁶ Hence, the strategy of Democrats and Social Democrats to come up with competing scandals also backfired. In view of the opprobrious discourse accompanying all the scandalizing, observers could not help feeling that an era of scandals was indeed being ushered in. The media exploitation of the Magdeburg trial and the Barmat scandal did not pay off for one particular party: all the anti-Barmat/SPD propaganda that the Reichsblock could muster did not suffice to get the DVP party politician Jarres elected in the first round of the presidential elections. However, the moment the right-wing parties could present, in Hindenburg, a candidate who could be credibly presented to be standing above (democratic) partisan politics, the majority of the electorate responded. Magdeburg and Barmat provided the right kind of political backdrop in front of which Hindenburg could be cast as the ‘Retter’, Germany’s saviour, as right-wing propaganda hailed him.²⁴⁷ The key to his success lay in the mobilization of former non-voters, and their dissatisfaction with the present system. At the same time, his victory was a very close-run thing. It is questionable whether Hindenburg would have scraped into office without four months of media barrage aimed at discrediting the Republic. The Magdeburg trial and the Barmat scandal did great damage to Weimar’s political culture: by the creation of scapegoats, enemies, and pariahs, political divisions in Germany were deepened, antagonism strengthened, and the legitimacy of the political system undermined. The terminology of 1924–5 was of long-lasting influence. Magdeburg and Barmat provided commentators and politicians with an imagery that could be reused for years to come, since it had been invested with a certain amount of legitimacy. Novembermord, Parteibonze, and System were not, as has sometimes been suggested, National Socialist inventions to denigrate the republic.²⁴⁸ They were part of the right-wing vocabulary, which had gained credibility at the occasion of political trials and scandals, and which had been spread by the media

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for years. In this respect, the election of Hindenburg was, in fact, a mixed blessing: on the one hand, it showed how an anti-republican majority could be mobilized; on the other, it did at least provide a period of respite for the Weimar Republic, a cease-fire in the media’s onslaught on the Republic’s legitimacy.

4 The ‘Unpolitical’ Press: Provincial Newspapers around Berlin, 1925–8 What we know about society, yes, about the world in which we live, we know from the mass media. Niklas Luhmann, Die Realität der Massenmedien (Opladen, 1996), 9.

On the night of Sunday 26 April 1925, many citizens of the small Brandenburg town of Oranienburg who wanted to find out about the outcome of the Reich presidency election gathered in front of their local newspaper publishing house, where updates of the election counts were projected on the walls. Despite the incessant rain, many stayed until long after midnight, when the incoming results from rural constituencies tipped the balance of the close race in favour of Hindenburg.¹ Editors of the Niederbarnimer Kreisblatt worked through the night to publish a special edition on Monday morning carrying the sensational news that the veteran field marshal had been elected as new Reich president. On Tuesday, the paper was mostly devoted to the outcome of the election, reactions to it from abroad, and, among the extensive local news, reports of events on election day as well as the individual results for the various district towns and villages. Editors were sure that their local readership would study this edition carefully, and they did not miss the opportunity of advertising for their own paper: the Niederbarnimer Kreisblatt, a big advertisement pointed out, was the local paper of record. Due to its many supplements it featured more reading material than any other local paper; it also claimed to report quickly and reliably about all noteworthy events ‘within the closer and wider fatherland and abroad’.² This advertisement, like the whole Tuesday edition, makes clear why Berlin papers stood no real chance of finding a wider reading audience outside the metropolis, even in a town like Oranienburg, less than 35 km from central Berlin. Apart from entertainment value, readers subscribed to a paper primarily for the local news, eager to find out about what happened in their immediate surrounding area: information on the Landrat’s action on an outbreak of swine fever was much more relevant than news of a tram accident in BerlinWedding. No Berlin newspaper provided information on the election results in Oranienburg, Bernau, and Liebenwalde, not to mention tiny villages like Werder

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bei Rehfelde or Vogelsdorf. An advertisement of the Oranienburger Bank would have been completely wasted in a Berlin paper. To increase further the appeal to a local readership, the Niederbarnimer Kreisblatt carried the sub-title Bernauer Zeitung, as well as calling itself Tageblatt für Altlandsberg, Neuenhagen und Hoppegarten. In Oranienburg itself, it even appeared under a completely different name, Oranienburger General-Anzeiger; in the small town of Liebenwalde, it was called Zeitung für Liebenwalde. In Oranienburg, there was just the one paper; in Bernau, the Niederbarnimer Kreisblatt was competing with the Bernauer General-Anzeiger, which, however, appeared only three times a week.³ If a citizen of Bernau moved about 20 km to the south-west, to Berlin-Pankow, he or she could choose from nearly seventy daily Berlin papers. The density of the Berlin newspaper market stood in stark contrast to the world of the provincial press. Like Bernau and Oranienburg, a typical small town in Weimar Germany would have one or two local newspapers at most. Unlike Berlin, where readers would often receive two or even three daily editions, provincial readers were satisfied if they could enjoy a newspaper every day of the week: a third of Germany’s newspapers appeared three times a week or less in 1925.⁴ Circulation was also much lower than in Berlin: several studies during the 1920s established that 67 per cent of all papers had a circulation of fewer than 5,000 copies; around 84 per cent ran at under 10,000.⁵ Tabloid papers and street sales were unknown; retailing centred on weekly or monthly subscriptions. In rural areas, the state of informedness also depended on the season. The long working hours in agriculture meant that newspaper reading was a luxury often reserved to the winter months. Once the harvest began, subscriptions to some local papers slumped by up to 50 per cent.⁶ Many of the provincial newspapers had been established in the last decades of the nineteenth century by local jobbing printers who wanted to reduce the long hours of inactivity of their printing machinery. These enterprises were usually undercapitalized and economically unstable. Often they did not even have an editorial board: they were run as one-man businesses and involved a lot of cutting and pasting. Quite a number of them used so-called Matern—commercially available ready-made typesets—to which only a local section including the advertisements needed to be added. In many cases the only difference between one paper and another was the different title, as was the case with the Niederbarnimer Kreisblatt and the Oranienburger General-Anzeiger. Many critics condemned these purely commercial publications, calling them ‘parasites’ that lived off reprinting other papers’ articles.⁷ But while newspapers from the capital were often the source of inspiration for the relatively short political sections of the local press, the true strength of local papers lay in the provision of local news and advertisements. This demand for local news resulted in a regionally fragmented, decentralized German press, in which Berlin papers held little appeal to people outside Berlin, with the possible exception of local editors. In terms of available information, contemporaries of the Weimar Republic were experiencing totally different situations, depending on whether they lived

Provincial Newspapers around Berlin, 1925–8

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in an urban context with its multiple, competing, channels of communication or in a provincial town or village with limited access to information beyond the immediate local sphere. The extent to which this different media experience resulted in a different outlook on politics has never been analysed. Of course, it is impossible for any study to look at the total of some 3,300 daily papers in Germany, not least because only few of them have been collected for future use.⁸ But fortunately a great number of local papers have survived in the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, mostly from the Brandenburg province. This allows us to take a sample of local newspapers from a relatively clearly defined region, and to look at their particular character and the coverage of current affairs in provincial Germany. The Prussian province of Brandenburg was typical in many respects. In 1932, there was a total of 256 newspapers appearing in 169 different towns in Brandenburg. They tended to have a slightly lower circulation than the average across the Reich: 75 per cent running at under 5,000 copies; 90 per cent at under 10,000. The percentage of dailies, around 70 per cent of all newspapers, was only a fraction higher than the Reich average. Almost every fourth paper was a sub-edition, having the same content as the main edition but appearing under a different name. Only just over 7 per cent of all Brandenburg newspapers were left wing in political orientation, a fraction less than the Reich average.⁹ The nine newspapers analysed for this chapter appeared in six towns: Brandenburg, Wittenberge, Prenzlau, Angermünde, Bernau, and Königswusterhausen.¹⁰ Local papers were the main source of information for the inhabitants of these provincial towns, as radio was still limited mainly to the provision of light entertainment, especially music—news was rarely broadcast.¹¹ ¨ T H E ‘ U N P O L I T I C A L’ FUHRER: R A L LY I N G F O R H I N D E N BU RG For most of this period, the majority of regional newspapers would normally try to avoid overtly partisan positions, in order to appeal to as large and politically heterogeneous a readership as possible. Because of this policy provincial papers, like the Generalanzeiger press more generally, were often perceived as ‘unpolitical’ by urban observers who were used to a more openly partisan press. This was a crass oversimplification. The extent to which local editors understood their newspapers to have a political function was most obvious at election times. The election campaign leading up to the Reich presidency elections in April 1925 was a case in point. Hindenburg’s candidature after the first round of elections proved essential in mobilizing editorial support in the provinces. Even newspapers which, during the first round of elections, had tried hard to maintain a relatively neutral stance, like the Niederbarnimer Kreisblatt or the Königswusterhausener Zeitung, now succumbed to the popularity of the old field marshal. His first electoral

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address to the German population, published on Easter Sunday, promptly made it on to the front pages. Hindenburg’s message was quintessentially nationalist: ‘patriotically minded Germans from all German Gauen and tribes’ had asked him to stand, now he appealed to all Germans to ‘help in the resurrection of our fatherland’.¹² Marketed under the headline ‘Hindenburg’s Easter Message’, the wording was semi-religious and aimed at portraying him as standing above the low culture of party politics. The declaration of his opponent, the ‘Easter Greeting’ of Centre politician and former Reich chancellor Wilhelm Marx, in contrast, was mostly ignored. This set the tone for the coming weeks. Normally without illustrations on their front pages, almost all non-socialist papers printed portraits of Hindenburg on their cover at least once before the elections.¹³ Marx featured rarely and, apart from the Social Democratic newspapers, only few provincial papers even mentioned the activities of the so-called ‘Volksblock’ supporting Marx’s candidature. The Königswusterhausener Zeitung would on most days have a front-page column entitled ‘Vom Wahlkampf ’ covering both camps, but it would always begin with, and have more to say about, the Hindenburg campaign. The week before the elections, the Königswusterhausener Zeitung began publishing daily appeals in favour of Hindenburg on page three.¹⁴ This campaign found a climax on election day, when a third of the front page was taken up by a lengthy pro-Hindenburg proclamation: ‘Who is against class struggle, profiteering, atheism, sloppiness! Then vote for Hindenburg!’¹⁵ This was quite drastic language for an allegedly ‘parteilos’ paper.¹⁶ Editors were obviously willing to alienate a significant part of the Königswusterhausen electorate: at the first round, the candidates of the three parties which now supported Marx—the SPD, the DDP, and the Centre party—had received 1,036 votes in the town, slightly more than Hindenburg’s predecessor, Jarres.¹⁷ The Königswusterhausener Zeitung was not untypical of bourgeois editors’ approach to electioneering. In Prenzlau, both daily newspapers, the Prenzlauer Zeitung and the Uckermärkischer Kurier, backed Hindenburg in a similar way. Marx was given short shrift.¹⁸ During the last week before election day, the Uckermärkischer Kurier changed its layout and inserted a large box on its front page, immediately underneath its title, advertising ‘Wählt Hindenburg!’¹⁹ The Prenzlauer Zeitung did likewise for several days before 26 April.²⁰ In this paper, it was obviously editorial policy to ignore Marx’s candidature. While the Uckermärkischer Kurier did publish an announcement of a Volksblock rally, albeit on page 4, and once even included a provocative pro-Marx advertisement on the front page, the Prenzlauer Zeitung denied republicans the opportunity to advertise in the paper.²¹ As the editor explained in one leading article, whoever voted for Marx was supporting the ‘eternalization of a rotten and corrupt system’.²² The composition of the Prignitzer in Wittenberge displayed the same mixture of exclusive coverage of the Hindenburg campaign,²³ polemical attacks on the republican candidate,²⁴ and front-page appeals for, and portrayals of, Hindenburg.²⁵ Even more explicitly partisan were the two self-proclaimed

Provincial Newspapers around Berlin, 1925–8 111 Fig. 4.1. Local newspapers campaigning for Hindenburg in April 1925. On the day before the elections, the allegedly ‘parteilos’ (non-partisan) Prignitzer (left) explicitly called on its readership to back the old field marshal. It was no less partisan than an openly ‘national’ newspaper like the Brandenburger Anzeiger (right).

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‘nationalist’ newspapers in Angermünde and Brandenburg. Here, editors were also the main organizers of the Reichsblock, the union of right-wing parties supporting Hindenburg. The Angermünder Zeitung published at least five special editions called ‘Der neue Reichspräsident’ providing Reichsblock election propaganda, and distributed several pamphlets, which readers apparently received with their daily paper.²⁶ In Brandenburg, the two main Reichsblock rallies were not only prominently advertised in the Brandenburger Anzeiger, but the meetings themselves were chaired by the paper’s chief editor, who was chairman of the Reichsblock committee in Brandenburg.²⁷ More distinctively than other provincial papers, the Angermünder Zeitung and the Brandenburger Anzeiger also constructed the image of a large national political consensus. Day after day in April, these two papers would devote considerable space to the news that such-and-such an organization or personality had thrown their support behind Hindenburg.²⁸ On paper, there was an increasing dynamic of national rallying behind Hindenburg, a picture of large groupings of German society bowing to the authority of the old hero. To a certain extent, this was nothing but literary construction: ‘The entire German small trade for Hindenburg’ was the headline announcing that the Deutsche Handwerkerbund had decided to back Hindenburg—but failed to mention that this was a small association with only a few local groups in Pomerania, East Prussia, and Mitteldeutschland.²⁹ The Social Democratic Brandenburger Zeitung severely criticized this misrepresentation of the ‘public’, accusing the right-wing press of ‘lying to its ‘‘nationalist readership’’ and deluding themselves’.³⁰ As the election result showed, far from being united behind Hindenburg, German society was, in fact, deeply divided into two camps of almost the same size. This, however, was not reflected on the pages of most provincial newspapers. The upbeat presentation of the Hindenburg campaign stood in sharp contrast to the mood of its organizers in Berlin. Gustav Stresemann, foreign minister and chairman of the DVP, had serious qualms about Hindenburg’s candidature.³¹ He feared that hostile reactions to Hindenburg abroad would have significant repercussions for his foreign policy. Indeed, immediately after Hindenburg’s nomination, newspapers of the Mosse and Ullstein publishing houses reported an overwhelmingly critical reception of the news in French, English, and American newspapers.³² Citing foreign press reports verbatim, they warned that the election of Hindenburg would greatly damage Germany’s finances, as American loans under the Dawes Agreement would be thrown into doubt. These press reports, and incoming diplomatic reports which seemed to confirm these anxieties, had a great impact on Stresemann and Reich chancellor Luther, both of whom considered asking Hindenburg to resign in favour of an all-party candidate. Such a candidate, however, was not found, and the idea was dropped. The DVP’s support for Hindenburg was subsequently characterized by strong scepticism, as was the case in parts of the Bavarian People’s Party, the BVP. The mood was such that Hindenburg himself seems to have considered retiring from


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the race.³³ Less than a week before the election, Stresemann noted in his diary the Berlin mood as ‘fully pessimistic in view of Hindenburg’s chances’, describing the campaign as chaotic and without drive.³⁴ This was not only Stresemann’s view. At a meeting of the DNVP’s party executive in the week of the elections, strong criticism was voiced against the DVP and BVP. The Reichsblock was denounced as ‘an awful conglomeration’ and its propaganda management deplored.³⁵ This dissent within the Reichsblock was made public through Mosse’s Berliner Tageblatt, which had somehow acquired the minutes of the meeting.³⁶ Democratic and socialist newspapers widely reprinted the minutes to highlight the infighting within the Reichsblock, which stood in such marked contradiction to the efforts to present Hindenburg as standing above party politics. But news of this Reichsblock crisis hardly ever made it through to the provincial readership in the Brandenburg region. Bourgeois newspapers only mentioned it—by giving the DNVP’s official version of the meeting—in response to the reports of their local Social Democratic competitors.³⁷ This was symptomatic of the way political conflict from the capital filtered down to a provincial readership: while little information was provided, it was often steeped in hostile partisan rhetoric. The reception of Hindenburg’s nomination abroad was a case in point. None of the sampled bourgeois provincial papers admitted that there was a certain justification for the concern of Germany’s neighbours about the possible election to the presidency of a self-declared monarchist and militarist. Instead, they fiercely attacked Socialist and Democratic papers for suggesting that such concerns should have any bearing on the electoral decision.³⁸ The Ullstein papers in particular drew heavy fire for their overtly critical stance. They were accused of fabricating, and indeed provoking, this foreign ‘opinion’ through their negative Hindenburg coverage.³⁹ It was suggested that it was not Hindenburg, but rather the BZ am Mittag and the Vossische Zeitung, that ruined Germany’s reputation abroad.⁴⁰ Ullstein’s, Mosse’s, and Social Democratic newspapers were bundled together as ‘the press of the so-called Volksblock’ that could only be read with disgust.⁴¹ Anti-Marxism and anti-Semitism were blended in attacks on Vorwärts, Vossische Zeitung, ‘and other Galicians’ (sometimes referred to as the ‘German Press’ in inverted commas), representatives of the ‘Internationalistenpresse’ and its ‘pathetic submission’ to foreign powers.⁴² Explicit parallels were drawn to enemy propaganda during the world war, where such ‘poisoning of the people’ had allegedly resulted in the stab-in-the-back.⁴³ Apart from some local editors, provincial readers were not normally exposed to the Berlin papers to which the polemics referred. So why were they so heavily attacked? To some extent, editors used them to rail against a political argument occasionally taken up by those few provincial papers that were critical of Hindenburg.⁴⁴ Also, provincial papers often followed the line of argument pursued by anti-Marxist papers in Berlin, for whom their Democratic and

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Social Democratic counterparts seemed a real challenge. But most importantly, newspapers with a large readership such as the BZ am Mittag were perceived as political actors in their own rights, and were therefore valid targets in their own right, as the prime representatives of a metropolitan and democratic political system.⁴⁵ While Marx himself was careful to avoid an open confrontation with Hindenburg, newspapers backing him were less subtle in their electioneering and were therefore attacked as the real campaign managers.⁴⁶ For the political culture of the Weimar Republic, this media war had serious repercussions: even when politicians themselves were trying to steer a moderate line, intent on avoiding the degeneration of political competition into ideological mud-slinging, the press took an active role in escalating any conflict. Thus, even during the socalled ‘golden years’, parliamentary democracy was denied the veneer of political respectability. What were the effects of newspaper support for the election result? Again, as in Chapter 1, the answer is not clear cut. In the second round of the elections, Hindenburg received 25 per cent more votes than the Reichsblock’s candidate, Jarres, had achieved in the first round, and he was particularly successful in provincial Germany. In Angermünde and Prenzlau, where the only available newspapers were overtly pro-Hindenburg, he achieved over 60 per cent and 70 per cent, respectively. However, it was not the degree of overt backing that seemed to be decisive, but rather the media consonance in any given town. In Brandenburg, the openly nationalist Brandenburger Anzeiger gave Hindenburg the greatest possible support, but simultaneously the Social Democratic Brandenburger Zeitung called on its readers to vote for Marx. Over 50 per cent of the voters decided to back Marx. In Wittenberge, the campaigning of the Prignitzer was countered by the Social Democratic Volks-Zeitung. Because of the division of the readership in Wittenberge and Brandenburg along political lines, it is very likely that the Prignitzer and the Brandenburger Anzeiger were preaching to the converted. In both Brandenburg and Wittenberge, Hindenburg increased the Reichsblock vote, but considerably less than on average across the Reich. This can be contrasted with Hindenburg’s performance in those towns where media backing was less partisan, but in essence unchallenged. This did not automatically result in a majority of citizens voting for him, as the case of Bernau shows. But in Bernau, as in Oranienburg, Hindenburg’s vote increased by two to three times as much as in Brandenburg. They were catered for by the Oranienburger General-Anzeiger and the Niederbarnimer Kreisblatt, which both assiduously backed Hindenburg. Locals in Bernau and Oranienburg had not been exposed to any explicitly anti-Hindenburg paper. The same was true of Königswusterhausen. At the first round, the candidates of the Volksblock had achieved a narrow lead over the Reichsblock. Hindenburg improved by 30 per cent over the first Reichsblock result, achieving a total of 1,321 votes. Votes for Marx also increased, but only by 20 per cent, falling behind Hindenburg with only 1,236.⁴⁷ The mobilization of voters by Marx’s


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Table 4.1. Elections to the Reich presidency, 1925 (various towns around Berlin) Volksblock∗ (Votes & %)

Reichsblock∗∗ (Votes & %)

Thälmann (Votes & %)

Brandenburg 1st round 2nd round

18,610 (54.5%) 17,901 (50.5%)

13,613 (39.8%) 15,074 (42.5%)

1,947 (5.7%) 2484 (7.0%)

34,170 35,459

Wittenberge 1st round 2nd round

5,198 (42.3%) 5,869 (43.3%)

5,732 (46.7%) 6,644 (49.1%)

1357 (11%) 1031 (7.6%)

12,287 13,544

Prenzlau 1st round 2nd round

4,220 (37.3%) 4,069 (34.3%)

6,662 (58.9%) 7,385 (62.3%)

424 (3.8%) 400 (3.4%)

11,306 11,854

Angermünde 1st round 2nd round

1,312 (30.8%) 1,319 (28.5%)

2,885 (67.8%) 3,245 (70.1%)

58 (1.4%) 66 (1.4%)

4,255 4,630

Bernau 1st round 2nd round

2,332 (47.9%) 2,770 (49.7%)

1,696 (34.9%) 2,128 (38.2%)

838 (17.2%) 670 (12%)

4,866 5,568

Oranienburg 1st round 2nd round

2,310 (37.6%) 2,264 (32.3%)

3,029 (49.2%) 3,963 (56.5%)

812 (13.2%) 785 (11.2%)

6,151 7,012

Königswusterhausen 1st round 2nd round

1,036 (45.2%) 1,237 (44.5%)

1,006 (43.9%) 1,321 (47.5%)

249 (10.9%) 221 (8%)

2,291 2,779

Total

Notes: ∗ First round results give the combined total of votes cast for Braun (SPD), Marx (Centre), and Hellpach (DDP). In the second round, these parties supported the Centre politician Marx as the Volksblock candidate. ∗∗ First round results give votes cast for Jarres, joint candidate of the DVP and DNVP; second round results give votes cast for Hindenburg, the new Reichsblock candidate.

Sources: Compiled from Brandenburger Anzeiger, 98, 28 April 1925; Volks-Zeitung, 97, 27 April 1925; Der Prignitzer, 75, 30 March 1925; Prenzlauer Zeitung, 98, 28 April 1925, Angermünder Zeitung, 97, 27 April 1925; Niederbarnimer Kreisblatt, 76, 31 March 1925 and 98, 28 April 1925; Königswusterhausener Zeitung, 98, 28 April 1925.

Volksblock had suffered from two strategic disadvantages: firstly, in the absence of a local party organization in both the Centre party and the DDP, the task of holding rallies had fallen exclusively on the Social Democrats, which probably alienated some of the bourgeois electorate.⁴⁸ Secondly, the town’s largest daily newspaper, the Königswusterhausener Zeitung, with its circulation of over 5,000, had given little coverage to the republican candidate, and had clearly championed Hindenburg. This, in the absence of a newspaper backing Marx, had helped to mobilize bourgeois voters. Of course, the election result cannot be explained exclusively in terms of media support. As has often been pointed out, the Communists’ decision to

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support their own candidate, Thälmann, in the second round prevented a greater working-class vote for Marx.⁴⁹ Rural and protestant Germany responded to the name Hindenburg even in places where newspapers did not exist. Cases like the little village of Felchow in the Angermünde district, where 252 votes for Hindenburg contrasted with 5 for Marx and Thälmann, showed that voting was influenced at least as much by social and communal pressures.⁵⁰ Also, there were clear limits to the extent of newspapers’ electoral impact: 45 per cent of the voters in Königswusterhausen did, after all, decide to back Marx. But the effect of pro-Hindenburg newspaper support is clearly discernible, especially in places where alternative sources of information were lacking: here growth of the Hindenburg vote, and the overall result, were well above average. At the same time, media support paid off to a much lesser extent than many contemporaries assumed. The media boost to Hindenburg can hardly have exceeded 5 per cent even in the areas most favourable to the nationalist cause. Yet this support provided Hindenburg with the crucial margin to scrape into office. But, clearly, one should not look exclusively at election days to measure the political impact of newspapers. As the previous chapter showed, the press exercised a day-to-day influence on individual decision-makers in Berlin. The same was true at a local level. Local editors often reacted to the Berlin coverage of the campaign by following the lead of some papers and countering the statements of others. Most importantly, grass-root activities were co-ordinated through, and amplified by, newspapers. However, newspapers did not only publish announcements of election rallies and follow up with space devoted to their coverage, they also provided much of the content of local political campaigning. As in the case of the Barmat scandal, where parliamentarians in Berlin had relied on particular newspapers for the supply of ‘information’ that could be used in the political struggle, local activists relied on their dailies for help in conducting rallies. The agenda of local political meetings was largely set by the arguments provided in the daily press. This is vividly illustrated by the activities of the Reichsblock in the town of Brandenburg. Their second major election rally on 23 April 1925 was opened by the chief editor of the Brandenburger Anzeiger, who acted as chairman of the Brandenburg Reichsblock.⁵¹ The first speaker, a teacher, started by dwelling on the difference between the Parteimann Marx and Hindenburg, who was above party politics.⁵² Warming to his theme, he castigated the deal between the Centre party and Social Democrats that had resulted in the SPD’s support for Marx in exchange for Catholic support for Braun as prime minister in Prussia as symptomatic of party politics.⁵³ Next, he addressed Social Democratic newspapers’ claim that through Hindenburg the republic was in danger.⁵⁴ Finally, he rounded off his speech by quoting articles of democratic and social democratic newspapers from before and during the war, which were largely positive about Hindenburg. This material was itself taken from recent press coverage, which had used quotations to demonstrate the


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opportunism of those papers now backing Marx.⁵⁵ The second speaker elaborated on Germany’s need for a ‘Führer’, a theme which ran like a leitmotiv through the Hindenburg press coverage.⁵⁶ To prepare themselves for their speeches, the speakers had obviously studied their newspapers with great care. The same was true of the Hindenburg rallies in Oranienburg, Angermünde, and Wittenberge: here, too, the speakers went through the topics which had dominated the election coverage in the local press.⁵⁷

P O L I T I C S O F T H E ‘ U N P O L I T I C A L’ P R E S S In early May 1925, a German press statistic was published, which gave the number of German dailies as 3,168, of which only 150 were Social Democratic, with over 50 per cent declaring themselves parteilos (literally: non-partisan) or not giving any political tendency.⁵⁸ This percentage remained stable up until 1933.⁵⁹ The fact that the majority of German local papers described their political stance as parteilos stood in stark contrast to the strong pro-Hindenburg bias in the local press as described above. Still reeling from the shock of Hindenburg’s election, republican commentators decried this label and pointed, like Carl von Ossietzky, to the impact of these so-called parteilos papers: ‘This means, translated into experience, that these papers are reactionary, monarchist, militarist, that they are nothing but scantily camouflaged German Nationalist party organs . . . 51% of all German newspapers are therefore sailing under a false flag, are supplying—under the label of neutrality—party arsenals, are popularising . . . slogans and ideology of the party which has bought them.’⁶⁰ According to Ossietzky, many of these newspapers were more or less being bought by the DNVP to propagate nationalist politics. Five years later, a fellow journalist, Richard Lewinsohn from Ullstein’s Vossische Zeitung, took a slightly more differentiated view: Politically they [i.e. provincial newspapers] are steering a bourgeois mainstream line. Prior to the war, they were national-liberal, now they are volksparteilich, but depending on business cycle and local circumstances they adapt to the general mood: sometimes they venture to the right wing of the Democrats, more often they take the course to the Right and promote, always under the disguise of non-partisanship, German Nationalist politics.⁶¹

While generally displaying a moderately right-wing tendency, the provincial press broadly followed local political sentiment to some extent. This was certainly true in the districts of Prenzlau and Angermünde. Here, the DNVP, DVP, and right-wing splinter groups had received over 60 per cent of the vote at the Reichstag elections in December 1924. The local papers’ decision in April 1925 to back Hindenburg was thus anything but surprising, as it was in line with the political majority in these districts.

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The enthusiasm of the grass-root support for Hindenburg’s candidature that was reported in the local news of provincial dailies goes some way to explaining the press support that Hindenburg enjoyed. Even when discounting the positive gloss that was undoubtedly put on the reporting of events, the picture that emerges is one of unprecedented mobilization of bourgeois provincial Germany. Rallies were attended by record numbers and resulted in overcrowded halls, public parades were set in train by local associations, and numerous incidents of private campaigning were reported.⁶² In view of this popular support, editors were risking the alienation of substantial sections of their readership if they decided not to back Hindenburg. Alternatively, one might argue that the predictable surge of support for Hindenburg allowed local editors to be more openly partisan than usual. After all, newspapers did not simply reflect local sentiment: many of the articles written in Hindenburg’s favour preceded the full-scale mobilization of grass-root support in particular localities. It was a two-way relationship: while to some extent reflecting the general political disposition of their readership, provincial newspapers were simultaneously a crucial factor in activating and reinforcing a political trend. Clearly, Ossietzky and Lewinsohn were right to question the self-description of ‘non-partisan’ (parteilos) papers, but they were wrong to equate their political bias with Hugenberg’s German Nationalist party, the DNVP. In fact, it should rather be seen as an implicit rejection of party-based parliamentary politics tout court. As the Hindenburg election showed, many papers were promoting a new kind of protestant, nationalist, and anti-socialist Sammlungspolitik, an explicitly non-party political alliance that was based on the concept of heroic leadership. Although there was a great proximity to DNVP politics, there was a clear rejection of the kind of party politics of which the DNVP formed part. This was also expressed in the 1925 press statistic mentioned above: only 104 out of 3,168 dailies gave their stance as deutschnational, while almost four times as many chose a more general, non-party self-description: 108 preferred the label ‘bourgeois’, thirty-three ‘right-wing’, and 242 either ‘nationalist’ or ‘patriotic.’⁶³ The English translation of deutschnational as ‘nationalist’ blurs the difference many editors felt existed between adhering to a DNVP platform and subscribing to a truly nationalist political world-view. True nationalism did not come with a particular party membership, and on election days, papers would often call on their readers to vote ‘nationalist’ or ‘German’. If specifying this recommendation, the DVP and the DNVP would almost always both be given as possible options. Even Hugenberg himself was aware of the need to downplay the link to the DNVP for some of his press products. His right-wing news agency, the TelegraphenUnion (TU ), that serviced some 1,600 local newspapers in Germany, was more influential than any of Hugenberg’s other attempts at spreading the nationalist gospel. But despite clear political instructions for journalist joining the TU, they were not expected to toe the DNVP line, but contracted to pursue ‘a line of political and economic re-building of Germany without party-political or other affiliation on a national basis’.⁶⁴


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As regional anaysis of electoral statistics has shown, the Hindenburg vote in 1925 is one of the best predictors of the Nazi vote in September 1930 and July 1932.⁶⁵ This suggests that the ‘radical nationalist’ coalition that ultimately backed the Nazis had assembled beforehand, and was not solely a product of economic hard times in the early 1930s.⁶⁶ In this period of profound realignment of middleclass party loyalties, local newspapers constituted a crucial influence, because they combined a continuity of political sentiment with the rejection of party-political allegiances. The fragmented landscape of Weimar party politics meant that local newspapers normally tried to avoid being too closely associated with one particular parliamentary group, in order not to alienate significant sections of their bourgeois readership. They overcame the domestic fragmentation by focusing on foreign news, in particular that which arose out of questions related to the Versailles Treaty. Throughout the 1920s, local papers attributed much more of their limited space to questions of foreign policy than did metropolitan newspapers. In their coverage of domestic news, most local newspapers continued to display a moderate hostility to Social Democracy, and a dismissive view of Parteiengezänk reminiscent of the pre-war period. But within the context of Weimar politics, this parteilos politics pursued by local papers acquired a new partisan dimension. It was a populism based on the two greatest common denominators of the bourgeois readership: nationalism and anti-socialism. Many urban commentators perceived a very distinct provincial political culture shaped primarily by the local media. Lewinsohn considered the parteilos regional papers of ‘enormous importance’ for Germany’s political life, as they dominated the major provincial towns in Germany, wielding an influence much more extensive than that of the so-called political press in Berlin.⁶⁷ The editors of the Social Democratic Volkszeitung in Wittenberge repeatedly called on its readers to send on the paper, once read, to relatives, friends, and acquaintances ‘into the provinces . . . where the right-wing monarchist press is still predominant’.⁶⁸ Although wrong in equating the anti-SPD tendency of most regional newspapers with being ‘monarchist’, Social Democrats were right to address the structural disadvantage they faced all over Germany: SPD papers had a total circulation of only 1.1 million copies in 1924 and 1.3 million in 1929, out of an estimated total daily printing nationwide of 20 million copies.⁶⁹ Even allowing for the large circulation of a handful of liberal General-Anzeiger and tabloid papers concentrated mainly in Berlin, it is clear that the political right enjoyed a huge advantage in its domination of channels of communication. Many contemporaries commented on the fact that the new Republic was faced with a mass media overwhelmingly hostile to its democratic achievements, particularly in provincial Germany. In the left-wing weekly Die Weltbühne, Tucholsky painted a stark picture of what an urban democrat could expect if he dared to venture beyond the limits of his metropolitan existence: he would find neither court, nor administrative officials, nor press to support him. Local newspapers, Tucholsky claimed, were kept toeing a ‘reactionary’ line through boycotts, firing

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of editors, and withdrawals of advertisements. The ‘unpolitical’ atmosphere of a rural German town thus darkened the light which shone in Berlin.⁷⁰ E X P RO P R I AT I N G T H E P R I N C E S Tucholsky’s article ‘Berlin and the Provinces’ is interesting for two reasons. On the one hand, it is a portrayal of the sense of insecurity and scepticism with which metropolitan democrats viewed the various institutions of civil society in provincial Germany. At the same time, it is evidence for the way in which stereotypes proliferated through the mass print media, helping to reinforce preexisting notions of antagonism between the metropolis and the provinces.⁷¹ The same applies to Social Democratic election analysis after Hindenburg’s election, when the Volks-Zeitung in Wittenberge explained the result with the appeal of a grand military name on ‘the mass of the unpolitical’.⁷² However, whilst these stereotypes did little justice to the political complexities on the ground, many historians have taken them at face value. Picking up the Social Democratic propaganda that depicted Hindenburg as a representative of the monarchy, various historians have explained his election with the German demand for an ‘Ersatzkaiser’, seeing 1925 as monarchism’s last hurrah in Germany.⁷³ But explaining the 1925 presidential election by a mass of unpolitical monarchistsat-heart being swayed by an outburst of pro-Hindenburg media coverage squares uneasily with events in 1926, more particularly the relative success of the campaign for the expropriation of the former German princes. The political controversy about the wealth of the former German princes was the dominant domestic political issue in 1926. The revolution of 1918–19 had not resulted in an expropriation of the former princes, and the question of how to disentangle private from state property had been dodged by the National Assembly—it was not a Reich, but a state matter. After 1919, extensive negotiations and judicial proceedings on a state level had mostly failed to produce a comprehensive solution to the problem. But by 1925, more and more courts appeared to side with the deposed princes.⁷⁴ The Prussian ministry of finance drafted a compromise in October 1925 that was intended to settle the dispute with the house of Hohenzollern. But as soon as the compromise became public, parliamentary opposition arose, not least because it envisaged ceding three quarters of the disputed land to the Hohenzollerns. The Communists were quick to recognize the potential of widespread dissatisfaction with this state of affairs, particularly at a time of rising unemployment. In early December 1925, the Communist Rote Fahne published an open letter addressed, among others, to the executive committees of the SPD and the General German Trade Union Congress (ADGB), suggesting a concerted effort to organize a referendum calling for the expropriation, without compensation, of all former German princes.⁷⁵


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This proposal was in line with the new ‘United Front’ strategy that the KPD had adopted over the autumn of 1925 when ousting—with considerable support from Moscow—the ultra-Left group around Ruth Fischer and Maslow.⁷⁶ The aim now was to mobilize the masses with the slogan ‘expropriation’, in the hope of regaining many of the voters that the KPD had lost at the December 1924 Reichstag elections. Equally, it presented a unique opportunity to drive a wedge between the leadership and the membership of the Social Democrats as well as the trade unions.⁷⁷ Social Democrats were very aware of Communist intentions, and were at first opposed to entering an alliance with them. By late January 1926, however, they had drafted a provisional law jointly with the Communists and trade unions along the lines suggested by the KPD. This change of mind had been brought about by two factors: the formation of a new right-of-centre government, and the perceived mass support for expropriation. After securing the acceptance of the Locarno Treaties by the Reichstag in late November 1925, the Luther government had fallen apart, and for the next six weeks coalition negotiations took place. Until mid-January 1926, the Social Democrats kept open the option of participating in a Grand Coalition with the DVP.⁷⁸ During this time, the expropriation issue was muted in order not to alienate potential bourgeois coalition partners. Only after 12 January 1926, when the members of the SPD in the Reichstag voted against the formation of a Grand Coalition, and after the formation of a bourgeois minority government, did the Social Democrats resume their role as opposition party. More importantly, however, the leading Social Democrats in Berlin had been exposed by this stage to a barrage of newspaper reports indicating that a great majority of party members sympathized with the Communist proposal.⁷⁹ If the SPD leadership refused to support a referendum, the press coverage suggested, the dissatisfaction of workers would benefit only the KPD. These reports were published exclusively by the Rote Fahne. The Social Democratic Vorwärts failed to report on any of the grass-roots support within the SPD for a referendum.⁸⁰ Most of the cases of spontaneous socialist co-operation reported by the Rote Fahne concerned small towns and sub-sections of the Social Democratic organization. In fact, the Rote Fahne built up a literary image of unanimous workers’ support for the expropriation of princes in a similar way to right-wing newspapers’ reporting on unanimous, national support for Hindenburg’s candidacy. But SPD politicians took these reports seriously and, on 19 January 1926, the party committee (Parteiausschuss) ordered that preparations for a referendum be made.⁸¹ The alliance of Social Democrats and Communists was a very uneasy one. The sole aim for the Communists—as evidenced from an internal directive of the KPD Berlin-Brandenburg district executive—was to use the referendum to alienate the masses of Social Democratic voters and party members from the SPD leadership and to attract them to the Communist cause.⁸² Right from the beginning of their co-operation, Social Democrats and trade unionists kept a sometimes acrimonious distance from the KPD.⁸³ Thus, although the SPD and

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KPD both supported the referendum, the Communists failed to create United Front Committees, and the two parties conducted entirely separate campaigns.⁸⁴ In their campaigning, the Communists openly admitted that they saw the expropriation of the former princes as the first stage of an all-out attack on private property. The Social Democrats, in contrast, promoted the referendum primarily as a way of further securing the democratic basis of the Republic.⁸⁵ Those parties and social groupings opposed to the referendum hardly ever acknowledged these diverging intentions of the two workers’ parties. Where the KPD had failed, the bourgeois press unhesitatingly projected the image of a united Left: the provincial press depicted the referendum as carried by ‘the Marxists’, ‘the Bolshevists’, ‘the Reds’, or simply ‘the Communists’.⁸⁶ Editors constructed the threat of a concerted socialist attack on private property, for which the expropriation of the former princes was just the beginning.⁸⁷ The editor of the Angermünder Zeitung felt it necessary to reassure his readers that ‘nationalist circles’ were ‘ready to suppress a second revolution which would mean Germany’s death’.⁸⁸ The image of a revolution in the making was used regularly by nationalists in their opposition to the referendum. In Berlin big posters proclaimed ‘Victory of the referendum results in revolution!’⁸⁹ These scare tactics sometimes replaced, and at other times supplemented, a policy of withholding all information on the expropriation issue. The petition for a referendum, which took place from 4 to 17 March 1926, was almost entirely ignored by most bourgeois provincial newspapers. Again, as in the case of Hindenburg’s election in 1925, the news selection of these papers amounted to a clear endorsement of one particular policy. To some extent, they were even more partisan than during the 1925 election campaign: then they had covered at least superficially some of the movements and statements of Hindenburg’s opponent, Marx, whereas now they censored almost all pro-referendum activities. The comparison to the presidential race of 1925 is interesting, because the opponents of the expropriation referendum were almost identical to those groupings supporting Hindenburg in 1925. But while bourgeois Sammlungspolitik and press support had seen Hindenburg into office, it now proved much less effective. In many Brandenburg towns the petition received greater support than had Hindenburg the year before; the petition results showed that popular support for expropriation considerably surpassed the combined vote of KPD and SPD at the Reichstag elections of December 1924. Unlike the case of Hindenburg’s candidature, when provincial editors had accurately captured grass-roots enthusiasm by throwing their support behind the field marshal, they now refused to acknowledge the popularity of the suggested expropriation of the former princes. Editors did not simply reflect popular sentiment; they did not switch allegiances, nor did they start writing critical assessments of the expropriation issue. Their position, like their editorial policy, remained unchanged; they kept trying to influence their reading public. News selection continued to be biased against the referendum, which was scheduled for


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20 June 1926. And what information the non-socialist provincial newspapers did provide on the expropriation issue tended to originate from anti-expropriation sources.⁹⁰ The coverage of Reichstag debates was slanted in the usual way. In a display of apparent neutrality, the allegedly parteilos Königswusterhausener Zeitung summarized and partly quoted the speeches of one parliamentarian of each major party. But the contribution of the leader of the DNVP, Graf Westarp, received the most generous coverage, thus ensuring that the provincial readers were able to appreciate fully his polemic against the ‘lies and terrorism’ that were used in an attempt at a ‘dry revolution’ and his expression of ‘disgust’ for the ‘wretched lowness’ of the ‘revolution profiteers’. The paper even found place to reprint some anti-Semitic heckling from the back-benches.⁹¹ The Angermünder Zeitung did not even attempt to provide a summary of the discussion, and instead reprinted exclusively the entire speech by Westarp.⁹² Whether in Wittenberge, Brandenburg, or elsewhere, it was impossible to find either a verbatim report or an impartial summary of the Reichstag deliberations in either bourgeois or Social Democratic newspapers.⁹³ Throughout the run-up to the referendum, newspapers like the Niederbarnimer Kreisblatt kept information on the expropriation debate as rare as possible. This was not because editors thought the referendum was unimportant—on the contrary. While the headline announcing the defeat of the referendum—‘The People Against the Expropriation of the Princes’—would run over the whole front page of the Niederbarnimer Kreisblatt on the Tuesday after the vote, on the previous Sunday, 20, June, the paper chose simply to ignore the fact that a referendum was taking place.⁹⁴ Pro-referendum news items almost never broke through this policy of editorial denial. The referendum’s opponents, on the other hand, enjoyed another important advantage within this context of partisan news selection: the bourgeois Reich government led first by Luther, and then—after Luther’s resignation—by Marx, was opposed to the referendum, and made various statements to this effect. The fact that a Centre-Right government opposed expropriation without compensation was not really surprising, but many local newspapers still managed to turn this item into front-page news.⁹⁵ Even more significant than the government’s position on the referendum was Hindenburg’s intervention less than a month prior to the vote. The DNVP parliamentarian Loebell had written to Hindenburg asking him for a public statement opposing the referendum. In his answer Hindenburg declined, pointing to the neutrality demanded by his office, but went on to describe his ‘private’ views, which were very explicit in their condemnation of the referendum. In early June Loebell published this letter with Hindenburg’s consent.⁹⁶ This was a political sensation that always made it on to the front page.⁹⁷ The SPD papers did their best to downplay it and condemned the fact that Hindenburg had violated the neutrality of his office.⁹⁸ The issue was, of course, the subject of heated discussion in the Reichstag—but this merely provided further opportunity for the local press to reiterate Hindenburg’s anti-referendum stance.⁹⁹ The symbolic

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Table 4.2. Expropriation referendum 1926 (various towns around Berlin)

Brandenburg Wittenberge Prenzlau Angermünde Bernau Oranienburg Königs Wusterhausen

KPD & SPD Reichstag election December 1924

Volksbegehren 4–17 March 1926

Volksentscheid 20 June 1926 (change over 1924 in %)

18,061 6,241 3,880 1,113 2,512 2,609 1,124

20,502 8,325 (2,800)∗ 603 4,280 4,040 1,571

22,400 (+24%) 8,864 (+42%) 3,961 (+2.1%) 1,161 (+4.3%) 4,666 (+85.7%) 4,398 (+68.6%) 2,105 (+87.3%)

Notes: ∗ No figure could be established. Estimate based on referendum result. Sources: Compiled from Volks-Zeitung, 141, 21 June 1926; Der Prignitzer, 75, 30 March 1926; Uckermärkischer Kurier, 143, 22 June 1926; Angermünder Zeitung, 142, 21 June 1926; Niederbarnimer Kreisblatt, 76, 31 March 1926 and 98, 28 April 1926; Königs Wusterhausener Zeitung, 143, 22 June 1926; Märkischer Stadt- und Landbote, 67, 20 March 1926; Zeitung für Liebenwalde, 66, 19 March 1926; Oranienburger General-Anzeiger, 66, 19 March 1926.

power of government and president helped to give anti-referendum messages a media presence which supporters of expropriation lacked. Like in Berlin, Weltanschauung journalism had an immediate impact on the political information available to the average citizen. But what were the consequences? Some newspapers started their own anti-referendum campaigns, like the nationalist Angermünder Zeitung, which, apart from endless news on anti-referendum activities, featured several polemical leading articles.¹⁰⁰ There is a certain temptation to conclude from the relatively low turnout of proreferendum voters in Angermünde—only 4 per cent more than had voted for the KPD and SPD in December 1924—that the mass of anti-referendum items in the Angermünder Zeitung did perhaps tip the balance. But the same cannot be said of Brandenburg and Wittenberge, where the Brandenburger Anzeiger and the Prignitzer had campaigned just as intensely against the referendum as had the Angermünder Zeitung.¹⁰¹ The referendum found 24 per cent more voters in Brandenburg than had voted for the KPD and SPD in December 1924; in Wittenberge the figure was even 42 per cent. In fact, even though the referendum fell 5.5 million votes short of the necessary support of twenty million voters throughout Germany, it proved much more popular than anyone had initially expected.¹⁰² In the Brandenburg region, the results were particularly striking in those towns in which Hindenburg’s candidature had elicited the greatest growth in votes in 1925: in Oranienburg the referendum’s vote outdid the KPD/SPD result of 1924 by 67 per cent, in Bernau by 86 per cent, and in Königswusterhausen by 87 per cent. Here, as in many other towns, the expropriation of the princes proved considerably more popular than Hindenburg in 1925. In the light of these figures, Hindenburg’s election a year earlier can


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clearly not be seen as the result of an overwhelming surge of monarchical nostalgia. Rather than a return to the past, Hindenburg’s election pointed to the anti-parliamentary radicalization of a large section of the electorate. Try as they might, provincial editors could not counter the inherent appeal of the expropriation proposal to a wide spectrum of voters. Nor could they counter the effects of economic hardship and political disillusionment in the final phase of Weimar’s post-inflationary stabilization. Many conservative middle-class voters had supported the DNVP in 1924 and Hindenburg in 1925, attracted by unrealistic promises concerning the Aufwertung (revaluation) of their credits and savings lost during inflation. The subsequent law passed by the Luther government in 1925 proved to be a big disappointment for these voters. As many editors acknowledged, this created enormous resentment towards the DNVP.¹⁰³ In the run-up to the expropriation referendum, the question was often posed why the princes should get a better deal than did the thousands of savers and creditors expropriated by inflation.¹⁰⁴ The results in the electoral districts of Potsdam I and II showed that a substantial number of traditional right-wing voters supported the referendum, too, often belonging to the so-called ‘revaluation victims’.¹⁰⁵ Perhaps not surprisingly there was little detailed discussion of the referendum’s result in local papers. While giving the overall figures, most editors refrained from engaging with the question of non-socialist support for expropriation. Instead, many editors deplored the referendum result as a ‘black day’ for Germany, and saw it as ‘a reminder for a united front against the threat of bolshevism’.¹⁰⁶ One editor warned: ‘Those bourgeois, who yesterday provided the Communist-Socialist thieving riff-raff with the service of fellow-travellers, will recognize only too soon that they have put themselves at their mercy. But then it is too late, and the red flood will race over Germany, and bury the last remains of law and order.’¹⁰⁷ The sources of evil were the cities, as another editor emphasized, where violent clashes were on the daily agenda and part of the terror of the red parties.¹⁰⁸ The Angermünder Zeitung went on to paint a gloomy picture of German society: ‘The cool reason of the Germans has been driven out by the lowest instincts, and the glorious past of our Reich is dragged through dirt with pure joy. The mud of Socialism and Communism is threatening to bury us. What is one to say when reading that in Halle a bestial horde of Communists has opened machine-gun and carbine fire on their own Volksgenossen, and that women like hyenas are laying into political opponents and cutting them to shreds with kitchen knifes? Are these still humans?’¹⁰⁹ In Halle, a clash between anti-referendum demonstrators—members of the right-wing paramilitary organization Stahlhelm—and Communist referendum supporters had escalated when a Stahlhelm convoy of cars passed through a Communist stronghold and encountered a hail of cobblestones. Different from the impression created by the Angermünder Zeitung, it remained unclear which of the two sides had first resorted to using guns. The kitchen-knife wielding women were apparently the figment of some anti-socialist imagination.¹¹⁰ Readers of the

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Angermünder Zeitung, however, were left with a clear impression of the nature of ideological conflict. The terminology was the same as that of the Nazis, and the sentiment expressed was one that would later allow Hitler to pursue his political terror against the Left with considerable popular support. C O N C LU S I O N On 29 January 1927, Centre politician Wilhelm Marx was re-elected Reich chancellor, heading a coalition government comprising the German Nationalists, the Catholic Centre party, the right-wing DVP, and the Bavarian People’s party (BVP). This new conservative government—the most right wing so far—was to survive for just over a year. But because many of the bourgeois-conservative provincial newspapers were largely supportive of the policies pursued by this government, 1927 was to appear relatively peaceful and uneventful to the provincial reading public. The violent antagonism of the immediate post-war period seemed to be waning. Partisan news reporting continued, but the antisocialism of the provincial press was not as immediately obvious to the everyday reader as it had been during the Hindenburg campaign or the expropriation referendum. After all, how were readers to know what information was held back? In May 1927, they would read extensively about a rally held by the right-wing veterans’ organization, the Stahlhelm, in Berlin, which drew some 100,000 participants.¹¹¹ In contrast, the ‘Festival of the Hundred Thousand’, the huge rally of the republican organization the Reichsbanner, held in Leipzig to celebrate 11 August, the Day of the Constitution, received very little, if any, coverage.¹¹² Only some overtly right-wing editors would openly admit that they disliked celebrations of the Constitution as ‘socialist victory celebrations’.¹¹³ In 1925, the mass mobilization of bourgeois Germans campaigning for Hindenburg had still carried distincly anti-republican overtones. Now, with a right-wing Reich government in charge and Hindenburg as Reich president, anti-republicanism was beginning to appear somewhat dated even to many on the political Right. With Hindenburg as symbolical figurehead, the nature of the German Reich could be redefined. It was no coincidence that for many provincial editors, the political highlight of 1927 was Hindenburg’s eightieth birthday, in October 1927.¹¹⁴ The minutely staged festivities in Berlin were covered by provincial newspapers in a level of detail which was entirely absent from their normal political analysis. The day after Hindenburg’s birthday, the Königswusterhausener Zeitung presented a poem to ‘Our Hindenburg, the Führer of all Germans’ in the centre of the front page of an issue almost entirely devoted to the official celebrations.¹¹⁵ Of course, there were dissenting voices. The Social Democratic Volks-Zeitung in Wittenberge, for example, provided an extensive, but strongly satirical, report of events in Berlin, and mocked the local Stahlhelm celebrations. The whole event, the paper reminded its readers, was


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used as a ‘propaganda day for the DNVP’.¹¹⁶ This impression was created by the dominance of the old imperial colours—black, white, and red—throughout the festivities. But many bourgeois editors were not thinking about the German Nationalist party when deciding to devote unprecedented amounts of coverage to Hindenburg’s birthday celebrations. Their enthusiasm for the occasion was fuelled primarily by the combination of entertainment value and overt, transparty, nationalism which they were able to offer to an appreciative readership. It was no coincidence that the publishers of the right-wing Angermünder Zeitung decided at the end of 1927 to change the self-description of the paper’s political tendency from ‘nationalist’ to parteilos.¹¹⁷ Apparently, to be nationalist was considered self-evident. The true political mission, now, was to promote politics which were above party-politics. There were obvious limits to this policy of right-wing appropriation of the Weimar Republic. The day-to-day running of politics was still based on partypolitics, and at the Reichstag elections in May 1928, citizens had to chose from an unprecedented number of different interest parties. The election campaign did not witness the same degree of heated campaigning as in 1924 and 1925, when the elections still seemed to determine the fate of the democratic Republic.¹¹⁸ But other than that, the lines were drawn as in previous elections. As usual, overtly partisan local papers indulged in attacks on the press of their political opponents, mostly referring to Berlin papers that their subscribers never read.¹¹⁹ Again, bourgeois papers only published advertisements for the DVP, DNVP, and the Volkisch-nationale Block, rarely for the DDP, never for the SPD. Local editors still thought they could influence the political choices of their readership. The Angermünder Zeitung, for example, focused primarily on DNVP activities in its local news section, and for a week before the elections every issue carried a huge DNVP advertisement at the bottom of the front page.¹²⁰ At election time, editors were forced to take position, and their parteilos emphasis was expressed primarily in their constant appeals to their bourgeois readers to participate in the elections, and not to waste a vote on a splinter party when voting for one of the bourgois parties.¹²¹ Readers obviously did not heed their newspapers’ advice: the 1928 Reichstag elections saw the lowest turnout since 1898, and a record number of votes cast for special interest and splinter parties.¹²² The DNVP, in particular, was penalized for its participation in government, and the role it played in passing the highly controversial Aufwertungs-laws.¹²³ Despite the support it received in the various local papers, the DNVP lost dramatically, in Wittenberge haemorrhaging more than 50 per cent of its previous votes. The weather probably played a more important role in determining the outcome than did the press: rain had persuaded many supporters of the bourgeois parties to stay at home, while at the same time the SPD was extremely successful in mobilizing its supporters.¹²⁴ In fact, the SPD seems to have been the only party to benefit partly from its provincial

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Table 4.3. Elections to the Reichstag, 1924–32 (various towns around Berlin) KPD 2,934 (8.8%) 2,556 (6.7%) 5,021 (12.2%) 4,409 (10.7%)

SPD 15,127 (45.5%) 19,956 (52.2%) 17,247 (41.8%) 17,239 (41.9%)

DDP 2,277 (6.9%) 2,017 (2.3%) 1,352 (3.3%) 305 (0.7%)

Zentrum 745 (2.2%) 732 (1.9%) 853 (2.1%) 831 (2.0%)

WP 1,738 (5.2%) 1,699 (4.4%) 1,829 (4.4%) 131 (0.3%)

DVP 3,429 (10.3%) 3,013 (7.9%) 1,269 (3.1%) 199 (0.5%)

DNVP 6,961 (21%) 6,221 (16.3%) 5,131 (12.4%) 1,834 (4.5%)

NSDAP 577 (1.5%) 7,667 (18.6%) 16,060 (39.0%)

Total 33,211 37,748 41,286 41,139

Wittenberge RT December 1924 RT May 1928 RT September 1930 RT July 1932

KPD 1,911 (14%) 1,892 (12.5%) 2,391 (14.6%) 2,416 (15.2%)

SPD 4,430 (31.6%) 6,833 (45.3%) 5,845 (35.6%) 4,927 (31.0%)

DDP 874 (6.4%) 702 (4.7%) 652 (4.0%) 157 (1.0%)

Zentrum 372 (2.7%) 261 (1.7%) 312 (1.9%) 358 (2.3%)

WP 254 (1.9%) 1,141 (7.6%) 482 (2.9%) 0 (0%)

DVP 1,062 (7.8%) 1,108 (7.3%) 419 (2.6%) 0 (0%)

DNVP 4,476 (32.7%) 2,274 (15.1%) 1,500 (9.1%) 1,375 (8.6%)

NSDAP 404 (3%) 313 (2.1%) 4,195 (25.6%) 6,565 (41.3%)

Total 13,683 15,096 16,410 15,910

Prenzlau RT December 1924 RT May 1928 RT September 1930 RT July 1932

KPD 711 (6.3%) 1,937 (14.7%) 1,800 (14.6%) 2,333 (18.8%)

SPD 3,169 (28.2%) 2,736 (20.8%) 2,781 (22.5%) 2,343 (18.9%)

DDP 559 (5%) 540 (4.1%) 330 (2.7%) 72 (0.6%)

Zentrum 188 (1.7%) 192 (1.5%) 269 (2.2%) 254 (2.0%)

WP 471 (4.2%) 382 (2.9%) 366 (3.0%) 19 (0.2%)

DVP 1,002 (8.9%) 1,324 (10.1%) 688 (5.6%) 125 (1.0%)

DNVP 3,184 (28.4%) 4,194 (31.9%) 2,262 (18.3%) 1,356 (10.9%)

NSDAP 835 (7.4%) 944 (7.2%) 3,371 (27.3%) 5,864 (47.3%)

Total 11,219 13,149 12,345 12,405

Angermünde RT December 1924 RT May 1928 RT September 1930 RT July 1932

KPD 138 (3.2%) 307 (7.3%) 562 (11.7%) 461 (9.1%)

SPD 975 (22.4%) 1,190 (28.3%) 1,084 (22.7%) 887 (17.6%)

DDP 222 (5.1%) 360 (8.6%) 188 (3.9%) 46 (0.9%)

Zentrum 130 (3%) 63 (1.5%) 62 (1.3%) 77 (1.5%)

WP 44 (1.0%) 138 (3.3%) 138 (2.9%) 9 (0.2%)

DVP 516 (11.9%) 544 (12.9%) 310 (6.5%) 75 (1.5%)

DNVP 1,697 (39.1%) 1,137 (27.0%) 749 (15.7%) 497 (9.8%)

NSDAP 602 (13.8%) 274 (6.5%) 1,502 (31.4%) 2,975 (58.9%)

Total 4,354 4,209 4,785 5,050

Bernau RT December 1924 RT May 1928 RT September 1930 RT July 1932

KPD 886 (16.7%) 1,474 (24.6%) 2,117 (29.7%) 2,534 (30.8%)

SPD 1,626 (30.7%) 2,060 (34.4%) 1,943 (27.2%) 2,182 (26.5%)

DDP 502 (9.5%) 304 (5.1%) 251 (3.5%) 92 (1.1%)

Zentrum 173 (3.3%) 165 (2.8%) 179 (2.5%) 229 (2.8%)

WP 352 (6.6%) 505 (8.4%) 546 (7.7%) 51 (0.6%)

DVP 359 (6.8%) 301 (5.0%) 180 (2.5%) 43 (0.5%)

DNVP 1,095 (20.7%) 886 (14.8%) 674 (9.4%) 463 (5.6%)

NSDAP 51 (1.0%) 114 (1.9%) 1,055 (14.8%) 2,482 (30.2%)

Total 5,294 5,992 7,135 8,226

Oranienburg RT December 1924 RT May 1928 RT September 1930 RT July 1932

KPD 1,174 (16.2%) 1,552 (20.8%) 2,272 (24.3%) 2,304 (21.8%)

SPD 1,435 (19.8%) 1,712 (23.0%) 1,783 (19.1%) 2,250 (21.2%)

DDP 590 (8.1%) 467 (6.3%) 350 (3.7%) 102 (1.0%)

Zentrum 303 (4.2%) 267 (3.6%) 328 (3.5%) 394 (3.7%)

WP 866 (11.9%) 747 (10.0%) 794 (8.5%) 70 (0.7%)

DVP 705 (9.7%) 928 (12.5%) 622 (6.7%) 124 (1.2%)

DNVP 1,469 (20.3%) 1,205 (16.2%) 810 (8.7%) 729 (6.9%)

NSDAP 205 (2.8%) 234 (3.1%) 1,955 (20.9%) 4,436 (41.9%)

Total 7,247 7,445 9,334 10,590


Brandenburg RT December 1924 RT May 1928 RT September 1930 RT July 1932

KPD 364 (14.3%) 559 (17.9%) 836 (21.5%) 796 (17.0%)

SPD 760 (29.9%) 1,034 (33.1%) 981 (25.3%) 1,258 (26.8%)

DDP 177 (7%) 237 (7.6%) 176 (4.5%) 95 (2.0%)

Zentrum 70 (2.7%) 73 (2.3%) 80 (2.1%) 178 (3.8%)

WP 223 (8.8%) 347 (11.1%) 523 (13.5%) 35 (0.7%)

DVP 304 (11.9%) 298 (9.6%) 141 (3.6%) 63 (1.3%)

DNVP 569 (22.3%) 443 (14.2%) 494 (12.7%) 400 (8.5%)

NSDAP 44 (1.7%) 26 (0.8%) 497 (12.8%) 1,803 (38.5%)

Total 2,546 3,120 3,885 4,689

Sources: See www.hist.cam.ac.uk/academic staff/further details/fulda-press-and-politics.html Abbreviations: KPD = German Communist Pary; SPD = German Social Democratic Party; DDP = German Democratic Party; WP = Business Party; DVP = German People’s Party; DNVP = German Nationalist People’s Party; NSDAP = National Socialist Party.


Königswusterhausen RT December 1924 RT May 1928 RT September 1930 RT July 1932

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press. While on average across the Reich the KPD managed to increase its votes significantly, the SPD was able to prevent Communist growth in those towns (of the sample analysed in this chapter) where a Social Democratic newspaper existed: in Brandenburg and Wittenberge the number of votes cast for the KPD actually decreased. Apart from the gains by the Social Democrats, the most vivid sign of the apparent stabilization of the Weimar Republic was the continuing decline of the Nazi vote in May 1928. Compared to their performance four years earlier, in May 1924, when they had won nearly two million votes in Germany, they were now down to just over 800,000, or 2.6 per cent.¹²⁵ Yet it was not a good day for parliamentary democracy in Germany. The bourgeois pro-democratic centre parties, the Catholic Centre party and the DDP, lost significantly; special interest and splinter parties benefited from the losses of DNVP and DVP; and the antidemocratic Communists managed to increase their seats in the Reichstag by 20 per cent, to a total of fifty-four.¹²⁶ As already indicated by Hindenburg’s election and the referendum on the expropriation of the former princes, the German electorate was increasingly dissatisfied with the choices offered by post-1918 party politics. The potential for an anti-democratic coalition based on mass support was all too obvious. Reading their provincial newspapers, there was little that Germans in this period would find to bolster their trust in parliamentary democracy. The political nature of the patchwork provision of news by provinical newspapers meant that what information was provided had to be interpreted by being put into a context of existing prejudices and stereotypes. Even allegedly nonpartisan—parteilos —papers contributed to this political culture of antagonistic ideologies. They would often be read by self-professed ‘unpolitical’ Germans who found in their papers enough evidence of political malaise to condemn the present ‘system’.¹²⁷ A nationalist newspaper like the Brandenburger Anzeiger repeatedly expressed this discontent with parliamentary democracy, polemicizing against the ‘sins of parliamentary dictatorship’.¹²⁸ As long as the Reich was led by a Centre-Right bourgeois government, criticism remained relatively muted, and attacks were primarily aimed at the opposition parties. However, when SPD and government happened to be one and the same thing, as was the case after the Reichstag elections of May 1928, it was predictable that the German press would become increasingly critical of parliamentary democracy.

5 Conquering Headlines: Violence, Sensations, and the Rise of the Nazis, 1928–30 We are living in a time when the struggle between old and new Weltanschauungen is being fought out with never-suspected passions. But to intensify this struggle through false or exaggerated sensationalist news would mean throwing further fuel onto the torch of passion which is already now fully ablaze. Zeitungs-Kunde, 7, 15 April 1919: ‘Wahrheit oder Sensationsberichterstattung!’

The period between May 1928 and September 1930 saw the single most spectacular electoral breakthrough in German history: within just over two years, the National Socialists were transformed from an extremist fringe movement into the second largest party in the Reichstag. Much recent research has emphasized the importance of the Nazi exploitation of rural discontent for an explanation of this sudden growth.¹ However, this can only partly explain the phenomenon. How would peasant support help us understand the explosive growth of the NSDAP in a metropolitan setting like Berlin, where Hitler’s party increased its votes tenfold, more than the Reich average? This is no trivial issue because it goes straight to the heart of the question why the Weimar Republic failed. Hitler’s appointment as Reich chancellor in January 1933 was not inevitable, but it was based on genuine, widespread mass support for the NSDAP. Almost half of this mass support was already rallied by September 1930, well before the worst effects of the Great Depression were felt. Historians studying the social composition of Hitler’s voters have concluded that by 1930 the Nazi party had established itself as a ‘Volkspartei des Protests’, a catch-all party of social protest.² According to Jürgen Falter, one crucial factor for understanding the complex electoral movements which brought this about is local newspaper ‘climate’.³ Falter’s idea that the press played an important role in the Nazi breakthrough is not exactly new. In fact, it is one of the staples of Weimar historiography that the right-wing press magnate Alfred Hugenberg helped Hitler to achieve national stature through an alliance in 1929 against the latest reparations plan, the Young Plan. As a recent study shows, the Nazis gained

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both publicity and a degree of respectability on the mainstream Right.⁴ But if the headlines of the Hugenberg press had the power to turn Hitler into a convincing electoral proposition, why did their magic fail to work for Hugenberg himself? As Chapter 1 demonstrates, the heterogeneous nature of Berlin’s press landscape makes it difficult to identify a newspaper ‘climate’ along party-political lines. But in terms of newspaper format, there was an unmistakable trend: voters were more likely than ever before to derive their information from a sensationalist tabloid press. Contemporaries were well aware of the political significance of the increasing sensationalism within a partisan press. In September 1929, one of the leading media researchers of his time, Emil Dovifat, observed that the Strassenverkaufspresse had ‘rubbed off on the great political press’ and forced it to adapt to a more ‘sensationalist’ and ‘gripping’ approach.⁵ What were the consequences of these media dynamics? This chapter sets out to analyse the impact of this particular mixture of sensationalist and partisan reporting on political culture generally, and on the fate of the NSDAP in particular. After all, the rise of the NSDAP in Berlin took place in a context of intense political and commercial media competition, in which Hugenberg’s press was just one of many players. How—and when—did the Nazis manage to catch readers’ attention? How did the Berlin media report, and in turn feed, the rise of the Nazis? And what damage did the media’s partisan sensationalism inflict on the Weimar Republic’s political fabric? T H E C R I S I S O F T H E PA R L I A M E N TA RY ‘ S Y S T E M ’ In the 1928 Reichstag elections, the Nazis received a mere 1.6 per cent of the vote in Berlin.⁶ Nearly 60 per cent of the Berlin electorate supported either the SPD or the KPD. For Joseph Goebbels, a journalist-politician if there ever was one, the future course of action seemed clear. To avoid extinction, it was imperative for the Nazis to attain all possible publicity, to secure a place in the public’s awareness and to make people talk about the party. Goebbels’s weekly newspaper, the Angriff, founded in July 1927, was intended to serve this purpose. Modelled on the increasingly popular tabloid style, Angriff tried to fuse various elements from successful mass newspapers and elite political papers: sensationalism, an unrelenting partisanship, emphasis upon violent clashes with the ‘enemy’, an almost complete disregard for hard news, and a concentration upon polemic.⁷ One of the most important selling points was illustrations, particularly caricatures. However, a newspaper alone did not guarantee public awareness, especially when circulation stood at under 10,000 copies. The opposition was overwhelming, since the two liberal publishing houses, Ullstein and Mosse, dominated over half of the Berlin newspaper market. Millions of their newspaper copies, Goebbels complained, ‘spew . . . Jewish poison throughout the capital’ on a daily basis.⁸ Goebbels had not always been this dismissive of these Jewish publishing houses.

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As an aspiring young journalist, he had himself applied for an editorship at Mosse’s Berliner Tageblatt in early 1924.⁹ Three years later, his ambition for the Angriff was to equal the ‘Jewish press’ in ‘sarcasm and cynical wit’. The first edition, however, was a disappointment. It was ‘printed crap’, according to Goebbels.¹⁰ The circulation of the Angriff amounted to just one per cent of the total circulation of Berlin’s six other tabloids. As an extremist fringe party, the Nazis stood little chance of receiving substantial press coverage. However, Goebbels was not alone in his anti-democratic struggle. The newspapers of Hugenberg, recently elected chairman of the DNVP, and Münzenberg, the KPD’s ‘Red Hugenberg’, continued the now long-running fight against the SPD-led government in Prussia and the more recent SPD government of the Reich.¹¹ Their tabloids, the Nachtausgabe and the Welt am Abend, respectively, had more than tripled in circulation since the early 1920s. The coverage in November 1928 of the tenth anniversary of the November revolution indicated their stance of contemptuous disdain on the Weimar Republic.¹² Involuntarily, the newly formed Grand Coalition, including the SPD, DDP, the Centre, and the DVP, helped in this endeavour. After long and arduous negotiations, the first session of the new Reichstag saw the representative of the right-wing DVP declare that the Müller government was not really a coalition government, and the spokesman for the Catholic Centre party described the coalition as a ‘temporary emergency solution’.¹³ A month later, the SPD had had to break its most prominent election promise. After having campaigned against the building of the warship ‘Armoured Cruiser ‘‘A’’ ’, a symbol of militarist continuity, the SPD leadership now gave in to the demands of its coalition partners and agreed to its construction. The SPD’s Reichstag members rebelled. In November 1928, SPD parliamentarians tabled a motion to stop the construction, and forced the Reich chancellor and his Social Democratic ministers to support this in spite of the earlier cabinet decision. The Reichstag now witnessed an absurd spectacle. The main government party and the SPD ministers voted against a government project, but were defeated by their coalition partners and the opposition.¹⁴ The public standing of the SPD was severely damaged. Newspapers of the far Left and Right had a field day.¹⁵ Even whole-hearted democrats were appalled. Joseph Wirth, Centre politician and former Reich chancellor, declared that it made ‘obvious the crisis of the parliamentary system’.¹⁶ Only three months later, parliamentary democracy suffered another blow. After various attempts to turn Müller’s ‘coalition of personalities’ into a formal ‘grand coalition’, the Centre party left the government, which thereby lost its majority. The DVP demanded entry into the Prussian government as a condition for a ‘grand coalition’ in the Reich. It took two months of arduous negotiations to form another working coalition between the SPD, Centre party, and DVP.¹⁷ Stresemann was under no illusions as to the state of parliamentary democracy. ‘We are experiencing a crisis of parliamentarianism, which goes beyond being a mere crisis of confidence’, he declared to the DVP party executive in February 1929.¹⁸ In Mosse’s left-liberal

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Berliner Volks-Zeitung, Otto Nuschke from the DDP agreed: parliamentarianism was being ‘increasingly damaged in the eyes of the population’.¹⁹ Voters were watching politics with a ‘feeling of repulsion’, the newspaper observed.²⁰ The Centre politician Lammers resigned his Reichstag seat in disgust.²¹ Joseph Wirth expressed his despair with the situation in an article that received widespread press coverage in February 1929: ‘It really cannot go on like this . . . otherwise the ten-year development of democracy is going to end exactly like liberalism in Italy.’²² A Reichstag debate on 1 March 1929 highlighted this widespread dissatisfaction with ‘the parliamentary system’.²³ THE RISE OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE Whilst the political elite fretted over the future of German parliamentarianism, the movements of the extreme Left and Right began to shift the emphasis of their struggle onto the streets. This policy change resulted in an upsurge of political hooliganism, which itself became a media event. The immediate beneficiaries were the Nazis. In late September 1928, the Prussian interior minister, Grzesinski, had lifted the ban on public speeches by Hitler in Prussia, explaining that the Nazis were no longer of any political relevance.²⁴ This was a fateful misperception. Although receiving only some 40,000 votes in Berlin at the Reichstag elections in May, when Hitler made his first public appearance in Berlin on 16 November 1928, he drew an enormous crowd. An audience of 16,000 filled the Sportpalast to capacity.²⁵ This in itself, however, was not particularly newsworthy. Hugenberg’s newspapers ignored the occasion completely, as did almost all other papers. Only Münzenberg’s Communist Welt am Abend covered the speech, but concluded that Hitler was ‘just a laughing stock’.²⁶ But after the rally there were clashes between Nazis and some left-wing opponents.²⁷ The following morning, the dead body of a Nazi party member, Kütemeyer, was retrieved from the Landwehrkanal. How exactly he had ended up there remained a mystery. For Hugenberg’s tabloid, the Nachtausgabe, the story became front-page news exactly because of this mixture of crime, mystery, and violence. ‘Suicide or murder?’ ran one headline. Apparently, Kütemeyer had been drunk, and on his way home got severely beaten up. He then continued home, but fell into the Landwehrkanal. Some witnesses claimed they had seen him being thrown into the river; others had seen how he jumped himself.²⁸ In his Angriff, Goebbels tried to turn Kütemeyer into a party martyr, depicting him as a victim of the ‘red blood mob’.²⁹ However, Goebbels did not succeed, not least since the police found no evidence of foul play, as the Communist Welt am Abend pointed out gleefully: ‘The facts speak . . . a different language, and do not grant the Nazis their martyr.’³⁰ Almost a year later, when Kütemeyer’s death became the subject of a trial, the Communists were proved right. The court ruled out any possibility of murder.³¹


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Following a funeral service for Kütemeyer, Nazis clashed with members of the KPD fighting organization, the Rotfrontkämpferbund, and a Communist was shot. Since the Nazis had obviously been the aggressors this time, the Nachtausgabe —in the spirit of right-wing solidarity—refrained from covering the event at all. The Communist Welt am Abend, in contrast, devoted half its front page to it.³² Such coverage of political violence was to become standard over the next years. Partisan editors chose to cover only those incidents which would allow them to put their political opponents in the worst possible light. Thus, prior to September 1930, most readers of Berlin’s mass newspapers encountered the Nazis primarily as opponents (and, in Hugenberg’s papers, victims) of Communist aggression. Whilst remaining unable to attract any media attention for their rallies and parliamentary activities, the Nazis found their earliest press coverage thanks to the public’s obsession with crime and violence. The same was true for the KPD. May Day 1929 saw clashes with the police, with numerous deaths. The conflict had started in December 1928, when Berlin’s SPD police president, Zörgiebel, had declared a ban on all open-air demonstrations in the city following several deaths in political clashes.³³ As a result of this ban, the front-lines of the street battle were shifted considerably. The KPD considered it a serious attack by their Social Democratic opponents on Communist political activities.³⁴ Over the following months, they repeatedly ignored the ban and provoked clashes with the police.³⁵ Eventually, the KPD leadership decided to risk an all-out confrontation with Social Democratic authorities on 1 May, the traditional date for demonstrations by the workers’ movement. Through the Rote Fahne, the KPD called upon workers to join the May demonstrations despite the ban.³⁶ Within a few days, the antagonism between Social Democratic and Communist newspapers reached fever pitch. The more the Communist press pressurized Zörgiebel to lift the ban, the more the SPD organ Vorwärts provided material that seemed to justify his stance.³⁷ It reported that in a meeting of the Communist May Committee one speaker had declared 1 May to be a ‘dress rehearsal for civil war’.³⁸ This was a distortion, as the existing police report of that meeting makes apparent. The speaker had, in fact, predicted that the Communists would succeed if ‘hundreds of thousands of the proletariat marched in Berlin, the focus of the fight’.³⁹ The interpretation of the word ‘fight’, ‘Kampf ’, as ‘civil war’, ‘Bürgerkrieg’, was one that came easily in an atmosphere of heightened tensions and mutual recriminations. Both sides now accused each other of wanting to spill blood.⁴⁰ In fact, newspapers took it for granted that there would be casualties, and positioned themselves accordingly. Münzenberg’s Welt am Abend denied that the Communists wanted bloodshed, and stated that it would be impossible to ‘shift responsibility for bloody incidents on 1 May’ onto the KPD.⁴¹ The Social Democratic Vorwärts disagreed. On 29 April, its front-page headline ran: ‘200 deaths on 1st May? Criminal plans by the Communists.’⁴² It reported on a meeting of the KPD Berlin district executive, where, it alleged, the hope was expressed that there

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would be clashes resulting in some 200 dead, which Communist agitation could then exploit. Rote Fahne claimed that the meeting had never taken place and accused the SPD of an outright lie; Welt am Abend castigated Vorwärts for creating a ‘mood of pogrom’; some 1,000 young workers demonstrated in front of the Vorwärts building.⁴³ Even if there was little veracity in the claim, it succeeded in alerting the mass press to a sensation in the making.⁴⁴ Up to this point, the polemics had been largely limited to the KPD and SPD press. Now the looming violence attracted the rest of Berlin’s press. Ullstein’s Berliner Morgenpost condemned the ‘heinous’ Communist scheme; Ullstein’s Tempo dramatized the pending clash between the Communists and the police.⁴⁵ Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe devoted considerable space to the police preparations to defend the streets and published a caricature accusing the Communist press of driving Berlin workers to their deaths.⁴⁶ Foreign newspapers reported on a ‘psychosis of fear’ in Berlin and predicted great bloodshed.⁴⁷ Tension was very high. Already on 29 April, there were clashes between demonstrating workers and the police; on the evening of 30 April two policemen were injured when trying to disperse a large crowd of demonstrators.⁴⁸ M AY D AY 1 9 2 9 : C R E AT I O N O F S C A PE G OATS The tragedy that followed on the first three days of May 1929 was largely a consequence of the media’s anticipation of a confrontation in which both sides, Communist workers and police, believed they were victims. The violent polemics of the Communists, and the scandal-mongering of the rest of the Berlin press, prepared the scene for a heavy-handed and disproportionate police response. Thirty-two civilians, among them seven women, were shot by the police. In not a single case could the police prove that the victims had been participating in demonstrations. Only one victim was a member of a KPD organization.⁴⁹ However, the clashes over the first three days of May 1929 remained disputed in detail, and were largely—and wrongly—blamed on the Communists. In fact, although the police repeatedly met with resistance when trying to disperse demonstrators, resistance had largely been provoked by the indiscriminate and exaggerated use of batons, and was mostly limited to beatings and stone-throwing. This triggered ‘warning shots’ by the police that often hit innocent bystanders. But the perception of events in early May was primarily shaped through a press coverage based on official police reports, which provided a one-sided and grossly distorted picture. One example might help to illuminate the fateful escalation brought about by exaggerated police violence. Alexanderplatz, Berlin’s central square next to the main police station, had been prominent in those press reports which had discussed the Communist plans to ‘achieve’ some 200 dead.⁵⁰ At lunchtime on 1 May 1929, several thousand Communist demonstrators had gathered there.


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The police used water-pumps and batons against the crowds.⁵¹ The water-pumps were a highly successful innovation, dispersing the crowd without excessive use of force: the 8-Uhr-Abendblatt called proceedings at Alexanderplatz ‘a bit more jovial’.⁵² Some demonstrators then moved on to Bülowplatz, not far away, home to the ‘Karl-Liebknecht-Haus’, the KPD headquarters.⁵³ This was KPD home territory, and it affected everyone’s behaviour fundamentally. The police were apparently greeted with stones, and, as a consequence, adopted raiding techniques: speeding in by car, jumping off, immediately starting a baton charge against anyone in their proximity, and firing repeated ‘warning’ shots. The number of pedestrians in this densely populated area meant that many of these shots, which were given without prior warning, hit innocent targets: one man, who had taken refuge inside a shop was shot dead; a sixteen-year-old girl who had passed by with her parents was shot in the thigh.⁵⁴ In Berlin’s working-class neighbourhoods the situation escalated even more. Wedding, the district with the largest KPD electorate, was treated by the police as enemy territory. In the course of afternoon raids by the police, two spectators were shot accidentally.⁵⁵ In the early evening workers erected a provisional barricade to prevent police cars from entering the Kösliner Strasse. If this had been intended as a measure of self-defence, it backfired badly. Armed police were sent out to clear the street from both ends, and—mistaking their own warning shots as hostile fire—shot wildly at windows and houses. Within some ninety minutes eight people were shot dead, and at least twenty-five seriously wounded. The police similarly overreacted in Neukölln, another working-class district, where two more lives were lost.⁵⁶ A total of eighteen people were killed on 1 May 1929. The shootings mainly affected the three neighbourhoods around Bülowplatz in Mitte, around Kösliner Strasse in Wedding, and around Hermannstrasse in Neukölln. In the rest of the city, people went about their daily business without witnessing any of the violence.⁵⁷ The newspapers of 2 May were the first many Berliners knew about it. Almost all papers blamed the Communists. ‘Ihr Blut komme u¨ ber Moskau . . . !’ ran a headline in Mosse’s 8-Uhr-Abendblatt.⁵⁸ In Wedding, the paper reported, the police had encountered heavy fire from an enormous barricade at Kösliner Strasse and from roof tops; similarly heavy fighting had taken place in Neukölln. According to this tabloid, the streetfight had all the characteristics of an uprising.⁵⁹ Other newspapers gave equally colourful and distorted accounts of events. Ullstein’s Tempo described the situation as worse than during the Spartacus uprising in January 1919.⁶⁰ It provided a highly dramatic and completely imaginary description of the ‘storming’ of the ‘barricade’ in Kösliner Strasse.⁶¹ Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe, too, had a field-day. It did everything to hammer home its message of the murderous Communist threat. The Kösliner Strasse, it explained, was known as a ‘stronghold of the Communist and of the most objectionable Wedding mob’.⁶² Allegedly 100 armed Communists had taken position behind a huge barricade some two metres

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high; ‘ragged characters’ with hand guns cowered in the windows and on roofs and opened a ‘murderous fire’ on the police. The fight was said to have taken over an hour and some 2,000 shots, and when the police combed the houses for combatants, they allegedly found weapons and ammunition lying around everywhere. Several policemen, it reported, had been wounded by shots. None of this was true. In fact, the police struggled to explain the lack of firearms confiscated during the riots. In Kösliner Strasse, they arrested only one young man on a roof, carrying an old dysfunctional gun, which a later police report and a court expert dismissed as ‘primarily dangerous to the user’.⁶³ No ammunition was found. As to the police casualties, a Wedding police officer stated in an internal report that no policeman had been injured during these fights. In fact, during the entire May riots, the police did not suffer a single injury by firearms. One reason that these sensationalist press reports seemed to carry a lot of credibility was the provision of an abundance of news photos. Photos of the police using water-pumps against demonstrators on Alexanderplatz were published in almost all newspapers, and made it onto the front page of Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe. Here, the contrast between the depicted non-violent approach of the police and the headline ‘Consequences of the bloody 1st May’ left little doubt as to who was to blame for spilled blood.⁶⁴ Another photo showed the police during one of their raids near Bülowplatz, jumping off their lorry, starting to chase after people, and setting the crowd running. The captions in the various papers provided the interpretation of events. For Mosse’s Berliner Volks-Zeitung the running crowd were clearly fleeing demonstrators; the 8-UhrAbendblatt used the photo to ‘illustrate’ the ‘bitter battle . . . between the police and Communist demonstrators’; Ullstein’s BZ am Mittag placed the photo in the centre of an article headlined ‘The street fights during the night’.⁶⁵ It did not suit the newspapers’ purpose to question the composition and identity of the depicted crowd. Only the much-described ‘barricades’ were missing. Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe provided one photo to illustrate an article headlined ‘The bloody 1st May in Berlin . . . Armed Communists behind barricades’, but this showed a rather unimpressive, improvised, and unmanned road-block.⁶⁶ Editors were fortunate that the the night of 2 May saw renewed clashes in Wedding and Neukölln, during which barricades were built.⁶⁷ In Wedding these consisted of cobble-stones, and were so easily dismantled that hardly any traces were left the following morning. In Neukölln, however, young men toppled a large advertising pillar and constructed a barricade with iron bars, cobble-stones, and some other debris, cutting off a whole street. This provided an excellent photo opportunity, and was widely covered in the newspapers of 3 May. It was shown from every possible angle, providing the impression of a multitude of barricades.⁶⁸ With this came headlines announcing that the police president had declared a state of emergency for Wedding and Neukölln.⁶⁹ The police sealed off the trouble spots around Kösliner- and Hermannstrasse, erecting signs saying ‘Halt! Es wird geschossen!’ These, too, became favourites for the press photographers.⁷⁰

Violence, Sensations, and the Rise of the Nazis, 1928–30 139 Fig. 5.1. A photo-collage from Mosse’s 8-Uhr-Abendblatt, 101, 2 May 1929. The caption ran: ‘Heavy fighting took place on Neukölln’s Hermannplatz and in Wedding between the police and Communist demonstrators. These photos visualize the uproar which took place in the workers’ districts of Great Berlin yesterday. Only on Alexanderplatz events were somewhat more gemütlich, because there the police dealt with any ticklish situation by means of the fire hydrant.’ The very graphic headline made up for the lack of visible Communist violence.

140 Press and Politics in the Weimar Republic Fig. 5.2. This photo from Mosse’s 8-Uhr-Abendblatt, 102, 3 May 1929, was one of many photos depicting the only one barricade of the May riots which had semblance to a properly constructed barricade. In different papers it was depicted from different angles, thus providing the impression of a multitude of barricades. A caption in Ullstein’s BZ am Mittag, 119, 3 May 1929, ran: ‘Barricades in the area around Hermannplatz’. Readers were thus led to believe there existed many various barricades, lending further credibilitiy to exaggerated articles based on distorted police reports.


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The non-Communist press almost unanimously backed the police measures, blaming the Communists for the bloodshed. This started to change from 4 May 1929, when, especially among liberal newspapers, there were increasingly sceptical voices following the death of eleven more people on 3 May in police ‘cleansing’ operations.⁷¹ On 4 May at the same time as reporting the success of the police in quelling the disorder, the newspapers started to reflect on the death-toll. Mosse’s 8-Uhr-Abendblatt, for example, proclaimed ‘Insurgence repressed!’ on its front page, declared ‘Full success of the emergency measures in Neukölln and Wedding’ on page two, but towards the back of the paper printed an article posing a pertinent question: ‘Were all shots legitimate . . . ?’ The accompanying drawing showed a dead woman lying on her balcony, with a toddler looking onto the scene from inside the room. The caption ran: ‘Who shot? In dubio pro Schupo.’⁷² Among liberal editors the mood was shifting. Perhaps this was also due to news of journalists falling victim to police violence. In Neukölln, two reporters of the Nachtausgabe and the Tempo had been severely beaten up by the police after showing their press cards. An editor of the Vossische Zeitung had been shot in the leg despite clearly identifying himself. A journalist from New Zealand had been shot dead by the police when approaching a police road-block.⁷³ Increasingly, police behaviour came under press scrutiny. Ullstein’s Tempo reflected on the police’s sleep deprivation and nervousness.⁷⁴ On its front page Mosse’s left-liberal Berliner Volks-Zeitung deplored the deaths of ‘innocents’ during the ‘streetfights’, and demanded an end to the bloodshed in its leading article. It also criticized the right-wing press for calling for even greater harshness.⁷⁵ Indeed, once the sensational news ceased to pour in, newspapers reverted to defending their political territory. Within a few days, the 8-Uhr-Abendblatt turned into one of the main critics of police behaviour. The news that the autopsy of seventeen dead had confirmed they had been killed by police bullets was accorded front-page status.⁷⁶ By this stage, however, such news was competing with other sensations. Already on 2 May, the Communist Rote Fahne had been banned for three weeks; now the KPD’s militant branch, the Rotfront, was banned in all of Germany.⁷⁷ Equally interesting was the news that one of the leading members of the Kapp Putsch had allegedly received stipends from the Reich interior ministry.⁷⁸ Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe even devoted most of its front page to an armed robbery.⁷⁹ If editors wanted to shed further light on the events of 1–3 May, their articles now competed with a wide array of more recent, and possibly more sensational, news. Communist media strategy added to the general confusion. Münzenberg’s Communist Berlin am Morgen stated that there had been no battles, no roof-top riflemen, and no weapons—only victims.⁸⁰ Nevertheless, the KPD executive decided to propagate the image of heroic resistance, rather than that of victimhood. In an attempt to turn the obvious failure of rallying mass demonstrations into a success, the Communists claimed in their official analysis of the May

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Fig. 5.3. Caricature from Vorwärts, 218, 12 May 1929. Social Democrats repeatedly pointed at the discrepancy between the coverage by the Communist press of the riots in early May 1929, and the official interpretation of events by the KPD executive. The caricature highlights the tensions between the Communist emphasis on victimhood, on the one hand, and or heroic resistance, on the other. It is entitled ‘Communist coverage of 1 May’, the captions underneath the three panels read: ‘Report for Berlin and vicinity: blindly the police fires into the void onto imaginary opponents’, ‘For the provinces: behind improvised cover we offered heroic resistance’, ‘For Moscow: great victory for the Communists!—Police defeated comprehensively!’


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riots that the proletariat had conquered the street on 1 May, and defended it against state power on the following two days by building and fighting from barricades.⁸¹ This political reshaping of events did not go undisputed. An editor of the Rote Fahne left the KPD, condemning the party line, which, he felt, had led to ‘senseless’ deaths.⁸² Two editors of Münzenberg’s Welt am Abend quit their positions in protest over interferences by KPD functionaries.⁸³ For the SPD, the conflicting Communist accounts of the first days of May made it possible to question the validity of criticism of police behaviour and Social Democratic governance.⁸⁴ Clarification of events did not become easier with the passing of time. Two investigation committees examined the claim of police violence.⁸⁵ However, apart from small publications like the left-liberal journal, Weltbühne, and Communist newspapers, these endeavours received little press coverage: the May riots had by this stage become so highly politicized that most liberal newspapers tried to avoid being seen to be supporting the Communist cause.⁸⁶ By July 1929, the danger of the May clashes vanishing from public awareness had become very acute. In order to keep the event in the headlines, the KPD accused the police president of ‘Arbeitermord ’, hoping to provoke libel trials which would provide renewed publicity.⁸⁷ But by this stage, most people’s impressions of events had already been formed in the few days of intense media coverage in the early days of May, largely reinforcing existing political cleavages. Most importantly, a new myth of a pending Communist putsch had been created. Immediately after the May clashes, news that the KPD wanted to exploit the burials of the victims for large-scale action made it onto several front pages.⁸⁸ Over the following year, rumours of a Communist uprising became a staple of the right-wing press. In late July 1929, Hugenberg’s Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger anticipated major riots on the occasion of anti-war day demonstrations.⁸⁹ In late December 1929, increasing Communist aggression triggered speculations about an impending coup.⁹⁰ In early February 1930, many newspapers reported on an attempted Communist coup that the police had prevented.⁹¹ In early March 1930, Communist preparations for demonstrations on ‘World Unemployed Day’ again served for more front-page anxieties.⁹² The memory of 1 May 1929, coupled with the increasing number of incidents of political hooliganism involving Communists, enabled the bourgeois press to inflate and sensationalize the threat of a KPD putsch. H U G E N B E RG , YO U N G , A N D T H E N A Z I S A much more real threat to the future of the Weimar Republic than a Communist putsch was presented by the endeavours of the extreme Right. In early June 1929, the Young Plan, a renegotiation of German reparation payments, had been signed. Although it granted an early withdrawal of Allied troops from

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the Rhineland, and improved on the Dawes Plan in terms of total reparations, it was an ambiguous success for the Germans, stipulating payments for fifty-nine years. For this reason, the nationalist Right, and particularly Alfred Hugenberg, leader of the DNVP, considered the Young Plan unacceptable. As Hugenberg was opposed to the whole system of parliamentary decision-making, he decided to bypass parliament through a referendum. To this end, he founded the ‘Reichsausschuss für das deutsche Volksbegehren’ in July 1929, which was to lead the campaign against the Young Plan.⁹³ As had been the case with other efforts of bourgeois Sammlung, such as the Reichsblock backing Hindenburg’s candidature in 1925, or the group organizing the opposition against the referendum for the expropriation of former princes in 1926, the Reichsausschuss was a loose coalition of right-wing parties and associations uniting for a single purpose. It included the usual suspects: the DNVP, the right-wing veterans’ organization, the Stahlhelm, the agrarians (Reichslandbund and Christlich-Nationale Bauernpartei), right-wing workers’ organizations, the Pan-Germans, some other nationalist associations, and the Nazis. The only substantial difference from earlier right-wing single-purpose coalitions was the absence of the DVP, unlikely to join a campaign against the foreign policy of its own chairman, Gustav Stresemann. Many historians have assigned great significance to Hitler’s involvement in the anti-Young Plan coalition in their explanation of the National Socialists’ sudden rise to prominence in 1929–30. Yet the Nazis did not join the coalition out of a position of weakness, nor did they gain extraordinary amounts of press coverage through it. Even prior to the anti-Young Plan campaign in 1929, the Nazis had been able to double their share of votes at state elections in Saxony and Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and they joined the Reichsausschuss only reluctantly. Part of the Nazis’ appeal was the rejection of the political establishment, and the DNVP had, after all, until recently formed part of the Reich government. To avoid being drawn into a bourgeois-nationalist block, in which the Nazis would lose their distinctiveness, Hitler ordered all grassroots party members to abstain from Reichsausschuss activities, and, with one exception, he refused to appear alongside Hugenberg and Seldte, the leader of the Stahlhelm, at Reichsausschuss rallies.⁹⁴ Hitler’s aim was to prevent National Socialism from being perceived as one bourgeois reactionary party among many—an image which Goebbels fought in his Angriff, and which he blamed on the ‘Jewish–Marxist press’. Even Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe contributed to this perception, mentioning Hitler only towards the very end of a report on the foundation meeting of the Reichsausschuss.⁹⁵ It was the impossibility of not supporting a nationalist campaign with which the Nazis agreed in principle, rather than a quest for press publicity, that made Hitler join Hugenberg.⁹⁶ Certainly, Hugenberg’s papers gave less prominence to Hitler’s participation in the anti-Young Plan campaign than they did to his party’s role as anti-Communist street-fighters.


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Fig. 5.4. This caricature in Angriff, 34, 26 August 1929, illustrates the problem that joining the campaign for the anti-Young Plan referendum posed for the Nazis. The caricature, entitled ‘Those beautiful soap-bubbles!’, shows a stereotypical ‘Jewish’ editor (labelled ‘Jewish-Marxist Press’) drawing from a bucket labelled ‘slander’ (and showing the David Star) to produce soap-bubbles with some of the recent headlines in the liberal and SPD press, like ‘Hitler’s swerve to the reaction’ and ‘Hitler, Hugenberg & Co.’ Rather than welcoming the press publicity that came with the anti-Young Plan campaign, Goebbels feared for the Nazis’ revolutionary appeal.

Hugenberg’s Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger covered the first Reichsausschuss meeting in great detail, devoting half the article to Hugenberg’s speech. Much less extensive was the coverage of the speech of the agrarian leader, Schiele; Hitler only got a third of Schiele’s space.⁹⁷ This was how Hugenberg’s papers were to present the campaign until the end of the referendum in late December 1929: as a nationalist enterprise, spearheaded by the DNVP, lead by its ‘Führer’, Alfred Hugenberg.⁹⁸ Membership in the anti-Young Plan coalition did not result in a shower of positive press coverage for Hitler’s party. On the other hand, it did mean that they could no longer be simply ignored: the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger printed three small articles by a special correspondent about the Nazi party rally in Nuremberg in early August 1929.⁹⁹ This was not in itself unusual, as the alleged participation of some 160,000 party members was certainly a newsworthy event. In earlier years, similar activities by the Stahlhelm had received much more coverage. Now, Hugenberg’s editors considered the progress of the Zeppelin flight to New York

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considerably more important.¹⁰⁰ The only favour to the Nazis was the way in which clashes with left-wing opponents on the fringes of the Nuremberg rally were reported. Although clearly originating with disorderly SA men, Hugenberg’s news agency, Telegraphen-Union, and his papers wrote of events in a way that spared them the blame.¹⁰¹ Again, this was not exactly a new development: Hugenberg’s editors had always sided with the Nazis when reporting on clashes with the Communists. Already in October 1928, a proud Goebbels had noted after a violent end to a Sportpalast rally: ‘The press brings columns of reports about yesterday. . . . The entire Scherl business is on our side.’¹⁰² The argument that Hitler was turned into a major national figure through the press campaign in support of the referendum against the Young Plan is flawed.¹⁰³ It assumes that Hitler received a lot of press coverage, which he did not. The referendum was clearly presented as Hugenberg’s project, especially in Hugenberg’s newspapers. It also assumes that mere quantity in press exposure invariably leads to political success, which it does not, as Hugenberg was to find out for himself. Despite the full support of his three papers, the Tag, the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, and the Nachtausgabe, with a combined circulation of half a million copies per day, the referendum drew only a disappointing 348,000 votes in Berlin.¹⁰⁴ Compared with the showing of the DNVP at the Reichstag elections of 1928, this signified a loss of almost 100,000 votes, and was not even one-fifth of the votes cast in favour of the expropriation of former princes in 1926.¹⁰⁵ Considering the particular concentration of Hugenberg’s press empire in Berlin, the anti-Young Plan referendum was a miserable failure for the leader of the DNVP. Hugenberg had perhaps relied too much on the effectiveness of his press campaign. The Nazis, in contrast, relied much less on printed propaganda and instead mounted an enormous campaign of local rallies: in October 1929 alone they staged 7,000 rallies throughout the Reich. The Young topic proved enormously successful, and drew many more participants than had previously been attracted by Nazi events, as Goebbels noted.¹⁰⁶ They also drew more press coverage. Whereas in the past clashes with Communists in the wake of Nazi meetings had hogged the attention, now the clashes became a smallprint encore to the description of successful evenings. In effect, Hugenberg had provided the Nazis with a topic with which they succeeded in attracting many nationalist voters previously untouched by Nazi propaganda. At the same time, the increasing radicalization of the DNVP, apparent in the violent press polemics against parliamentary democracy, added to the perception that Hugenberg’s party was moving closer to the political position of the NSDAP and not vice versa. SCANDAL-MONGERING The anti-Young Plan campaign helped the Nazis to reach a wider audience, but it was not their major propaganda theme in autumn 1929. In the run-up


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to the Prussian local elections of November 1929, Goebbels’s Angriff was dominated by news on the so-called Sklarek scandal. This was the first scandal that Goebbels was effectively able to exploit. It became the Weimar Republic’s most damaging political scandal, though not simply as a result of Goebbels’s propagandistic skills.¹⁰⁷ It was due to the dynamics of the Berlin press market that a local municipal corruption affair could be turned into a press story that resonated throughout the Republic. Cut-throat competition among by now seven Berlin tabloids and the abundance of other mass and political newspapers created a media culture of intense political and business rivalry that fed sensationalism. The significance of the Sklarek scandal was not just its contribution to the electoral rise of the Nazi party in Berlin. It also highlighted politicians’ increasing frustration with a thoroughly partisan, sensationalist, tabloid press. The transgressions that came to light were not themselves particularly spectacular. The three Sklarek brothers, Max, Leo, and Willy, ran a clothing factory in Berlin, and—by bribing city officials—had been granted a virtual monopoly in supplying clothing to municipal institutions and employees. In September 1929, an audit of Berlin’s municipal bank, the Stadtbank, revealed that the Sklareks had defrauded the city treasury out of roughly RM 10 million. At the end of a long trial in June 1932, eight people were sentenced for taking bribes: two bank directors, two city councillors, two former mayors, one city official, and one accountant.¹⁰⁸ The mere technicalities of the fraud were of limited interest to the press. Instead, colourful detail about the corruption of local politicians and municipal managers provided the affair with the local dimension as well as the human-interest element necessary to gain maximum attention from its readers. To this was added an element of suspense, not only through the piecemeal revelation of who was involved but also because the scandal hit the headlines less than two months before local elections were to take place, raising the question of who would be hurt most by it. The political slant of the affair was apparent right from the first headlines announcing the arrest of the Sklareks. Hugenberg’s Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger immediately pointed out that the Sklareks had been sponsors of the pro-republican and mainly SPD-supported Reichsbanner organization.¹⁰⁹ The Communists, too, were eager to allocate political responsibility. The first front-page article on the affair in Münzenberg’s Welt am Abend mentioned twice that the Sklareks were members of the SPD.¹¹⁰ Leading Social Democrats convinced themselves that the affair would lose the SPD the elections.¹¹¹ In fact, the Sklareks had bestowed their favours in a non-partisan fashion, including several Social Democrats, among them two district mayors, two Communist city councillors in charge of the municipal procurement agency, and had entertained good relations with a number of deutschnational politicians, among them the publisher of the anti-Semitic journal Wahrheit, Wilhelm Bruhn, DNVP member of the Prussian parliament.¹¹²

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Political responsibility was anything but clear cut, and thus newspaper polemics abounded. Whilst the Communists and Hugenberg’s papers pointed at the Social Democrats involved, Vorwärts and liberal papers emphasized that Communist city councillors played a crucial role in the affair.¹¹³ The Communists were the most skilful in positioning themselves as incorruptible investigators. The Communist party organ, Rote Fahne, was at the forefront of bringing a gripping new approach to the coverage of the affair. Despite its low circulation, it became the most dynamic political driving force, setting the agenda for almost all other Berlin newspapers. Starting a series of ‘Sklarek revelations’ in early October 1929, it offered a mishmash of rumours, unfounded accusations, and kernels of truth presenting local government as thoroughly corrupt.¹¹⁴ The tabloid press also realized the potential of the affair, and started its own campaigns. Ullstein’s Tempo, with a languishing circulation, established itself as one of the most vociferous prosecutors and attracted a lot of attention.¹¹⁵ Less interested in political responsibility, Tempo sold its investigations as a crime story, focusing on the Sklareks’ ‘accomplices, confidants, and silent sufferers’ within municipal authorities.¹¹⁶ The fact that the state prosecution was in possession of a secret list of people who had benefited from the Sklarek’s self-serving magnanimity fuelled speculation.¹¹⁷ Allegations abounded, and reached a climax with the ‘news’ by the Rote Fahne that Berlin’s lord mayor, the DDP politician Gustav Böss, had apparently also been one of the Sklareks’ beneficiaries.¹¹⁸ Böss, who was then touring the United States, was informed by his deputy that there was ‘no newspaper copy without [mention of the] Sklarek case’.¹¹⁹ For once, the heavily fragmented Berlin press focused on the same issue, providing the affair with a mass audience that far surpassed the usual Teilöffentlichkeiten.¹²⁰ In the Prussian parliament, a gloating speaker of the Wirtschaftspartei criticized Berlin’s ‘municipal-socialist system’ by quoting from liberal papers, not least tabloids like Ullstein’s Tempo and Mosse’s 8-Uhr-Abendblatt.¹²¹ The message was clear. An admission of mismanagement even by the liberal press, concurring with the position of the right-wing press, was as close to ‘truth’ as one could get within the well-known context of Berlin’s partisan media. Social Democrats, against whom most of the polemics were directed, took this new press dynamics as evidence that the entire affair was a media invention, a ‘press scandal’.¹²² They blamed the scandal squarely on ‘sensationalists’ and on a ‘baiting press’, and felt justified pointing an accusing finger at the fusion of the sensationalism of Berlin’s tabloids with the electioneering of the right- and left-wing press.¹²³ This Social Democratic defence misfired badly. Their selfstylization as victims led to a strategy of defensive complaints and apparent denial of the obvious evidence for municipal mismanagement, reinforcing accusations that Social Democrats were unwilling to investigate transgressions within their own ranks.¹²⁴ In fact, the Social Democrats were simply slow to adapt to the new rules of sensationalist mass-media politics brought about by Berlin’s tabloid press. The new quality of political life manifested itself in the streets, too. Upon


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his return from America, lord mayor Böss was welcomed by several hundred riotous demonstrators at Bahnhof Zoo and in front of his home. The mood in the streets, one liberal broadsheet noted, had been incited by a sensationalist press.¹²⁵ In a novel published in 1931, set in 1929 Berlin, there is a telling section on political journalism. In response to an older colleague’s complaints about the absence of conscientious analysis in journalism, his younger colleague notes, ‘What for? Scandal-mongering earns more.’¹²⁶ Indeed, especially for those newspapers on the front line of daily revelations, the benefits were considerable. The Communist Rote Fahne claimed it had gained 5,000 new readers, temporarily halting its constant decline; Ullstein’s Tempo increased circulation by over 20 per cent, and the income from street-sales of Hugenberg’s Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger and Nachtausgabe reached a new record level.¹²⁷ It was this obvious demand for sensationalist revelation that convinced Goebbels to use the Sklarek scandal as the main theme of his election propaganda in autumn 1929. The Nazis were particularly well placed to exploit the affair, since they were not represented in the city council, and were therefore the only party without any connection to the Sklareks. Angriff devoted nearly all front pages in October 1929 to the Sklarek scandal. Headlines such as ‘Secret safe in Sklarek’s villa’, or ‘Pheasants, champagne, caviar, lobster!’ demonstrated that Goebbels knew how to combine human-interest stories with sensationalist politics.¹²⁸ The scandal was by far the dominant topic of the election campaign leading up to the Prussian local elections of 17 November 1929. On election day, Hugenberg’s Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger told Berliners to vote against ‘Sklarekcity’.¹²⁹ This they did, though not entirely as Hugenberg had wished. Böss’s DDP lost a third of their seats and received a total of fourteen, the SPD declined from seventy-three to sixty-four. However, Hugenberg’s DNVP also lost, almost as much as the SPD, and ended up with forty seats. There were only two winners: the KPD, which improved from forty-three to fifty-six seats, and the Nazis, who had not been represented before, and now gained thirteen seats.¹³⁰ In fact, Goebbels had good reason to triumph. While the Communists improved upon the result of the local elections in October 1925, they had received some 50,000 less votes than at the Reichstag elections of 1928. The Nazis, on the other hand, trebled their votes compared to 1928. Their total of 132,000 was small compared to that of the SPD (652,000) and the KPD (566,000). Still, in Berlin the Nazis were almost as strong as the DDP, and that without significant press support. Hugenberg’s papers had certainly not been a crucial factor in this success. Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe had issued front page recommendations only for the DNVP and the DVP on the day before the elections.¹³¹ Apart from the fact that Nazi rallies—like those of the Wirtschaftspartei —were included in the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger’s election listings, they received very little coverage at all. With over 750,000 votes in the whole of Prussia, the Nazis received almost as many votes as they had gained in the entire Reich in 1928, and were clearly an up-and-coming party.¹³²

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T H E M A K I N G A N D B R E A K I N G O F PA RT I E S Compared to the Sklarek scandal, the anti-Young Plan referendum played almost no role in the election campaign. But it proved crucial in breaking up the DNVP. At the core of the internal party conflict was a piece of radical Nazi rhetoric. In order to prevent the Young Plan from passing parliament, §3 of the so-called ‘Freiheitsgesetz’, the proposed anti-Young law, stipulated that no new treaties were to be signed based on the war-guilt clause 231 of the Versailles Treaty. If such treaties were nevertheless signed, the Nazis suggested that §4 should stipulate the death sentence for responsible ‘Reich Chancellors, Ministers and Reich plenipotentiaries’ for high treason.¹³³ This radical proposal soon divided opinions within the Reichsausschuss. One of the potential targets of the punitive Nazi clause was after all Reich President Hindenburg, the revered honorary member of the Stahlhelm, and guarantor of East-Elbian agrarian interests. The agrarian Landbund demanded from Hugenberg that the relevant passage should be dropped.¹³⁴ The Nazis eventually agreed to lowering the sentence to two years in prison, but otherwise conceded only a slight rephrasing of §4 to exclude any possible action against Hindenburg.¹³⁵ This battle of opinions did not go unnoticed on the Left; Vorwärts took it as evidence that the Nazis were now leading the campaign. Goebbels noted with satisfaction that the press was ‘full of us’. He was particularly pleased with a Vorwärts caricature of himself threatening Hindenburg with §4.¹³⁶ Rather than the Nazis being identified as conservative stooges, as Goebbels had initially feared, it was the DNVP that was thrown into difficulty by the anti-Young Plan partnership. Hindenburg himself expressed his disapproval of the anti-Young agitation, particularly of §4, which caused great consternation in Hugenberg’s entourage and in his press.¹³⁷ It also encouraged moderate politicians within the DNVP openly to express their dissatisfaction with Hugenberg’s leadership and his strategy of totally rejecting parliamentary democracy. The tensions between the DNVP’s pro-governmental faction and Hugenberg’s hardliners increased throughout October and November 1929.¹³⁸ The conflict reached its climax on 30 November 1929, when Hugenberg’s Freiheitsgesetz was put to a vote in the Reichstag. It was clear from the outset that it would fail, since the governing coalition of SPD, Centre, and DVP rejected it, but a Reichstag vote on the proposition was a formal requirement. Parliamentarians had to vote on each section of the proposed law, and when the vote reached §4, the DNVP split spectacularly: only fifty-five of its members voted in its favour, seventeen abstained. In the afternoon, three of them issued a press release announcing that they considered fruitful political work within the DNVP impossible. Within four days, twelve Reichstag parliamentarians left the DNVP, among them some of the party’s leading names, including Treviranus, Lambach,


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and Schlange-Schöningen. Westarp resigned from his position as leader of the parliamentary party.¹³⁹ Even before the anti-Young referendum had failed to achieve a substantial vote on 22 December 1929, Hugenberg and his DNVP had suffered a shattering blow. Matters were made even worse for Hugenberg by the public display of party disunity. The press presented the Reichstag ballot as a personal defeat for Hugenberg.¹⁴⁰ The subsequent crisis occupied not only the front pages in early December 1929, but was covered in great detail.¹⁴¹ Hugenberg’s desperate attempts at crisis management dominated the headlines.¹⁴² News of his failure to achieve reconciliation and of subsequent further resignations from the DNVP made it onto every front page. As the dissidents did not all leave on the same day, newspapers kept count of the departures over several days, often providing their photos on the front page.¹⁴³ ‘Deutschnational’ became synonymous with ‘split’, ‘disintegration’, and ‘crisis’.¹⁴⁴ Even Hugenberg’s papers struggled to put a positive spin on developments. The Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger only published short notes, the Nachtausgabe more daringly presented the events as a healthy ‘clarification’ of positions within the DNVP. Both papers eventually decided to ignore further departures and criticism by the dissidents, and instead emphasized statements of support for Hugenberg from the rump of the party. Other papers ridiculed this ‘high tide of telegrams of devotion’ as part of the DNVP’s ‘dissolution ceremony’.¹⁴⁵ Most observers agreed that the split within the DNVP had fundamental consequences for German political life. On 7 December 1929, the 8-UhrAbendblatt started its leader with the observation ‘Germany no longer has a big right-wing party’.¹⁴⁶ This was not entirely accurate. On the same day, Goebbels noted in his diary: ‘The disintegration of the DNVP continues. Relentlessly. The way we rise, the others fall.’¹⁴⁷ The following day, Goebbels was proved right. At the state elections in Thuringia, many former voters of the DNVP reconsidered their choices, and overwhelmingly supported the Nazis.¹⁴⁸ With 11.3 per cent, the NSDAP received almost three times as many votes as the DNVP, which slumped from 8.2 per cent in 1928 to just 4 per cent now.¹⁴⁹ The NSDAP had suddenly become Thuringia’s biggest right-wing party. Hugenberg’s Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger tried to sell the outcome as a ‘Marxist-democratic defeat’.¹⁵⁰ However, the claim that Nazi gains had been taken from ‘Marxist parties’ was contradicted in the Nachtausgabe, which admitted that events within the DNVP had ‘naturally’ influenced the outcome.¹⁵¹ Liberal papers were unanimous in the conclusion that the increase in votes for the NSDAP had been to the detriment of Hugenberg’s DNVP. The relationship between these two parties was dramatized and personalized in the headlines. Mosse’s Berliner Volks-Zeitung proclaimed ‘Hitler’s victory over Hugenberg’, in the 8-Uhr-Abendblatt the headline ran ‘Hitler devours Hugenberg’.¹⁵² More recent quantitative electoral analysis has shown that between 1928 and 1930, almost one-third of the people voting for the DNVP switched to

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the NSDAP. Apart from former non-voters, these former DNVP supporters constituted the largest group within the Nazi electorate in 1930.¹⁵³ For the leader of the DNVP, the state elections in Thuringia could not have come at a worse time. For the Nazis, on the other hand, they provided a unique opportunity. The particular distribution of seats in the Thuringian parliament meant that bourgeois parties had to choose between either the SPD or the NSDAP to form a government. In January 1930, the Nazis entered government in Weimar. Wilhelm Frick, who had been jailed for his involvement in the Hitler putsch in 1923, became Thuringian minister for interior and education.¹⁵⁴ For the first time ever, the Nazis occupied a position of considerable political influence. It was Frick who grabbed headlines like no other Nazi prior to the Reichstag elections in September 1930, securing his party the place in the media limelight it had previously lacked. By January 1930, the NSDAP had become a political factor that could no longer be ignored even by a hostile press. Until the Thuringian elections, the Nazis had stood little chance of promoting their political agenda to a wider newspaper-reading public. Frick’s participation in the Thuringian state government changed this.¹⁵⁵ In March 1930, he made it onto the front pages of Berlin’s press for the first time, with reports of his conflict with the Social Democratic Reich interior minister, Severing, over right-wing youth movements.¹⁵⁶ At the same time, newspapers picked up reports published by Vorwärts accusing Frick of trying to ‘Nazify’ the Thuringian police force.¹⁵⁷ Severing’s decision to freeze Reich payments to Thuringia until these allegations had been investigated made front-page news in the second half of March.¹⁵⁸ The conflict between Reich government and Thuringian state government could well have dominated headlines for several more weeks, had the Müller government in Berlin not broken apart at the end of March 1930. The new government under Heinrich Brüning lifted the freeze initially, but after appointments of Nazis to high-profile police positions in Thuringia had to reimpose restrictions in early June 1930.¹⁵⁹ By this point, Frick had already become a national figure. In early April 1930, Frick figured as the main speaker at a large Nazi rally in the Sportpalast in Berlin, speaking on the ‘ ‘‘war’’ with Thuringia’. The venue was once more filled to capacity, as more than 16,000 Berliners tried to get a glimpse of the man who had successfully resisted the powerful Severing.¹⁶⁰ For the first time, Goebbels noted in his diary that a Sportpalast rally had received a ‘good press’.¹⁶¹ S PI N N I N G M U R D E R S TO R I E S Frick had become a political factor in Germany. Goebbels cheered the press coverage of Frick’s appearance in the Reichstag as ‘Mordspropaganda’.¹⁶² At the same time, Nazi media presence should not be exaggerated. The increase in Nazi activities was regularly noted by some commentators, but the coverage they


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received was hardly extensive. Reports of street clashes with the Communists continued to dominate the coverage well into 1930. And this intensified following the NSDAP party conference in early August 1929, when members of the SA made deliberate incursions into Communist strongholds in Berlin. Ironically, it continued to be the Communists—not the SA—who were perceived as the aggressors, a perception only reinforced by the Rote Fahne which in late August 1929 had adopted the violent slogan ‘Beat the Fascists wherever you meet them!’¹⁶³ The incitement to violence in the KPD party organ and the perceived upsurge in clashes between Communists and Nazis coincided so neatly that it conjured up a causal relationship. In his Angriff, Goebbels held the editors of the Communist Rote Fahne responsible for the increased violence, and constructed the image of victimized Nazis defending themselves. Though the rest of the Berlin press remained sceptical, editors of Hugenberg’s Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger went along with the Goebbels line.¹⁶⁴ On 14 January 1930, Goebbels’s version seemed dramatically confirmed when a group of Communists shot the leader of the Berlin-Friedrichshain SA, Horst Wessel, in his room. Wessel died five weeks later from blood poisoning.¹⁶⁵ By this stage, street clashes with fatalities had become sufficiently unspectacular not to merit front page attention. Cold-blooded murder was different, Berlin’s tabloids had a penchant for spectacular crimes. The attempt on Wessel provided all the ingredients for a successful media story: there was the spectacular crime (Wessel had been shot the moment his murderers had entered his room), mixed with an element of mystery (was it political murder or domestic conflict?), coupled with some ‘human interest’. Wessel was not the normal working-class unemployed man often found in the SA, but a student and a successful local SA leader, who happened to live with an ex-prostitute, who very recently had had a serious argument with their landlady.¹⁶⁶ Wessel made headlines, and he caused controversy.¹⁶⁷ For once, the accusations in the Hugenberg newspapers (presenting the incident as a ‘Communist murder attempt’) were right. At the core of the crime lay a domestic conflict, but Wessel’s murder was undeniably a political act. The KPD organization took care of the two main perpetrators. They had to hand back their KPD membership passes, received false passports, and were hidden in the villa of a Communist functionary. Albrecht ‘Ali’ Höhler, the shooter, was then smuggled to Prague by a member of the Communist Rote Hilfe. The landlady was instructed by the KPD headquarters to claim that a private quarrel was at the core of the incident.¹⁶⁸ Initially, the Communist cover-up was not entirely without success. Ullstein’s Berliner Morgenpost thought it was ‘more a case of personal revenge than of political murder’.¹⁶⁹ However, very soon Ali Höhler was identified as a pimp with a criminal record, his flat searched, and incriminating Communist material found. For Tempo, Nachtausgabe, and Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, the case was clear.¹⁷⁰ Communist editors, however, did not give up. They turned the revelation that Höhler was a pimp to their own advantage. Wessel, they claimed,

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Fig. 5.5. According to Goebbels’s Angriff, clashes between Communist workers and Nazis were a result of the incitement to murder by the KPD organ, Rote Fahne. German workers were manipulated by ‘foreign’ and ‘Jewish’ editors propagating the slogan ‘Beat the fascists wherever you meet them!’ These caricatures all appeared in late 1929 and early 1930, from top left clockwise, in Angriff, 37, 16 September 1929; 19, 6 March 1930; 39, 30 September 1929; 47, 27 October 1929; and again 39, 30 September 1929. Goebbels’s narrative found its climax in the creation of the first NS martyr, Horst Wessel.


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had been a pimp, too, and had snatched away one of Höhler’s prostitutes. A conspiracy of the Berlin police and bourgeois press was turning an underworld murder, an act of jealousy, into an occasion for Communist bashing.¹⁷¹ Several days later, the Welt am Abend substantiated this conspiracy theory. According to one of its informants, Berlin’s bourgeois tabloids, particularly Nachtausgabe, Tempo, and 8-Uhr-Abendblatt, had intervened directly with the police to have the incident declared as a political crime, for the sake of sensation and antiCommunist propaganda. According to the Welt am Abend, this confirmed—as did the reporting around 1 May 1929—that these tabloids were in cahoots with the police.¹⁷² Compared to Goebbels’s failed attempt at turning Kütemeyer—the victim of 1928—into a party martyr, Wessel was a better prospect, particularly because this time the facts were on Goebbels’s side. Early February 1930, Ali Höhler was arrested and confessed.¹⁷³ Information about his flight to Prague led to several more arrests, and renewed media interest. The revelation of a Communist ‘secret service’ arranging fake passports, conspiratorial limousines, and a decadent goodbye feast in the villa of a Communist functionary greatly impressed contemporaries.¹⁷⁴ For several more days, further arrests of Rote Hilfe functionaries—sold by Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe as ‘Communist agents’—kept the affair in the headlines.¹⁷⁵ Knowledge of facts did not preclude multiple interpretations of events. Various and often contradictory readings all made sense only within the context of the individual newspaper. Within Goebbels’s Angriff, Wessel’s murder was the pinnacle of anti-Nazi violence induced by devious Communist editors. The anti-communism of Hugenberg’s newspapers focused not on the Nazi victim but on yet another example of criminal Communist violence. The Communists sold it as just another case of the conspiracy between an anti-Communist police led by Social Democrats and a sensationalist, capitalist press.¹⁷⁶ T H E PE RC E P T I O N O F DY N A M I S M Wessel’s murder helped Goebbels to create a party martyr, but it did not provide the Nazis with news value for very long. Hugenberg’s papers soon reverted to their habit of reporting more extensively about clashes after rallies than about the rallies themselves.¹⁷⁷ Even one of Hitler’s rare appearances in Berlin at a Sportpalast rally in early May 1930 received less attention in Hugenberg’s Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger or his Nachtausgabe than in Münzenberg’s Welt am Abend or the 12-Uhr-Blatt, both of which provided polemical accounts of the meeting.¹⁷⁸ The Nazis had quite literally to fight for press publicity on a daily basis, and despite Wessel’s murder could not conceal for long that very often it was the Nazis who were the aggressors. In early March 1930, for example, a gang of armed Nazis attacked a Reichsbanner meeting in Röntgental near Bernau, shooting four people, one of whom died. While the incident itself received little attention, the

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ensuing trial in July 1930 was covered very widely.¹⁷⁹ Typically, Hugenberg’s papers covered the incident itself in a way that concealed the exact role of the Nazis.¹⁸⁰ Another incident in mid-May 1930 exposed Nazi violence even more dramatically. An innocent bypasser, a newspaper agent called Heimbürger, had been mistaken for a Communist, and severely beaten, kicked, and ultimately knifed by a group of Nazis. As there had been several clashes that same night, with a total of three casualties, Heimbürger’s death received little attention initially.¹⁸¹ However, when details emerged, Tempo devoted its front page to the ‘bestial murder’ of Heimbürger.¹⁸² Apparently, he had escaped from his tormentors and—already mortally wounded—sought refuge in a tavern nearby. His pursuers had threatened the publican with the storming of his tavern, had then dragged Heimbürger out and thrown him to the ground, beating and kicking him in the face until he lost consciousness. In July 1930, the trial of Heimbürger’s murderers received considerable coverage in papers other than Hugenberg’s—not just because of the contrast between the unrestrained violence of the crime and the fact that Heimbürger had been an innocent and politically uninvolved passer-by.¹⁸³ The trial began in parallel to that of the Röntgental murder, as well as a couple of other hearings all dealing with cases of political hooliganism, some of which had made front page news in early July 1930.¹⁸⁴ This kind of political violence suddenly became very relevant, as the Reichstag was dissolved on 18 July, and new elections were scheduled for 14 September 1930. On 19 July, Ullstein’s Tempo expressed a general fear in its large-letter front-page headline: ‘Bloody election campaign feared’.¹⁸⁵ Within the next ten days, a multitude of bloody clashes confirmed the worst expectations.¹⁸⁶ At least among the editors of Berlin’s liberal mass papers, the focus of attention was now slowly turning towards the Nazis, mainly because, by July 1930, the Nazis had established themselves as the most dynamic right-wing party. At the state elections in Saxony on 22 June 1930 the NSDAP garnered 14.4 per cent of the vote, making it the second strongest party after the SPD. This had been primarily the result of an exceptional propaganda effort, with rallies even in the tiniest villages.¹⁸⁷ The difference in style to Hugenberg’s DNVP was obvious. On election day, the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger published a long and learned reflection on a Hugenberg speech in Bischofswerda, in which he had discussed the various stages of Germany’s history.¹⁸⁸ In the same edition, however, Hugenberg’s paper printed a short front-page article on campaigning in Saxony, providing as an example Hitler’s speech in Zirkus Sarrasani in Dresden.¹⁸⁹ Hitler was certainly the bigger draw. As in Thuringia, DNVP voters switched to the NSDAP, and provided—together with former non-voters—the largest group of support.¹⁹⁰ Even the Communist Welt am Abend did not manage to conceal the extent of the Nazi victory: despite trying to highlight Communist ‘successes’, the ‘breakthrough’ of the NSDAP was the more sensational story.¹⁹¹ The ‘Swastica


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Fig. 5.6. The success at the state elections in Saxony in June 1930 provided the Nazis with very visible positive press coverage. The above caricature from Angriff, 51, 26 June 1930, is a variation on the theme of the ‘Jewish press’: very anxious Jewish editors are now despairing after proving unable to prevent the Nazi success in Saxony, despite buckets full of ‘lies’, ‘defamation’, and ‘incitement’, as well as bags of money. The caricature also shows how conscious Goebbels’s Angriff was of tabloid coverage: all three papers here representing the ‘Jewish press’ are tabloids, the BZ am Mittag, the 12-Uhr-Blatt, and the Montag Morgen.

Victory’ in Saxony made it onto the front pages of all mass newspapers, to Goebbels’s great relish.¹⁹² Hugenberg’s papers, faced with the collapse of the DNVP, struggled to preserve a sceptical stance towards the Nazi success.¹⁹³ The DNVP had lost nearly half of its votes compared to the state elections of 1929, and achieved only one-third of the votes of the NSDAP. Many commentators pointed at the desertion of the DNVP by a disappointed electorate.¹⁹⁴ Indeed, prior to June 1930, Hugenberg had struggled to overcome the ‘April crisis’, another serious party-internal conflict. After the breaking-up of the Grand Coalition

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under Müller, Brüning had managed to convince the moderate DNVP politician and chairman of the agrarian interest group Landbund, Schiele, to join his government as minister for agriculture.¹⁹⁵ Brüning’s intention was to woo the left wing of the DNVP by offering concessions to the agricultural interests.¹⁹⁶ In this, he succeeded. Immediately, the conflict between pro-governmental and anti-system forces in the DNVP resurfaced.¹⁹⁷ When Hugenberg ordered his party to support the vote of no-confidence against Brüning tabled by the SPD, KPD, and NSDAP in early April 1930, he suffered an embarrassing defeat. Schiele openly contradicted Hugenberg and called on the Landbund members within the DNVP to support the government.¹⁹⁸ In order to prevent another party split, Hugenberg had to perform a very public volte-face, for which he was much ridiculed in the press.¹⁹⁹ Once more, commentators wrote that the DNVP was in a state of ‘complete disintegration’.²⁰⁰ Throughout April 1930, the tension between the pro-Brüning DNVP parliamentarians around Westarp and Hugenberg’s supporters increased.²⁰¹ Press reports repeatedly highlighted the possibility of a party split.²⁰² Goebbels noted in his diary that the DNVP was ‘finished’: ‘All grist to our mill.’²⁰³ Compared to the rising NSDAP, the DNVP seemed to be in terminal decline. This impression was reinforced in July 1930, with the Reichstag’s vote on Brüning’s first emergency decree. As in December 1929, the parliamentary DNVP was split: while Hugenberg’s followers voted against it, the group around Westarp decided to support it. The Reichstag was dissolved, Westarp and his supporters left the DNVP and joined forces with those who had abandoned Hugenberg already in December 1929, founding a new right-wing party, the Konservative Volkspartei.²⁰⁴ Once more, the press devoted considerable attention to these developments.²⁰⁵ Headlines announcing prominent departures from Hugenberg’s DNVP occurred almost on a daily basis: ‘One Adieu to Hugenberg every day’ and ‘The Mass Flight from Hugenberg’ created the image of a leader increasingly deserted by his following.²⁰⁶ Caricatures illustrated Hugenberg’s plight.²⁰⁷ The meltdown of the DNVP was not covered everywhere, as the 8-Uhr-Abendblatt observed in a commentary: ‘Every day we read in newspapers about the melting down of Hugenberg’s party . . . The readers of his [i.e. Hugenberg’s] newspapers, however, get to learn nothing about the flight from the party leader, because . . . the writers of these newspapers keep quiet about any embarrassing news.’²⁰⁸ This was an accurate observation. The editors of Hugenberg’s papers tried hard to keep up the image of the DNVP’s Führer. As in December 1929, all there was to warn the alerted reader that something was amiss in Hugenberg’s party was the sudden flood of devotional declarations and telegrams, often from rather obscure organizations.²⁰⁹ Though the collapse of the DNVP was clearly good news for the Nazis, the problem for Goebbels was to ensure that his party did not get sucked down with Hugenberg. This remained a worry because the DNVP split led to wild speculation about possible electoral strategies. Münzenberg’s Welt am Abend


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ventured in a front-page headline the possibility of an electoral alliance between Hitler and Hugenberg.²¹⁰ Ullstein’s Tempo reported that a ‘Hugenberg–Hitler agreement’ had been struck, and the next day one of Mosse’s newspapers spoke of the ‘Firma Hugenberg–Hitler’.²¹¹ Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe immediately published a denial.²¹² But Goebbels was even more anxious not to be linked to the flagging bourgeois nationalists, and denounced the rumours as a Jewish smear campaign.²¹³ C A M PA I G N I N G AG A I N S T T H E N A Z I S The change in political fortune for the NSDAP was also apparent in the intensity of press attacks directed against them. Until early 1930, anti-Nazi items had been a near monopoloy of the Communist press, for whom Hitler was merely the latest instance of generic fascism.²¹⁴ From the summer 1930, several of Berlin’s liberal mass papers started to turn their attention to Hitler’s party. In July 1930, after the latest DNVP split, the chief editor of Mosse’s Berliner Volks-Zeitung, Otto Nuschke, expressed a widespread view when writing that he expected Hugenberg and his party to receive fewer votes than Hitler at the next Reichstag elections.²¹⁵ As a consequence, he turned the left-liberal Berliner Volks-Zeitung into one of the most vociferous press opponents of National Socialism in Berlin.²¹⁶ With the 8Uhr-Abendblatt and the Berliner Tageblatt, two other Mosse publications joined the fight. Predicting fifty to sixty Nazis in the next Reichstag, the chief editor of Mosse’s Berliner Tageblatt, Theodor Wolff, launched a scathing attack.²¹⁷ Other mass and tabloid papers also devoted critical attention to the Nazis. News of Nazi violence during the election campaign repeatedly made it onto their front pages.²¹⁸ But, despite the new liberal interest, Münzenberg’s Communist Welt am Abend continued to be the most aggressive.²¹⁹ In mid-August 1930, the Communist tabloid reacted to a story in the Nazi Angriff in which Goebbels had castigated the ‘giant income’ of Communist ‘Bonzen’ (big wigs), and started to attack the Berlin Gau leader for his own considerable personal income. With headlines such as ‘Goebbels Rieseneinkünfte’ the paper hit a raw nerve and intensified already existing tensions within the Berlin SA.²²⁰ Stormtroopers in Berlin were suffering from insufficient financial support, and repeatedly made demands to the party leadership for pay increases during periods of heavy campaigning.²²¹ Now, tensions erupted in open rebellion. First, SA members refused to guard rallies, then, despite last-minute appeals by Goebbels, stormed and demolished the party office in Berlin, clashing with members of the SS.²²² They demanded the immediate resignation of Goebbels and other so-called ‘big wigs’. Hitler had to hurry to Berlin, promise considerable financial improvements, and personally assume overall leadership of the SA. Two weeks prior to the Reichstag elections, this was sensational news for many anti-Nazi papers. 8-Uhr-Abendblatt, Welt am

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Abend, Tempo and the Berliner Volks-Zeitung all devoted their front pages to the ‘rebellion against Goebbels’ and the ‘war’ in Hitler’s party.²²³ The clash with Gregor Strasser and the subsequent departure of the NSDAP’s left wing had occasioned much less coverage in early July 1930.²²⁴ Appalled by the unwelcome press coverage, Goebbels now simply decided to deny the existence of a mutiny.²²⁵ In his Angriff, he described the incident as an invention of the ‘Jewish press’.²²⁶ His effort was supported by Hugenberg’s papers. Almost by reflex, they had first contradicted reports of the ‘Linkspresse’ about ‘alleged divisions’ on the far right, then blamed Strasser’s supporters for the violence, and eventually reported in a small note on minor SA misunderstandings, resolved under Hitler’s leadership.²²⁷

Fig. 5.7. The mutiny of the Berlin SA two weeks prior to the Reichstag elections of 1930 provided the NSDAP with very unwelcome negative press coverage. Goebbels simply denied that such a thing had happened, claiming it was an invention by the Jewish press. This caricature in an Angriff special election edition from the first week of September 1930 depicts a gloating Jewish editor dancing among the front pages of Rote Fahne and the tabloids Tempo, Welt am Abend, BZ am Mittag, and 8-Uhr-Abendblatt with headlines of the SA mutiny. He is just about to be smashed by a Nazi fist, symbolizing the hope that election day would bring revenge.


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Led by Mosse’s 8-Uhr-Abendblatt and Berliner Volks-Zeitung, the last two weeks before the Reichstag elections saw a flood of anti-Nazi reporting.²²⁸ The allegation of a provincial SPD newspaper that Frick wrongly claimed to hold a Ph.D. was picked up and sensationalized until Frick’s Alma Mater was ascertained beyond doubt.²²⁹ News of a government memorandum analysing the NSDAP’s revolutionary potential was sold as the revelation of Nazi putsch plans.²³⁰ To the usual accounts of Nazi violence and murder²³¹ were now added spicy stories of Nazi corruption²³² and sex scandals.²³³ These reports were often factual, sometimes based on rumour, and always intended to harm the electoral prospects of the NSDAP. Whatever the effect on the readers, Goebbels was very concerned. In his diary, he noted the ‘rising tide of lies’ against him and his party.²³⁴ A leading article in the Angriff complained about the ‘journalistische Wegelagerei’ of Mosse, Ullstein, and others, and Goebbels wrote a long piece refuting various allegations of the ‘Jewish press’.²³⁵ The many Nazi-related articles in the first half of September 1930 reflected both the increasing dynamism of the NSDAP and the mounting concern among left-liberal editors that Hitler would emerge victorious from the elections. Compared to this hostile coverage in the mainstream liberal and left-wing media, Hugenberg’s press played a significantly smaller role in providing the Nazis with publicity. There was, in fact, an interesting division of roles between Hugenberg’s main subscription newspaper, the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, and his street salesbased tabloid, the Nachtausgabe. The Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger was totally devoted to supporting the DNVP: coverage of Hugenberg speeches was combined with front-page boxes containing DNVP election appeals and Hugenberg quotes. The final editions before the elections were explicit about which party the reader was to support.²³⁶ The Nachtausgabe, by contrast, campaigned in a more general way for the radical Right.²³⁷ Its slogan, the ‘entschiedene Rechte’ or the ‘determined Right’, did not exclude National Socialism. A very positive article about Hitler’s final speech at a Sportpalast rally was announced under the headline ‘The great determined Right is on the march’.²³⁸ The Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, on the other hand, ignored the rally completely. Apparently, the editorial policy of the two papers was determined by their sales. Readers of the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger were receiving their paper as part of a month-long subscription, and could therefore be subjected to a barrage of pro-DNVP coverage. In the case of the Nachtausgabe, readers had a daily choice: by promoting exclusively the increasingly unpopular DNVP, editors risked losing their audience. The inclusion of National Socialism was simply a function of consumer demand. Berlin’s biggest newspaper, Ullstein’s Berliner Morgenpost, likewise told its readers how to vote. Warning of ‘fake prophets’, it declared that because of Hugenberg’s willingness to co-operate with Hitler in the next Reichstag, one should vote for neither: ‘Hugenberg oder Hitler—das ist Jacke wie Hose.’²³⁹ At the same time, liberal editors expected significant Nazi gains.²⁴⁰ A few days before the elections, Mosse’s 8-Uhr-Abendblatt and Ullstein’s BZ am Mittag predicted fifty

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seats for the NSDAP, more than four times the 1928 result.²⁴¹ Whilst refraining from openly supporting any one specific party, liberal mass papers were very explicit in their rejection of political radicalism and in their appeals only to vote for democratic and constitutional parties.²⁴² However, this did not dissuade a majority of Berliners: 750,000 voted for the KPD, 350,000 for the DNVP, and almost 400,000 for the NSDAP.²⁴³ This number of voters surpassed the combined total circulation of Communist, deutschnational, and Nazi newspapers in Berlin by almost 50 per cent. At the same time, at least a third of the readers of the republican press either did not vote, or supported extremists. In spite of all warnings, the NSDAP became the big winner: the Nazis received 14.6 per cent of the vote in Berlin; the Reich average stood at 18.3 per cent, which secured them a total of 107 seats in the new Reichstag.²⁴⁴ B R E A K T H RO U G H Everyone had expected an upsurge in Nazi support. Thuringia and Saxony had provided the party with double-figure results before. But the transformation of the NSDAP from a fringe party into the second largest in the new Reichstag came as a shock. For the media, it was a sensation.²⁴⁵ Never before had the Nazis received as much press attention as in the immediate aftermath of the Reichstag elections in September 1930. Hitler relished the new publicity. The Nazi movement had now conquered ‘a place in the public sphere’, he explained in his first speech following the success. Until now, they had struggled against the ‘Totgeschwiegenwerden’ and the ‘Nichthörenwollen’.²⁴⁶ Now, they had forced themselves on to the front pages. Even readers of newspapers, who had so far been provided with very little news about the Nazis, were now exposed to a flood of articles dealing with the surprise winners.²⁴⁷ Berlin’s mass papers ventured an array of factors as having contributed to the Nazi success. Most agreed on the economic crisis, impoverished middle-class voters, youth and former DNVP voters, but they also mentioned the role of scandals and the hardening of public attitudes towards the parliamentary ‘system’.²⁴⁸ Although the election had produced a clear winner, it did not help to solve the dilemma of the Brüning government, which was still without a parliamentary majority. Brüning’s only options seemed to be either a coalition with the SPD or with the Nazis, both of which commentators considered very unlikely. The press heightened the perception of political uncertainty, which depressed financial markets.²⁴⁹ Anxiety increased. On the day that Brüning declared he would not co-operate with the Nazis, Hitler delivered a widely reported speech in Munich, in which he proclaimed that the ‘struggle’ to take power in Germany would continue, whilst at the same time emphasizing that it would remain within the legal bounds of the constitution.²⁵⁰ This was widely noticed, and related to the recent SA mutiny. Within a day, political insecurity and press sensationalism


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led to a massive media scare. News of an instant upsurge in SA membership after 14 September and of its pending reorganization were linked to rumours about dissatisfaction among SA leaders with Hitler’s legalistic course. Rumours spoke of a ‘secret order’ by Hitler.²⁵¹ Ullstein’s BZ am Mittag tipped the balance, proclaiming a pending Nazi putsch. Editors took this information from Münzenberg’s Communist Berlin am Morgen, which earlier that morning had published an extensive article about Nazi preparations for a coup.²⁵² Based on this rumour, press reports spread about Nazi training for street-fights and night-time exercises, in which the occupation of government buildings was practised.²⁵³ As usual, right-wing papers contradicted these reports, claiming they were inventions by the ‘Linkspresse’.²⁵⁴ The next day, the BZ am Mittag published further reports about alleged Nazi activities and concluded that ‘systematic preparations for a putsch’ could not be denied.²⁵⁵ Liberals were overcome by a mood of despair. ‘Twilight of the parties. Ragnarök [i.e. Götterdämmerung] of German parliamentarism’ started a leader in Mosse’s 8-Uhr-Abendblatt.²⁵⁶ Foreign correspondents reported somewhat obscurely that only the Kaiser in exile in the Netherlands had prevented the Nazis from attempting a coup on election day; Germans with something to lose were starting to leave for Switzerland and the Netherlands.²⁵⁷ Such press reports forced the Prussian and the Reich governments to announce in public that putsch rumours were completely unfounded.²⁵⁸ In New York, they had harmed the German Young bond considerably. Government officials castigated journalists and publishers for artificially creating a ‘mood of panic’.²⁵⁹ However, although unfounded, the mood of panic was not merely artificially created or the result of journalistic profiteering. A ‘suitcase-packing mood’ had gripped Berlin’s editorial offices.²⁶⁰ Journalists themselves were unsure about whether to take the threat seriously. The political editor of Mosse’s Berliner Tageblatt, Ernst Feder, was only reassured after telephoning a couple of government and police officials, who emphatically denied any indication of a Nazi insurrection.²⁶¹ Feder then wrote an article, which was probably intended to calm fellow editors at least as much as the wider public.²⁶² Even days later, editors were still shaken.²⁶³ Goebbels was delighted and ridiculed the ‘Jewish’ putsch scare in his Angriff. Journalistic interest in anything concerning the Nazis was at a peak. The beginning of the trial for Wessel’s murder on 22 September 1930, just over a week after the elections, received a vast amount of coverage in the tabloids, indeed considerably more than at the time of the murder itself.²⁶⁴ It was only superseded in the headlines by another Nazi-related trial, namely that of several army officers arrested in Ulm in March 1930.²⁶⁵ Then, their arrest had prompted the year’s first front pages devoted to Nazi political activities. Liberal tabloids had reported on ‘putsch propaganda’; Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe had rejected these reports as ‘false rumours about right-wing putsch plans’.²⁶⁶ The officers now stood accused of ‘Preparing to Commit High Treason’ through working towards a military putsch with the NSDAP. Some days earlier, during

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Fig. 5.8. Goebbels’s Angriff, 77, 25 September 1930, ridiculed what it called a ‘Jewish’ putsch scare in an anti-Semitic caricature, depicting editors of the Welt am Abend, Berliner Tageblatt, BZ am Mittag, and Tempo dirtying their trousers while contemplating the recent Nazi success at the Reichstag election. Following the Nazi breakthrough, two Ullstein tabloids had picked up Communist reports about putsch preparations by restless SA leaders, which had caused insecurity and anxiety in editorial offices throughout Berlin.


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the putsch scare, commentators had emphasized that every attempt at an overthrow would be met by the full force of the Prussian police and the Reichswehr.²⁶⁷ They now declared that the trial in Leipzig would bring a ‘definitive clarification’ of the question whether Nazi endeavours were to be seen as legal or illegal.²⁶⁸ Trial proceedings were published extensively in all mass newspapers.²⁶⁹ Participants repeatedly complained when they thought press coverage had done their statements injustice.²⁷⁰ The Nazis successfully exploited this media limelight. Already at the end of the first day, one of the Nazi defence lawyers, Hans Frank, asked the judge to call Hitler as a witness for the Nazis’ legal aims.²⁷¹ This was by no means an unusual request. Over the previous years, Nazi and Communist defence lawyers had made a habit of exploiting the platform which trials provided by asking for high-profile party members to be called into the witness box for free and effortless publicity. Only two months earlier, at the occasion of the Röntgental murder trial, the Nazi defence counsel had asked the judge to invite Hitler and Frick as expert witnesses.²⁷² Then, the request had been turned down, but this time Hitler was summoned. Greeted by huge Nazi crowds demonstrating outside the court building, Hitler used the witness-box to launch a long propaganda speech.²⁷³ He refuted allegations that he had handed out ‘secret orders’ and that the SA was engaging in military exercises. He emphasized that his movement would take power by legal means. ‘Another two or three elections’ would give the Nazis a majority in the Reichstag, allowing them to reshape the state according to their wishes. When the judge confronted him with an alleged quote about the consequences of a Nazi revolution, the drama reached its peak. ‘When our movement is victorious in its legal struggle’, Hitler replied, ‘then there will be a German State Court, and November 1918 will find its atonement, and heads will roll, too.’ Supporters greeted this statement with cheers and cries of ‘bravo’.²⁷⁴ The statement was a sensation. In a nutshell, Hitler had managed to fuse his commitment to a legal course of action, the nationalist loathing of the November revolution, and the promise of resolution through Nazi radicalism.²⁷⁵ The fact that he had sworn on oath to the truth of his testimony added to the perceived importance of the occasion.²⁷⁶ Throughout Berlin, headlines proclaimed ‘ ‘‘Everything legally!’’ ’ and ‘Hitler: Only legal aims!’²⁷⁷ Even newspapers hostile to the Nazi movement contributed to the media spectacle. Mosse’s 8-UhrAbendblatt brought photos of Hitler, of demonstrators outside the courtroom, and a caricature of the ‘Hitli oath’.²⁷⁸ Goebbels was overjoyed with the ‘fabulous’ press coverage.²⁷⁹ In essence, the content of Hitler’s proclamation in Leipzig was nothing new. Over the past months, he had repeatedly and emphatically stressed his insistence on legal means.²⁸⁰ The threat to wreak vengeance on the so-called ‘November criminals’ was a staple of right-wing rabble-rousing and had been at the heart of the fracas over §4 of the Young Plan referendum. But the violence of his rhetoric, and the publicity surrounding the putsch scare just days earlier now guaranteed maximum media attention—and secured the greatest possible public

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impact. Hitler’s public disavowal of violent means to secure power dispelled many bourgeois anxieties, and, according to Goebbels, won the Nazis ‘enormous sympathy’.²⁸¹ Not everybody was equally reassured. Two weeks after Hitler’s courtroom oath, the chief editor of Mosse’s Berliner Tageblatt, Theodor Wolff, learned that his name came third on a list of public figures whom the Nazis were allegedly planning to eliminate upon taking power.²⁸² The threat was taken seriously. Some editors demanded that they be supplied with revolvers, and the publishing house was patrolled by several policemen.²⁸³ However, editors did not give in. Mosse’s 8-Uhr-Abendblatt continued to publish anti-Nazi news on an almost daily basis.²⁸⁴ In turn, the Mosse publishing house received dedicated attention from Goebbels’s Angriff, which even created a special section devoted exclusively to rebutting enemy journalism.²⁸⁵ The Mosse editorial policy sprang both from the political conviction of its editors, and from the fact that Nazi-related news found an appreciative audience. In December 1930, the Angriff attacked the 8-Uhr-Abendblatt as the pinnacle of the Berliner ‘Jewish press’ and scoffed: ‘The fact that for some time now the 8-Uhr-Abendblatt has published hardly a headline in which the term ‘‘Nazi’’ does not appear may still be explained by business interests. Because if not curious ‘‘Nazis’’, who else is still buying the paper?’²⁸⁶ By this stage, the owner of the Mosse publishing house, LachmannMosse, had already initiated his project of attuning his papers to popular preferences by firing both Otto Nuschke, one of the earliest liberal opponents of Nazism, and chief editor of the Berliner Volks-Zeitung, who had worked for the firm for twenty-two years; and Ernst Feder, the political editor of the Berliner Tageblatt.²⁸⁷ The Nazis had finally become a political force with which Germans had to reckon. C O N C LU S I O N The Nazi breakthrough in September 1930 was not brought about ‘in Cinderella fashion by the magic touch of Hugenberg’s headlines’.²⁸⁸ How could it have been? Hugenberg’s media empire could not even prevent his own party’s decline. The anti-Young Plan campaign had been a decisive step towards a Nazi breakthrough, but not through crucial press coverage. Nor did Hugenberg’s newspapers turn Hitler into a national celebrity: Hitler had gained that status already in 1924 through the media coverage of his trial. The anti-Young Plan referendum was decisive in two respects. Hugenberg’s attempt at political radicalism ended in a resounding defeat, turned considerable parts of the DNVP against their leader, and resulted in a serious party crisis. At the same time, the campaign provided grist to the mill of Nazi agitation: the Nazis were considerably better and more convincing in their radicalism, as was evident in the debate about §4, their many propaganda rallies, and regular street-clashes with Communists.


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The ‘spiral of success’ which carried the Nazis from Thuringia via Saxony into the Reichstag was primarily based on the DNVP’s very public decline.²⁸⁹ It was the contrast between a continuous stream of bad news concerning Hugenberg’s DNVP and the perception of an energetic, radical, and increasingly successful Nazi party that probably influenced many former DNVP voters’ decision to switch to the Nazis. The impact of Hugenberg’s press in this electoral decision-making process was limited. If anything, its relentless declaration of the Communist threat and its biased coverage of Communist attacks on Nazis helped to convince voters that the NSDAP was the more reliable and effective anti-Communist party. Readers picked and chose from the agenda set by Hugenberg’s papers, and ultimately acted on their own interpretation of the information provided. The particular mixture of sensationalist and partisan reporting had a crucial influence not only on some Nazi voters but on the political culture in general during these years. The May days in 1929 were primarily a result of the unwillingness of a Social Democratic police president to back down in the face of a Communist press demanding a lifting of the ban on demonstrations. The violence of the press polemics set the tone for the heavy-handed police approach. The depiction in the press of police violence as Communist rioting seemed to confirm the Communist conspiracy theory that the entire bourgeois ‘system’ was based on the class- struggle against workers. May 1929 helped the KPD to give substance to its previously hollow concept of ‘social fascism’. Consequently, increasing radicalism and street-clashes, especially with Nazis from August 1929, provided Nazis with their first press coverage. At the same time, the May days and subsequent Communist acts of violence allowed the bourgeois press to inflate the threat of a pending KPD putsch, and served the right-wing press by giving examples of ‘back-stabbing Marxist activities’. What had previously been merely political stereotypes, now seemed to have substance. The Sklarek scandal was another important step in this direction. The press climate was crucial in turning an incident of communal mismanagement and minor corruption into the Republic’s biggest scandal. It allowed commentators to decry parliamentary democracy as a hotbed of corruption, incapable of dealing with the increasing number of major political and economic problems. The press polemics firmly established the term ‘system’ in public and political discourse. For the Nazis, it was a godsend. The meanings that could be projected with the term turned ‘the system’ into the ultimate propaganda stereotype. It allowed Nazi agitation to sum up all the alleged negative characteristics of the Weimar Republic as a whole in one word. Constitution, government, parties, and democratic politics were bundled together and presented in a term, the ‘system’, which had no previous significance in German. It also served to avoid the use of the word ‘Republic’ in Nazi agitation, which helped to circumvent the stipulations of the ‘Law for the Protection of the Republic’. ‘The system’ became the main pillar of Nazi propaganda.²⁹⁰

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By the end of 1929, all the stereotypes that were to dominate political discourse and polemics in the early 1930s had been formed and seemed to have been given substance by the press. For a party as focused on agitation and campaigning as the Nazis, it made all the difference. Nazi propaganda stereotypes offered everything that makes media messages particularly effective. The Nazis offered a considerable degree of popular entertainment by the visualization, personalization, and dramatization of political conflict, often fusing politics with the ingredients of a human-interest story. The final Hitler rally in Berlin’s Sportpalast before the Reichstag elections dealt with the ‘corruption of today’s system’.²⁹¹ A liberal journalist was particularly impressed by Goebbels’s ‘heavy barrage of slogans, distortions and stupidities’: ‘Barmat and Sklarek, stab-in-theback legend and Jews, corruption and economic decline’—nothing was missing in this ‘general directory of all clichés used in Germany’s political life for years’.²⁹² But for many voters, these clichés had never sounded so true. Years of hostile press coverage had undermined the legitimacy of parliamentary democracy in the eyes of a substantial part of the electorate. The increasing support for the Nazis led to the crucial electoral breakthrough, and turned the NSDAP into a major political factor. The publicity that came with the electoral breakthrough in 1930 was crucial to the further rapid growth of the Nazi movement.²⁹³ From September 1930, the Nazis had the launchpad they needed for their assault on the Weimar Republic.

6 War of Words: The Spectre of Civil War, 1931–2 We no longer need to predict civil war, we are already in the midst of it. Volksstimme, 263, 10 November 1931, a Social Democratic provincial newspaper in Prussia, quoted in Dirk Schumann, Politische Gewalt in der Weimarer Republik 1918–1933. Kampf um die Straße und Furcht vor dem Bürgerkrieg (Essen, 2001), 337

Two factors dominated German politics during the final years of the Weimar Republic, in 1931 and 1932: an unfolding economic crisis of unprecedented severity; and a rising tide of street-violence. Parliamentary democracy failed to respond effectivley to either challenge. After the Nazi electoral breakthrough of September 1930, only negative majorities were possible in the Reichstag. The Brüning government therefore relied heavily on Reichspresident Hindenburg’s backing and the use of emergency decrees to manage the situation. Between March 1931 and February 1933, the Reichstag only met for a total of twenty-seven days. As a forum for political debate, the German national parliament ceased to play any meaningful role.¹ Yet Brüning’s deflationary crisis management based on presidential emergency decrees might actually have saved parliamentary democracy in the long run. In June 1932 the reparations issue, which had been plaguing German domestic politics and the economy ever since 1919, was resolved at the Conference of Lausanne; in 1932 there were increasing signs of a natural economic recovery, especially in the consumer industries; and the American decision to leave the gold standard in early 1933 opened up the possibility of a controlled devaluation of the German currency, thereby easing the balance-of-payments constraints which had forced Brüning to adopt severe deflationary measures since 1930.² It is very likely that parliamentary democracy would have been considerably more conservative and authoritarian in character than at any point during the 1920s, but there can be little doubt that if Reichstag elections had been held only in autumn 1934—rather than in July 1932—German history would have taken a very different course.³ So why did Hindenburg dismiss Brüning? Historians have thoroughly researched the behind-the-scenes intrigues which brought about Brüning’s

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downfall at the end of May 1932, and yet one crucial factor has received scant attention: the role of the press in exaggerating existing political violence and constructing the spectre of an imminent civil war. The truly divisive issue in spring 1932—the Gretchenfrage facing the Brüning cabinet—was not whether or not to initiate work-creation programmes, but how to position the government in the face of increasingly vociferous accusations of allowing Germany to descend into violent chaos.⁴ In fact, compared to the losses of human life in the early years of the Weimar Republic, the level of street-violence between 1930 and 1932 was negligible, nor did it at any point threaten to spiral out of the control of the state authorities. But a sensationalist and partisan press accorded such prominence to this Zusammenstoss violence that these clashes were pushed to the forefront of political debate. Political violence was turned—for contemporaries and historians alike—into an apparently ‘ubiquitous’ phenomenon of the late years of the Weimar Republic.⁵ In fact, one should treat the term ‘political’ with some caution. As a recent study has argued, much of the street-violence originated in a local culture of neighbourhood radicalism fed by generational and gender tensions in which party ideologies played only a minor role.⁶ It was partisan press coverage which charged these clashes with political meaning, and which called for decisive government action. At the same time, politicians were increasingly wary of the press, which they held responsible for much of the violent antagonism. As a result, increasingly draconian inroads were made into press freedom, promoted even by the last remaining pillar of parliamentary democracy, the SPD. FAC I N G A N U N RU LY P R E S S As long as he enjoyed the support of Hindenburg, Brüning was reasonably confident that he would manage to resolve the crisis, and thereby steer Germany back into calmer political waters. But throughout this period, Brüning worried that sensationalist press coverage was undermining public confidence in his economic measures, both within Germany and abroad. What he wanted was a dispassionate press supporting the government in its struggle to master the situation.⁷ Instead, sensationalist and partisan press coverage whipped up public excitement and made government even more difficult, as Brüning repeatedly complained. September 1930 was a case in point. In Brüning’s eyes, the slump of German bond prices was not primarily caused by the Nazi electoral breakthrough. Rather it was the subsequent press coverage, especially of Ullstein’s tabloid BZ am Mittag, which exacerbated Germany’s foreign-exchange situation. It was deplorable, Brüning announced in a cabinet meeting that the Reich government had no means at its disposal to ban this ‘irresponsible press’, which merely out of a craving for sensation ‘was fuelling a mood of anxiety through alarmist news about allegedly imminent putsch attempts’.⁸ In the case of ‘sensationalist,

The Spectre of Civil War, 1931–2

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damaging news, like in the case of the BZ am Mittag, only a newspaper ban would produce relief for a longer time’.⁹ Other senior politicians shared this view. In late September 1930, when the cabinet discussed Hitler’s testimony at the trial of the Ulm Reichswehr officers, Hans Luther, the Reichsbank president, voiced his lack of understanding for newspapers which covered Hitler’s speech ‘in such a major way [and] tendentiously without consideration for the effects at home and abroad’.¹⁰ Two weeks later, he complained to Brüning about the BZ ’s incorrect coverage of the Reichsbank’s deliberations about a possible change to its interest rates. This article, he claimed, constituted ‘a serious threat to [public] confidence in the unpolitical management of Reichsbank affairs’.¹¹ And in December 1930, the foreign minister pointed out to his colleagues the damage done by the discussion of all government measures ‘in full public’ (‘in ¨ voller Offentlichkeit’) by the media. In no other country was government activity reported in a similar way, he claimed. It was necessary to work towards greater discretion.¹² Leading Social Democrats were also concerned about press coverage, but they worried more about the polemical nature of it. In early 1930, Carl Severing complained that ‘Pressefreiheit’ (press freedom) had become ‘Pressefrechheit’ (press impudence).¹³ At the end of that year, now Prussian interior minister, he observed with anxiety the intensification of political conflict, a development which he blamed particularly on the lack of restraint in the radical press. His draft for a presidential emergency decree to combat political radicalism was sent to the Reich government for consideration. Civil servants around Brüning were in the process of investigating measures for the protection of the Reich against ‘sensationalist false reports’, and were very ready to take up the Social Democratic initiative.¹⁴ In January 1931, a series of violent clashes in Berlin which received considerable press coverage added a sense of urgency to these efforts.¹⁵ In one case a mass indoor rally in Friedrichshain featuring a debate between Joseph Goebbels and the KPD district leader, Walter Ulbricht, degenerated into a large-scale brawl. By this stage, such debating encounters had become something of a tradition, and they usually ended in a more or less bloody mêlée.¹⁶ In preparation for this particular event, Goebbels’s Angriff published an article calling for a day of reckoning, as well as printing a poem glorifying violence and Nazi martyrs.¹⁷ That evening, Goebbels had hardly begun to speak when fighting broke out.¹⁸ The clash left over a hundered injured and attracted extensive media attention both in Berlin and the provinces. It was widely claimed that the event signified a new dimension of political violence.¹⁹ The Social Democratic police president of Berlin considered Goebbels’s Angriff a crucial factor in encouraging this violence against political opponents. On 4 February 1931, he banned the Nazi tabloid for claiming after a recent clash between SA members and Communists that such violent acts were ‘understandable’, a comment which the Communist Ulbricht decried as a ‘call for the murder of workers’ in a Reichstag debate.²⁰ That same

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day, leading members of both the Prussian and the Reich government met and agreed that more stringent press regulations were needed.²¹ One of the problems which law-makers faced was the immunity from state prosecution which members of parliament enjoyed. Many radical papers exploited this provision by appointing parliamentarians as their managing editors. The KPD even issued a directive to this effect.²² By February 1931, the Reichstag had to consider over 400 applications by the state prosecution to lift the parliamentary immunity of various of its members, mostly for press offences.²³ As a consequence, during one of the Weimar Republic’s longest and most heated Reichstag sessions, the press law of 1874 was changed to prevent the exploitation of immunity by members of parliament acting as managing editors.²⁴ After ongoing consultations between the Reich government, the Prussian government, and the interior ministers of other German states, Reich Chancellor Brüning further curtailed press freedom in his emergency decree against political excesses of 28 March 1931. Although Brüning’s demand for enforced corrections was not yet included, the decree significantly extended government powers to ban daily newspapers for up to two months.²⁵ Even liberals applauded, though with a heavy heart. ‘One only needs to read the newspapers of the extremist Right and of the radical Left which accuse each other of the worst acts of violence to realize that extraordinary circumstances exist which necessitate extraordinary measures’, commented the Ullstein broadsheet Vossische Zeitung.²⁶ The Social Democratic party organ Vorwärts explained to its readers that either state authorities managed to curb the bloody violence between the extremists parties or else these fights would one day degenerate into a civil war.²⁷ T H E S PE C T R E O F C I V I L WA R It was not the first time that Vorwärts had conjured up the spectre of civil war in an editorial on German domestic politics. From December 1930 onwards, articles on the paramilitary wing of the NSDAP, the SA, often referred to Hitler’s ‘civil war army’.²⁸ On 7 January, at the occasion of the burial of a Reichsbanner member murdered by National Socialists, Vorwärts devoted its entire front page to a chronology of Nazi acts of murder under the banner headline ‘The bloody path into the Third Reich’.²⁹ This is turn provoked accusations of bias, which led right-wing journalists, in turn, to point an accusing finger at left-wing acts of violence that were alledgedly leading to a ‘creeping civil war’.³⁰ Goebbels’s Angriff routinely accused left-wing opponents of acts aimed at triggering a civil war.³¹ And politicians were only too ready to pick up this media discourse. At a typical National Socialist rally in early February 1931, the speaker—a Nazi member of the Reichstag—announced that the republican Reichsbanner was ‘openly driving towards civil war’. The Nazis, he added, were armed and prepared: ‘The only question is who will strike first.’³² Claims that a civil war was in the offing


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received further plausibility after the Nazis’ demonstrative departure from the Reichstag on 10 February 1931. Rumours had it that this exodus was the result of the pressure from a minority faction within the NSDAP leadership opposed to Hitler’s legalistic course.³³ Hitler himself, when he contradicted these press reports and tried to rein in the increasingly restless SA, also felt it necessary to invoke the threat of a civil war.³⁴ However, ‘civil war’ in the early 1930s was nothing but a media invention and a stick with which to beat one’s political opponents. It was a typically loaded and emotive term which journalists and politicians used to portray the grass-roots hooliganism on German streets, playing on the fears of contemporaries who had lived through the early years of the Weimar Republic. The brawls and fist-fights of 1931, the stabbings, and the occasional use of handguns did not compare to the massive bloodshed of 1919 and the early 1920s. Yet compilations of long (and one-sided) chronologies of political clashes on the pages of a partisan press conveyed the impression that contemporaries were already experiencing the first signs of the proliferation of violence so characteristic of a fully fledged civil war. Such lists and detailed reports on violent clashes, whether in Goebbels’s Angriff or Münzenberg’s Welt am Abend, helped to contribute to what one Social Democratic journalist called ‘the psychology of civil war’. It was always the political opponent who was blamed for instigating violent acts, which, in turn, fostered a spirit of revenge and retaliation.³⁵ This partisan coverage of political violence also contributed to the increasing polarization of German politics. State or Reich authorities trying to address the issue of street-violence were immediately attacked for supporting either one or other reading of events, and were accused of siding with the ideological enemy. It was this that eventually cost Brüning Hindenburg’s support, and thereby his chancellorship, in the spring of 1932. In terms of public perception, most of the responsibility for the continuing political violence on German streets in spring and summer 1931 fell on the Communists. The revolt and subsequent purge of the revolutionary faction within the National Socialist SA—the so-called Stennes crisis in early April 1931—received massive media attention and seemed to lend further credibility to Hitler as a guarantor of legality.³⁶ The Communists, in contrast, visibly intensified their armed struggle against fascism and their agitation against the Reich government.³⁷ Among the usual clashes with their right-wing opponents, some attacks stood out for their organized and calculated character. At the end of May 1931, for example, at the occasion of a huge rally in Breslau by the nationalist paramilitary veterans’ organization, Stahlhelm, Communists attacked participants at train stations throughout Germany. In Breslau itself, a violent attack resulted in one dead and several severely injured Stahlhelm members. Police authorities quickly established that these attacks had been ordered from the very top of the KPD leadership.³⁸ It was not difficult for Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe to sell these events as a ‘plague of Communist murder’.³⁹ Only a few days later, the KPD started to organize hunger marches and organized looting of food shops

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throughout the country to protest against Brüning’s second economic emergency decree with its drastic cuts in unemployment benefits. Rote Fahne and Welt am Abend were alone in claiming that these incidents were spontaneous actions of unorganized, desperate unemployed.⁴⁰ All the other Berlin papers agreed that these demonstrations, which often degenerated into riots and clashes with the police, were part of a Communist plan to destabilize further domestic politics and to create a revolutionary situation.⁴¹ According to the Berlin political police the Communist press played a major role in exacerbating tensions.⁴² This was a view shared by the Prussian interior minister, Carl Severing, who instructed Prussian district presidents to keep a close eye on Communist newspapers in mid-June.⁴³ CRISIS As policing fell within the responsibility of the German states, the Reich government under Brüning did not have to get involved at this stage. Rather than political violence, Brüning’s main preoccupation in June 1931 was the looming liquidity crisis of the German banking system, caused by the outflow of shortterm foreign deposits. Only for a regular reader of the National Socialist press like Göring was there a connection between international finance and street-violence. At a meeting with Brüning, Göring declared that the withdrawal of foreign exchange was the result of the anxiety caused by the ‘signs of civil war which reveal themselves everywhere in Germany’—yet despite the daily excesses by Communists no radical measures were adopted, Göring complained.⁴⁴ Brüning was right to refute this claim. Foreign investors were preoccupied with other news than Göring. The collapse of Austria’s Credit-Anstalt and the subsequent freezing of Austrian balances in May 1931, followed by Brüning’s aggressive appeal for reparations concessions in early June, led foreign investors to repatriate their funds while there was still time. By the end of the month, the Reichsbank’s reserves were depleted and it was forced to ration credit to the banking system.⁴⁵ Occasional reports in the foreign press about political clashes on German streets probably did not help to instil confidence, but they did not fundamentally affect foreign investors’ decision-making.⁴⁶ Depending on which newspapers they read, German contemporaries were more or less able to comprehend the economic crisis which was unfolding in June and July 1931 because of Germany’s dependence on short-term foreign loans. Experts widely agreed that there was only a handful of German newspapers which offered a thorough and high-quality coverage of economic affairs, among them the liberal Berliner Tageblatt.⁴⁷ Elite papers in Berlin, like Ullstein’s Vossische Zeitung, Hugenberg’s Tag, or the right-wing Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, also provided a decent overview of economic developments. But they were the exception rather than the norm. Provincial and local newspapers, on which most Germans had


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to rely for their information, rarely featured a well-developed economic section, and mostly limited their coverage to an eclectic range of agricultural and business news.⁴⁸ In any case, articles on the economy were apparently hardly ever read by the average newspaper consumer. This, at least, was one of the findings of an empirical survey on media consumption in rural Germany in 1937.⁴⁹ There is no reason to believe that things were any different a few years earlier. The business section of a newspaper was for most readers ‘a closed book’, admitted a study from 1928.⁵⁰ It is telling that tabloid newspapers did not offer much economic coverage at all. Such articles were obviously not popular enough to make it into these papers. However, no one reading a newspaper in early July 1931 could escape the fact that Germany was in the throes of a serious financial crisis. Articles on the desperate efforts by the Reich government to cope with the effects of the massive withdrawal of foreign deposits were no longer confined to newspapers’ business section, they were generally given front-page status, in tabloids just as in provincial papers. Similar to the period of hyper-inflation, when newspapers had announced the latest dollar rate for marks on their front pages, they now provided almost daily coverage on the state of Germany’s gold and foreign exchange reserves.⁵¹ Most contemporaries probably missed news of the collapse of a major Bremen textile company, Nordwolle, which mostly appeared only in small notes.⁵² But when Nordwolle’s largest creditor and Germany’s secondlargest commercial bank, the Danat-Bank, closed its doors on 13 July, the news was spread on the front pages of all Berlin tabloids, resulting in a run on banks throughout the city which forced the Reich government to declare a general two-day bank holiday.⁵³ Press coverage of the banking crisis sent shock-waves through German society. ‘Germany faces ruin’, ran a typical banner headline in the provincial Angermünder Zeitung on July 13.⁵⁴ Ullstein’s Berliner Morgenpost tried to assure its readers that although Germany was probably suffering through the worst economic crisis ever, it was a ‘crisis of confidence’ and not to be confused with the inflation crisis of 1923.⁵⁵ However, the front-page headline ‘Critical days for Germany’ hardly lent itself to inspiring confidence.⁵⁶ Photos of queues of people in front of various Berlin banks waiting to get access to their deposits reinforced the impressions of an exceptional crisis.⁵⁷ In Hugenberg’s Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, Adolf Stein skilfully dramatized events even further: ‘Things are quiet everywhere’, the government proclaims complacently. Indeed! Everyone is completely demoralised. One cannot manage an outcry any longer. Fear is making people choke. Many a small pensioner is asking himself if he will still receive his starvation money next month, many a business man is running around to rustle something up before the looming end . . . Never has Germany experienced a week such as this third week of July 1931.⁵⁸

In fact, the Reich government under Brüning was anything but complacent. Nervousness and anxiety were the predominant mood. Cabinet ministers resented

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the fact that their frantic efforts at damage control were exposed to the full glare of media attention.⁵⁹ But it was not just indiscretions and leaks that worried the cabinet. Facing the prospect of a general collapse in confidence in the German currency, the government perceived the press with its unpredictable impact on the public’s mood as part of the problem. Consequently, among the various emergency decrees issued over these critical days was the press decree of 17 July, which allowed Reich and state authorities to force newspapers to print announcements, replies, and corrections, and to ban them if they threatened ‘public peace and order’.⁶⁰ The implementation rule passed on to the press stated that the decree was to serve ‘the pacification of the population and for the prevention of the creation of a mood of catastrophe’.⁶¹ It meant to counter ‘concealement and distortion of true [facts] and the assertion of false facts’.⁶² Some democratic journalists reluctantly welcomed the decree, calling it ‘an unfortunately necessary measure’ caused by the agitation in the radical press.⁶³ But most journalists deplored the very vague definition of terms on which the government was able to censor the press. The Communist Welt am Abend announced the end of press freedom in a banner headline.⁶⁴ ‘We fear that a cold hand is in the process of pulling a cloth over Germany. It is becoming more difficult to breathe’, the Münzenberg tabloid commented on the decree.⁶⁵ The liberal Berliner Tageblatt concurred with this view. Castigating the decree’s ‘caoutchouc clauses’, the paper commented that the ‘threat of getting banned . . . is worse than the strictest pre-censorship’, in an article entitled ‘The end of press freedom’.⁶⁶ A heated meeting between Reich interior minister Wirth and representatives of the German press about the decree of 17 July 1931 revealed the extent to which politicians’ unease with a sensationalist mass press, Communist street-violence, and anxiety for the stability of the German currency were intertwined. Some of the press reports he had encountered exceeded anything the German people could bear, Wirth explained to the journalists. ‘With satanic evilness [they] propagate the bankruptcy of all banks, [and] the collapse of currency, [and] workers are turned wild.’⁶⁷ The minister pointed to Communist activities in the wake of the banking holiday in central Germany and the Rhineland to legitimate his claim that the country was ‘teetering on the brink of disaster’. The government was prepared to proclaim martial law in certain districts if trouble-spots emerged, in which case the present regulations would appear harmless in comparison. When one editor dared to point out the decree’s weaknesses, Wirth became very agitated. Existing regulations had not sufficed to deal with the ‘ludicrous reports on the German currency’. As an example, he referred to last week’s Montag Morgen, the left-wing Berlin weekly, which he called ‘an incredible scandal’. Germany had entered a ‘danger zone’, now it was ‘neck or nothing’, and the German government had to have ‘the option to destroy the Communist press in case of emergency’.⁶⁸ Putting the screws on the press was a displacement activity for a government frustrated by its inability to influence mass psychology. It also demonstrated


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how politicians were taking those press products they encountered as indicators of ‘the press’ in general, and how they projected their own readings onto the wider population, without any further thought on the likely impact of any individual publication. The example of the Montag Morgen mentioned by Wirth is a case in point. On Monday, 13 July, the Berlin weekly had published an article on its front page with a headline putting July 1931 in the same sequence as November 1918 and August 1923, proclaiming that, after losing both the First World War and the Ruhr struggle, Germany had now once again lost a war, namely Brüning’s ‘war of revision’. It called on the government to turn against the nationalist revanchists and to seek a rapprochement with France. If this course was not followed, the paper predicted another two to three weeks of financial struggle ending with the ‘total dissolution of the entire economic system’.⁶⁹ Annoying as this sensationalism might have been for a government engaged in crisis management and worried about public confidence, in the larger frame of events this article was a complete irrelevance. With its very limited readership, the left-wing pacifist Berlin weekly was not in a position to cause a mass panic. But due to its very critical attitude to the Reichswehr, Montag Morgen was a newspaper which was routinely scrutinized by government authorities, and therefore loomed large in decision-makers’ minds. They simply assumed that their own reaction was representative of that of German newspaper readers generally. Similarly, the language they encountered in a number of Communist publications became in their imagination a powerful influence over millions of discontented workers. In reality, the KPD leadership at the time was struggling with the fact that Communist newspapers were losing readers all over Germany. The KPD central committee complained that there existed ‘hundreds of local party groups in which not a single party member is subscribing to a party newspaper’.⁷⁰ According to detailed information available to the SPD, the official Communist press in Germany had lost more than 10 per cent of its readers in the first half of 1931, and now stood at just under 220,000 copies in total, not counting Münzenberg’s Welt am Abend.⁷¹ During the banking crisis, this figure was even lower as Rote Fahne and several regional KPD papers had been banned on the basis of the previous emergency decree of 28 March 1931.⁷² Of course, some of the remaining Communist papers used the opportunity to proclaim the imminent collapse of capitalism.⁷³ This was hardly a major threat to political stability, nor was the rhetoric itself new. But at least in some cases, like that of the Welt am Abend, the cabinet did encounter news—and comment—which chimed with their worst fears. ‘Measures with which the government has attempted to prevent the growth of the panic into a currency catastrophe have so far failed’, the Welt am Abend started a front-page article dealing with the falling exchange rate of the Reichsmark and the slump in bond prices for the Young Loan in London.⁷⁴ In a similar vein, the Münzenberg tabloid reported that panic buying and stockpiling was occurring in Berlin, caused by fears that the currency

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crisis would be followed by ‘inflation-like times’.⁷⁵ In the eyes of decision-makers like Wirth the fact that such things were happening was bad enough. Their publication, however, raised the spectre of a domino-like collapse in public confidence. G AU G I N G P U B L I C O PI N I O N Contemporaries’ perceptions and interpretations of developments, however, were much more complex than any of the decision-makers in 1931 realized. Despite all agitation from the radical Right and Left, there did not yet exist an antirepublican majority in the wake of the banking crisis. This became apparent at the occasion of the referendum on the dissolution of the Prussian parliament held on 9 August 1931. The referendum was part of a concerted right-wing attack on the last bastion of the Republic, the SPD-led government of Prussia. Social Democratic control over the police force in Germany’s biggest state constituted a considerable political power factor. Also, without Social Democratic toleration of Brüning’s emergency decrees, the Reich government would swiftly become dependent on the extreme Right.⁷⁶ Despite their anti-parliamentary intentions, the supporters of the referendum used democratic rhetorics to argue their case. In view of the landslide elections of autumn 1930, the composition of the Prussian state parliament elected in May 1928 no longer reflected the true political opinions of Prussian voters, they claimed. Indeed, at the Reichstag elections in 1930, the Nazis won ten times as many votes in Prussia as they had received in 1928. Elections in other German states throughout 1931 showed that the Reichstag elections in 1930 had not constituted the climax of Nazi support.⁷⁷ In Berlin, the NSDAP membership nearly doubled between November 1930 and June 1931; the SA nearly tripled in size throughout Germany in 1931.⁷⁸ Still, at least on the basis of their performance in September 1930, all those right-wing parties and groups supporting the referendum represented under 40 per cent of Prussia’s electorate, well short of the absolute majority needed for a successful referendum. However, the referendum’s prospects improved dramatically when the KPD party organ Rote Fahne declared on 23 July that the Communists were going to throw their support behind the proposition.⁷⁹ According to calculations in Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe, this meant that the referendum scheduled for 9 August was now backed by just under 50 per cent of the Prussian voters, certainly on the basis of their preference in 1930.⁸⁰ Hugenberg himself claimed that public opinion concerning the success of the referendum had changed completely.⁸¹ As so often, however, it was difficult to make out public opinion within the polemics published in the partisan press. In the weeks before 9 August, Münzenberg’s Welt am Abend strongly promoted what it called ‘the red referendum’, by presenting it as a Communist mass movement and by completely ignoring its right-wing bed-fellows.⁸² In Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe and Berliner


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Lokal-Anzeiger, the referendum featured as an undertaking initiated by the nationalist Right under the leadership of Hugenberg, aimed against the Social Democrats who were allegedly responsible for ‘the decline in the German economy, the bad state of finances, [and] the chaos in governance’.⁸³ Communist participation was almost never mentioned. The same was true of Gobbels’s Angriff, which described the referendum as the necessary destruction of Social Democracy and Catholic Centre party prior to the Nazi takeover of power in the Reich.⁸⁴ Ullstein’s mass paper, the Berliner Morgenpost, in contrast, did not miss the opportunity of polemicizing against the referendum of ‘swastika and Soviet star’, and denounced the enterprise as an exercise in ‘catastrophe politics’.⁸⁵ Other liberal and democratic papers were equally outspoken in their opposition, which, in turn, drew hostile reactions from the radical press. Two days before the vote, the Prussian government felt sufficiently nervous about the state of popular opinion to resort to extraordinary measures. Taking advantage of the press emergency decree of 17 July, it forced newspapers throughout Prussia to publish a lengthy official declaration against the referendum on their front pages.⁸⁶ Drafted by the head of the Prussian press office, the declaration built on newspaper readers’ long exposure to news of political street-violence.⁸⁷ The text warned against the ‘unnatural alliance’ of parties whose ‘fanatical supporters are facing each other daily in attacks and bloody fights’. Repeatedly, the declaration conjured up the prospect of a civil war: once the ‘citadel of democracy and Republic’ had been stormed, ‘chaos’ would reign whilst the radical wings would fight for ‘ultimate victory’, and Germany would experience a ‘patricidal war’.⁸⁸ The effectiveness of this declaration remained unclear. At least among those newspapers supporting the referendum, it only served to heighten their agitation further. Whether in nationalist provincial newspapers or radical tabloids in Berlin, journalists fumed against the ‘undemocratic’ measure adopted by the Prussian government.⁸⁹ Liberal observers, like the chief editor of Mosse’s Berliner Tageblatt, Theodor Wolff, feared that this blatant violation of press freedom would tip the balance in favour of the referendum supporters.⁹⁰ Yet when the votes had been counted, it turned out that less than 37 per cent of the Prussian electorate had supported the referendum.⁹¹ Ullstein’s mass papers proclaimed the result a ‘victory of reason’, and pointed out that the radical parties had lost nearly a quarter of their voters since September 1930.⁹² However, not knowing that 1932 would see a dramatic increase in votes for anti-democratic parties, contemporaries were unable to appreciate just how extraordinary this result was. Historians of the Weimar Republic, too, have tended to give short shrift to this episode in direct democracy.⁹³ Certainly the one factor usually given to explain voters’ dissatisfaction with Weimar democracy in 1932, the severe economic crisis, was already present. In early 1931, estimated unemployment had come close to the six million mark, a record figure so far in the history of the Republic, and even in summer 1931 estimated unemployment still stood well above five million.⁹⁴ Theoretically at least, the number of voters hit by

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economic hard times and dissatisfied with parliamentary democracy ought to have been higher than in September 1930, and significantly higher than only those 9.8 million who supported the referendum on 9 August. So why did the referendum fail? Clearly, both camps, the Communists just like the nationalist Right, had failed to convince a great number among their followers why they should suddenly make common cause with the ideological enemy. After months of press coverage of political violence, allegedly always instigated by the other side, suspicion towards an initiative supported by the other camp was sufficiently strong to make many voters stay at home. It is difficult to know how many of these had been swayed by the official Prussian press declaration, though it is likely that the number was only small. In those parts of provincial Prussia where right-wing newspapers held a monopoly, news about Communist participation in the referendum had largely been absent, and turnout for the referendum was strong despite the official declaration. In Berlin, in contrast, where it was difficult to overlook the competing progagandistic claims to ideological ownership of the referendum, many potential supporters shied away from casting their votes—more, in fact, than almost anywhere else in Prussia.⁹⁵ S P R E A D I N G T E R RO R Just how important media coverage of political violence had become within the political culture of the Weimar Republic was revealed on the evening of 9 August 1931, the day of the referendum. In a cynical exercise in public relations management, the twenty-four-year-old Erich Mielke, a local news reporter of the KPD party organ Rote Fahne and member of the party’s self-defence formation, led an ambush on three policemen in the vicinity of the party headquarters on Bülowplatz, killing two police officers. When the police returned fire, a gun battle developed, in the course of which one man was killed and several Communists were severely wounded. The police subsequently occupied the KPD headquarters and banned the party organ Rote Fahne.⁹⁶ Although not known at the time, the action had been ordered by the leader of the KPD’s ultra-left wing, the chief editor of Rote Fahne and inventor of the slogan ‘Beat the Fascists wherever you meet them’, Heinz Neumann. Worried about the propagandistic consequences of the party’s involvement in the referendum, Neumann wanted to distract attention from the referendum’s failure and to provoke a new situation in which the KPD could once again be portrayed as the victim of harsh government repression.⁹⁷ His plan succeeded only in part. On 10 August 1931, news of the spectacular murder and subsequent police occupation of the KPD headquarters displaced the referendum’s outcome as the day’s sensation in many newspapers. But in terms of public perception, the murder was a terrible fiasco for the KPD. In previous months, policemen had repeatedly been shot and sometimes killed in clashes with Communists, but most of these incidents had arisen spontaneously


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out of confrontations between demonstrators and police forces trying to disperse them.⁹⁸ Now, Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe published a photo on its front page showing graffiti which appeared on a wall in north Berlin on 9 August which stated that for each worker shot, two police officers would die. The deaths on Bülowplatz, the tabloid concluded, were the result of premeditated political murder.⁹⁹ This was a view shared by the Berlin police president. Communist terrorist groups were engaged in a fight against police forces by means of organized assassinations, he told the press.¹⁰⁰ The event aroused great public interest. The funeral of the two police officers turned into a public demonstration as hundreds of thousands of Berliners lined the streets to pay their last respects.¹⁰¹ In the provinces, too, the Communist attack triggered passionate responses. The deed revealed the ‘sinister face of the red civil war’, commented a journalist of the Magdeburgische Zeitung.¹⁰² The Reich government, too, debated the murders.¹⁰³ Following the circulation of a memorandum by the interior ministry on the ‘preparations for a violent overthrow of the constitution by the KPD’ from July 1931, the defence minister, Wilhelm Groener, now considered it high time for immediate and radical measures against the Communist threat. He was fully convinced that the KPD was trying everything to escalate its excesses step by step towards an armed uprising and towards civil war, Groener wrote in a letter to his cabinet colleague, the interior minister, Wirth.¹⁰⁴ Over the next weeks, the Reich interior ministry conducted a survey of political offences by the radical Left and Right brought to court on the basis of the emergency decrees of 28 March and 17 July. The result was unambiguous: in almost all German states, and in most types of political offences, the Communists were well ahead of the National Socialists.¹⁰⁵ Events in subsequent weeks and months seemed to justify the view that the KPD constituted the greater threat. Hardly a day passed without news of Communist violence in bourgeois papers. Reports from all over Germany told of attacks by Communists on political opponents which resulted in fatalities. In Berlin, a series of armed attacks on pubs that were known to be regular meeting places for the SA attracted considerable media attention in September and October 1931.¹⁰⁶ Recent historical studies into the nature of street-violence in the Weimar Republic have emphasized the mostly uncoordinated, grass-roots nature of such clashes between supporters of radical parties engaged in local territorial struggles.¹⁰⁷ But for contemporaries reading their daily newspapers the picture that emerged was considerably more threatening. While in any given community clashes between political opponents were experienced only every once in a while, they occurred daily on the pages of an anti-Communist press. Moreover, news of local clashes were framed by other reports on illegal Communist activities which suggested that they were part of a grand plan to unleash revolutionary terror. Readers learned about Communist arsenals of weapons and ammunitions, bomb attacks on regional politicians, and attempts to infiltrate the Reichswehr.¹⁰⁸ According to Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe, there

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Fig. 6.1. On the pages of Hugenberg’s tabloid Nachtausgabe the Communist threat was omnipresent, as in this edition, 229 of 31 October 1931. ‘Terror’ was one of the key terms used in autumn 1931, and helped to convince many a reader that violent responses—like those of the National Socialists—were the only effective way of dealing with the Communist menace.


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was unrefutable evidence for the dangerous ambitions of Communist terror organizations.¹⁰⁹ In autumn 1931, ‘terrorists’ and ‘terror groups’ were terms which appeared routinely in headlines relating to Communist activities, and not just in Hugenberg’s papers or in Goebbels’s Angriff. In the eyes of the KPD leadership, such newspaper consonance could only be explained through official press manipulation. According to a party-internal circular from September 1931, the Social Democratic government in Prussia was organizing a ‘central campaign of all bourgeois papers—from the Social Democratic to the nationalist press’ against the Communist party. In the eyes of the KPD leadership it was ‘one of the most devious terror- and murder-baitings against our party which has ever taken place in Germany’.¹¹⁰ Münzenberg’s Welt am Abend and other Communist papers tried hard to counter the negative impression by focusing their attention on the National Socialists. Much of the violence blamed on the Communists, the Münzenberg paper claimed, was provoked by the Nazis, who thereby provided the bourgeois press with the material needed for its red-baiting.¹¹¹ Through daily compilations of news of Nazi-instigated violence throughout Germany, the tabloid attempted to popularize its own slogan of ‘SA-terror’.¹¹² But, as the Communists soon realized, this counter-campaign did not achieve the desired effect largely because of the limited reach of the party press.¹¹³ By November 1931, the KPD leadership feared that this relentless ‘crusade of lies’ by the bourgeois press was preparing the grounds for a general ban of the Communist party, and issued an official resolution against what it called acts of ‘individual terror’.¹¹⁴ For right-wing journalists, this resolution was both an official admission of the existence of a Communist terror campaign, as well as a transparent and unconvincing move to avoid official sanctions.¹¹⁵ When media attention started turning to the National Socialists in October 1931, this was not the result of the Communist press campaign. Rather, news of the nationalist rally in the small northern German town of Bad Harzburg moved Hitler’s party back into the limelight. Using slogans against the ‘Marxist blood terror’, and threatening that nationalist paramilitary organizations would not come to the defence of the present ‘system’ in case of future uprisings, the anti-republicans gathered at Harzburg called on Reich President Hindenburg to replace the Brüning cabinet with a truly right-wing government.¹¹⁶ Although this demonstrative show of nationalist unity was to prove only short lived, it contributed significantly to heightening the temperature of political discourse. ‘It is do or die now’, proclaimed a headline in Vorwärts. According to the Social Democratic party organ, the following months would see the decisive struggle deciding whether or not Germany would become a fascist dictatorship.¹¹⁷ On the same day, the left-liberal Welt am Montag in Berlin published a statistic on the extent of political violence in Germany. According to its own research 457 dead and 1,154 wounded had been left lying on the ‘battle field of political opinion struggle’ in the last nine years. Ever since 1929, the paper proclaimed,

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Germany was experiencing ‘an era of latent civil war’.¹¹⁸ This article was probably brought to the attention of the Prussian interior minister, the Social Democrat Severing, who received regular reports on the number of casualties and arrests resulting from ‘political excesses’.¹¹⁹ That same week, Severing castigated the level of violence in a speech to the Prussian parliament which took up the theme of the Welt am Montag article. A guerrilla warfare was being waged daily, which he took as early signs of a civil war. Vorwärts reported this speech under the headline ‘Protection from civil war!’¹²⁰ A few days after Severing’s speech, a National Socialist mass rally involving tens of thousands of SA members in Brunswick saw a series of Nazi attacks on left-wing opponents, leaving two dead. In the wake of the intensification of political cleavages caused by the Harzburg front, press coverage of events in Brunswick was even more polarized than usual. Just what had happened was difficult to make out in the dissonance of Berlin newspapers. A huge banner headline in Vorwärts sold the news as ‘Civil war in Brunswick’.¹²¹ This was partly the polemical response to the fact that the National Socialist interior minister of Brunswick denied that events had occurred as reported by the local SPD paper.¹²² According to Goebbels’s Angriff, SA members had acted in self-defence against Communist attackers.¹²³ Hugenberg’s nationalist papers sided unambiguously with the National Socialist version. The tabloid Nachtausgabe, normally only too eager to report about violence and death, skimmed over the clashes in Brunswick, and claimed the entire affair was a typical product of left-wing media hype.¹²⁴ This view also coloured coverage of events by Hugenberg’s news service Telegraphen-Union. Readers of provincial newspapers which relied on TU for their news provision learned about the Nazi rally in Brunswick as an impressive demonstration of SA discipline, marred only by attacks by left-wing demonstrators and decried by hostile press commentators afraid about the alleged advance of the so-called ‘nationalist opposition’.¹²⁵ T H E P RO L I F E R AT I O N O F V I O L E N C E Mutual recriminations and talk about a pending civil war reached a preliminary climax in November 1931. Social Democratic newspapers advertised a new SPD campaign under the slogan ‘Against the Harzburg-Brunswick reaction, against inflation and civil war!’¹²⁶ National Socialists, in turn, prepared rallies for 9 November, the day of commemoration for so-called party ‘martyrs’, by publishing death lists of its fallen members. The Communist Welt am Abend countered this by publishing its own list, giving the names of 18 Berlin workers killed by National Socialists in 1930 and 1931 alone.¹²⁷ On 9 November, mass scuffles between several hundred members of the republican paramilitary organization Reichsbanner and SA men left two Nazis dead. Goebbels’s Angriff described events as ‘bestial atrocities of marxist murder-bandits’, and accused the


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Social Democratic Vorwärts of promoting murder; Vorwärts in turn proclaimed events as the result of National Socialist ‘civil war-ranting’.¹²⁸ In mid-November, it was impossible to open the SPD party organ without encountering numerous articles refering to Nazi or Communist violence with headlines threatening civil war. The war of words finally became an issue for the Reich government when a delegation of SA members tried to lobby President Hindenburg personally with their complaints.¹²⁹ Although Hindenburg declined to receive them, he issued a statement which signalled some sympathy, and encouraged them to present their material to the new Reich interior minister, Groener.¹³⁰ Among the documentation which Hitler subsequently sent to Groener were several death and casualty lists like those which had previously appeared in the Nazi press, as well as an article from the Social Democratic Münchner Post. The latter was an ‘infamous fabrication from beginning to end’, Hitler declared. But it was significant because ‘supporters of the marxist parties are being pushed systematically towards civil war and bloody terror through such ranting reports [Hetzberichte]’. Hitler ended his letter by expressing his expectation that Groener would take all necessary measures to curb the ‘murderous frenzy of Marxism’.¹³¹ Groener was well aware that political violence and its distorted presentation in the daily press constituted a real challenge for the Reich government, which depended as much on President Hindenburg’s whims as it did on the reluctant toleration of the Social Democrats. To act on Social Democratic calls for harsher measures against the National Socialists meant incurring the misgivings of Hindenburg, while to follow right-wing calls for a ban of the KPD would lead to a conflict with the SPD. Yet to do nothing was to jeopardize the government’s authority. Groener’s first statement to the press when taking over the interior ministry after the cabinet reshuffle in October 1931 reflected this precarious balancing act. He emphasized his intention to safeguard the authority of the state and deplored the attempts to divide the people into two camps. The reputation of the German Reich demanded that terrorist acts against political opponents and bloody confrontations among citizens were made impossible, Groener declared. If need be, he would ask the Reich president for draconian emergency decrees to achieve this. At the same time, he guaranteed that he would safeguard the evenhanded enforcement of existing decrees.¹³² This statement received a lot of coverage throughout the German press. Expectations were accordingly high prior to Groener’s first conference with interior ministers of the various German states in mid-November 1931.¹³³ Editors tried their utmost in the days before the conference to paint the opposing camp as the origin of all violence. Vorwärts presented a chronology of judicial verdicts against Nazis to counter what they perceived as a right-wing press campaign to whitewash Hitler’s ‘rugged warriors’.¹³⁴ The agitated tone in the press and the panoramic view of political violence provided by newspapers was not without an effect on Groener. In his opening remarks at the conference, he referred to the need to fight energetically the ‘murder epidemic’ which

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had become a ‘cultural shame’ for Germany.¹³⁵ The subsequent discussion touched several times on the issue of the press. The Social Democratic interior minister of Hessen, Leuschner, complained about the language in the Nazi press which ‘brutalised and provoked’; which in turn provoked the Nazi minister of Brunswick to declare that he too considered the press responsible for much of the violence and that he was very satisfied with the effects achieved by banning Social Democratic newspapers in Brunswick.¹³⁶ Groener himself was more worried about the overall impression left by sensationalist language. When Severing mentioned Communist preparations for civil war, Groener turned against the term ‘civil war’: ‘such a term has to vanish from our vocabulary, from our press’, he declared to his colleagues and admonished them to forestall ‘this damned fabrication of rumours’.¹³⁷ If Groener had hoped to calm public sentiment with the meeting, he largely failed. Newspapers latched on to his use of the term ‘murder epidemic’ and reported that Social Democrats demanded of Brüning that measures be taken against the threat of pending civil war.¹³⁸ It was also noted that Groener had only criticized Communist organisations, and that he had mentioned a request by Hindenburg that he should pay particular attention to the material received from Hitler.¹³⁹ Social Democrats suspected that Groener was minimizing the responsibility of the National Socialists for much of the brutalization of German politics.¹⁴⁰ In fact, in autumn 1931 both Brüning and Groener wanted to bring about the recognition of the NSDAP as a ‘normal’ party, to integrate it into decision-making, and thereby to defuse its oppositional appeal. Through this approach Brüning hoped to secure Nazi consent to a second term in office for Hindenburg, and to maintain the favour of Hindenburg, who had long demanded a shift of the Reich cabinet towards the political Right.¹⁴¹ This strategy could only work if the National Socialists could be presented credibly—and in contrast to the KPD—as a legal political movement. Brüning’s plan received a serious blow when news broke of the so-called Boxheim documents at the end of November 1931. Leaked to the Hesse authorities by a Nazi renegade, the papers contained a detailed set of proposals by a regional National Socialist functionary for emergency decrees following a Nazi takeover of power. Based on the assumption that after a failed Communist coup the SA would rule supreme, the Boxheim documents made a farce of Hitler’s repeated assurances of the NSDAP’s alleged legality. Apart from measures such as food rationing, the abolition of private income, and compulsory labour for everybody above the age of sixteen, the proposed decrees also stipulated the death sentence for any attempt to disobey the new authorities.¹⁴² Berlin’s liberal and left-wing press had a field day. ‘Death sentence! Death sentence! Death sentence! The Reich of blood courts’, titled Münzenberg’s Welt am Abend; Ullstein’s Tempo sold the documents as evidence for Nazi intentions to stage a coup and establish a ‘bloody dictatorship’; Mosse’s 8-Uhr-Abendblatt published drastic caricatures of what life under a Nazi dictatorship would entail.¹⁴³


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As was to be expected, the Nazi leadership distanced itself from the Boxheim documents, claiming that party headquarters in Munich had not been involved in this private work of an individual, and issuing renewed pledges of legality. Hugenberg’s papers agreed in minimizing the affair.¹⁴⁴ Brüning himself, who was pinning high hopes on the secret coalition talks between the regional Centre and Nazi parties in Hesse after the spectacular Nazi election victory there in mid-November, instructed the Reich state prosecutor to play down events.¹⁴⁵ But he was also aware of the dynamics triggered by lurid front page headlines. A few days after the Boxheim revelations, Hitler gave a press conference to US and British correspondents in which he dismissed the documents, stating that he would not dream of throwing overboard the principle of legality when having reached the threshold of power. The NSDAP would attain power within the next ten months, Hitler proclaimed to the foreign journalists.¹⁴⁶ The Times’ headline ‘Threshold of Power’, in turn, triggered front-page headlines in Berlin’s democratic press, which accused Hitler of undermining the Reich government’s authority abroad.¹⁴⁷ The media storm over Hitler’s press conference caused one of Brüning’s coalition partners and the Social Democrats to pressure the Reich chancellor into issuing a public condemnation of National Socialist interference in foreign politics.¹⁴⁸ A few days later, in order to prevent a similar media scandal, Brüning instructed the Reich mail ministry to prevent a radio broadcast by Hitler aimed at American audiences.¹⁴⁹ P R E S S M A N I P U L AT I O N S Brüning knew he depended on Hindenburg’s support, and he therefore tried hard to convince the Nazis through confidential negotiations to agree to an extension of Hindenburg’s mandate, which was coming to an end in early 1932. He wanted to bring this about by way of embracing the Nazis in a regional coalition of Centre party and NSDAP in Hesse. Yet his room for manœuvre was significantly constrained by anti-Nazi press polemics. This added to his already existing sense of frustration regarding press coverage of his economic politics. In his eyes, the less the press was let in on governmental debate and decision-making, the better. Throughout November and December 1931 Brüning repeatedly complained in cabinet about leaks and indiscretions which had allegedly become ‘such a persistent phenomenon that policy-making was hardly possible any longer’.¹⁵⁰ His views were reinforced by complaints from Germany’s leading business associations about inaccurate and sensationalist press reports on pending government action on prices, which allegedly led to a collective buyers’ strike.¹⁵¹ Ever since the press decree of 17 July 1931, relations to publishers and journalists had been strained; but they now deteriorated further. Editors, in turn, blamed Brüning’s restrictive information policy for the increasing reliance of journalists on rumour and hearsay. ‘Brüning in the darkroom—the

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fear of the public’, ran one headline accusing the Reich chancellor of fostering uncertainty and misunderstandings about the government’s intentions.¹⁵² Brüning was not inactive, though. Behind the scenes, he commissioned Hans Schäffer, state secretary in the Reich finance ministry, to establish contacts with the senior editors in the Ullstein publishing house and to bring about a gentlemen’s agreement to exercise restraint regarding news of a financial nature. The editors reluctantly agreed to a trial period in which they would publish confidential information only with Schäffer’s knowledge and assent. At the same time, they pointed out to Schäffer that despite their support for the government’s general policy, they would not refrain from criticizing individual measures or intentions. Still, Brüning’s emissary was satisfied: ‘I consider this arrangement as an attempt to achieve something of the unity in the press that we always notice with the French . . .’, he concluded his report of the meeting to the Reich chancellor.¹⁵³ Schäffer, of course, suffered not only from a misconception of the French press but also displayed considerable naïvety regarding the dynamics of the German media. As the head of the Reich government press office stated in his reply to Schäffer’s report, the number of journalists brought into such an agreement would have to be much larger to achieve the desired effect. Establishing preferential channels of communication with only a handful of editors would inevitably result in the ‘strongest animosity among their other colleagues’.¹⁵⁴ At least in the case of the Ullstein papers, however, the government’s backroom manœuvres were not without an effect. Various factors helped to convince the owners of Germany’s largest publishing enterprise that co-operation with the government was worth their while. After years of internal turmoil and bitter family disputes, the Ullstein brothers decided in the second half of November 1931 to approach Schäffer and ask him to become the managing director general of the Ullstein firm.¹⁵⁵ Although Schäffer took up the position only in spring 1932, his influence was already felt in December 1931. There was little the Brüning government could do about the sensationalist presentation of anti-Nazi news in the Mosse papers, like the many photo reproductions of the Boxheim documents which accompanied the 8-Uhr-Abendblatt’s extensive criticism of Hitler’s foreign press conference.¹⁵⁶ But similarly critical coverage in Ullstein’s tabloids could now be tackled. On 8 December 1931 a set of new directives was circulated to the firm’s various leading editors and managing directors which reflected the publishers’ intentions to work towards the Brüning government. Editors were asked to bring the following guidelines to the attention of their editorial staff: 1. It is not the task of either BZ [am Mittag], or Tempo, or [Berliner] Montagspost to actively engage in the political struggle . . . 2. Greatest caution needs to be exercised in the composition of headlines of street-sale based tabloids. Through tendentious or overly sensationalist headlines our newspapers can all too easily be identified with a particular [political] line which does not correspond to editorial intentions, and which is not in the interest of the entire firm.¹⁵⁷


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The Ullstein drive to depoliticize the firm’s tabloids came in the wake of the Ossietzky trial, which had sent shock-waves through the German press. In late November 1931 the chief editor of the left-wing Berlin weekly Weltbühne, Carl von Ossietzky, was sentenced to eighteen months in prison for treason. The trial had been triggered by a Weltbühne article in 1929 on a secret and illegal programme of rearmament in the German aircraft industry.¹⁵⁸ The Ullstein brothers were aware that with Franz Höllering, their chief editor of BZ am Mittag, they potentially had similar trouble on their hands. They had poached Höllering from Münzenberg’s successful Communist Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung and put him in charge of BZ am Mittag in summer 1930. Ever since, the BZ am Mittag had repeatedly incurred the wrath of the Brüning government.¹⁵⁹ In November 1931, the tabloid castigated the sentence in the Ossietzky trial as the prostitution of justice to reactionary political ends. Later that month, the Ullstein tabloid devoted significant coverage to the Boxheim documents; in early December a front-page leading article on ‘Hitler’s brown legal army’ gave details of the organization of SA and SS, and the following day the Ullstein tabloid was in the forefront of the media attack on Hitler’s foreign press conference.¹⁶⁰ Shortly after the first set of guidelines, the Ullsteins circulated another reminder to their editors to tone down partisan polemics: ‘Everyone who polemicizes in the newspaper today needs to be aware that he is putting the responsible editor and possibly the publishing house at serious risk if the reported facts are wrong or if the permissible level of criticism is exceeded.’¹⁶¹ This did not seem to greatly impress Höllering and his staff. In mid-December 1931, BZ am Mittag and Tempo both published reports about Nazi attempts at organizing a private airforce as sensational front-page news, although the rumour that Hitler had ordered twenty-five aeroplanes had immediately been described as false by the aircraft company in question.¹⁶² This was exactly the kind of sensationalist anti-Nazi headline which Brüning wanted to avoid at a time when he was about to open negotiations with Hitler about an extension of Hindenburg’s mandate. The government acted swiftly. Groener, the interior minister, circulated guidelines to all relevant state authorities encouraging them to apply the press emergency decree to maintain ‘public safety and order’: ‘Newspaper bans exist in order to prevent the whipping up of the unstable mood of the public through irresponsible provocations, and particularly through alarmist, one-sided press reports and news which serve to foment disquiet.’ This applied particularly to newspapers which ‘serve essentially the demand for sensations and which are retailed exclusively or predominantly on the streets’.¹⁶³ That same day Höllering was fired. The Communist Welt am Abend was not the only one to report that this move had been the consequence of government members expressing ‘in no uncertain terms their dissatisfaction with the political line of the BZ am Mittag, especially towards the Nazis.’¹⁶⁴ In the left-wing Weltbühne, Carl von Ossietzky labelled the Höllering case ‘the most scandalous capitulation yet to National Socialism’, and a ‘crime against German

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press freedom in the midst of its most difficult crisis’.¹⁶⁵ Höllering was replaced by Fritz Stein, the Berlin correspondent for the Hamburger Fremdenblatt, but not before various cabinet members and the Reich president were consulted and had approved the appointment. One of Stein’s first acts was to write to Brüning and to promise a reorientation of the Ullstein press: in view of the ‘very definite political reasons’ for his appointment, he understood his task as that of ‘giving first the BZ am Mittag and later the Vossische Zeitung a new political form and redirecting them on to the path of responsible political thought and action, a path which I and my political friends have followed for ten years’.¹⁶⁶ Within the Ullstein firm, publishers defended their action not least by pointing to the potentially counterproductive results of a continuous barrage of anti-Nazi press reports: ‘[T]he moment has now arrived where our papers are unintentionally engaging in propaganda for the National Socialist party through overly eager coverage of developments in the Hitler camp . . . [T]he particular emphasis on such news may lead the politically inexperienced reader to the view that the Hitler movement is growing every day and that the leader of the National Socialist party is in reality the rising star.’¹⁶⁷ In the same circular, the publishers called on their editors to pay heed to public opinion. Statements of political opponents ought to be at least reported and not just dismissed out of hand, without giving readers a chance of assessing the validity of the newspaper’s judgement: ‘After all, one cannot describe from the outset everything that is promoted at numerous rallies and which is believed by millions of voters as so irrelevant that one need not [even] discuss it.’¹⁶⁸ Just how anxious the publishers were about the potential repercussions of going against their readers became clear in a passage relating to the death penalty. ‘Criminal cases in which the judgement of healthy folk sentiment [das Urteil des gesunden Volksempfindens] is clear from the outset should be discussed in our newspapers in a careful manner. It antagonizes the views of the people when the attempt is made to explain clear-cut crimes in a literary-aestheticizing manner on the basis of the perpetrator’s background or dispositions. . . . The journalistic struggle against the death penalty should not be exaggerated in specific cases.’¹⁶⁹ As Modris Eksteins pointed out in his study of the German liberal press, with their financial investments menaced at a time of economic depression publishers tended to become the pliant servants of interest groups and of public opinion.¹⁷⁰ THE MAKING OF THE PRESIDENT Effecting a change within the editorial offices of Ullstein’s BZ am Mittag did not, however, greatly improve Brüning’s position. His main problem persisted: having to steer a policy which maintained both Hindenburg’s approval and Social Democratic toleration in a political climate deeply polarized by partisan press coverage. In early 1932, a decree by Groener which allowed National


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Socialists—in contrast to Communists—to become members of the Reichswehr exacerbated tensions with the Social Democrats, who were fundamentally at odds with the Reich government’s stance on Nazi legality. They were particularly incensed by the fact that Groener’s decree mentioned the Boxheim documents in the same breath as plans by the republican Reichsbanner from autumn 1930 to develop its so-called ‘Defence Formations’ into some sort of ancillary police force. In their eyes, attacks on the Reichsbanner had been part of a concerted right-wing press effort to deflect responsibility for the rising tide of political violence in 1931; Groener’s decree now seemed to lend credibility to these claims, and was obviously downplaying the danger emanating from the National Socialist SA. As a result, the SPD-led Prussian government started to prepare the grounds for a ban on the SA in co-operation with other German states such as Bavaria, Baden, and Hesse.¹⁷¹ Hence, once negotiations about the presidency with the National Socialists had broken down, the Brüning government found itself in a quandary: its unsuccessful overtures to Hitler had antagonized the Social Democrats, who were now needed more than ever to secure the election of Hindenburg to a second term in office. Yet Hindenburg wanted at all costs to avoid being seen by the public as the candidate of the political Left. The failure to square this circle eventually cost Brüning his office. From February 1932, Hindenburg’s renewed candidacy was promoted with fervent urgency. So-called ‘Hindenburg committees’ under the leadership of the Berlin mayor, Heinrich Sahm, initiated a bourgeois Sammlungspolitik which was meant to reconnect to his election in 1925 and the celebration of his eightieth birthday in 1927. Their petition asking Hindenburg to stand again was circulated by more than 1,100 German newspapers and resulted in the collection of more than three million signatures within two weeks.¹⁷² But for Berlin observers the differences with 1925 were all too obvious: then, Hindenburg had enjoyed the support of the entire right-wing press, and particularly of Hugenberg’s newspapers which were now openly hostile; also, his most outspoken opponents from 1925, especially Berlin’s major liberal newspapers, now played a very visible role in promoting him. The prominence of liberal and Social Democratic newspaper support immediately attracted scathing right-wing press attacks labelling Hindenburg the candidate of the ‘Weimar system’.¹⁷³ It was no coincidence that when Hindenburg announced his candidature in mid-February, he emphasized the fact that he had received his encouragement ‘not from a single party but from broad sections of society’.¹⁷⁴ Once Hindenburg’s announcement had been made public, the Reich government immediately set out to reorganize the campaigning apparatus in an attempt to block criticism from the right. ‘Above all, [the Hindenburg committees] have to be liberated from their dependence on the press, particularly of the Ullstein-Mosse press’, announced the senior civil servant in charge of the organization of the election campaign.¹⁷⁵ How this was to be achieved, however, remained unclear: it was, after all, impossible to ask the liberal Berlin mass press not to support Hindenburg; nor was it possible

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to prevent right-wing journalists from using this support as evidence for their claim that Hindenburg had now become the candidate of the Left. When the Reichstag reconvened in late February 1932, after a four-month break, Goebbels produced a scandal when he attacked Hindenburg for having sided with Social Democracy. There was a National Socialist proverb, Goebbels declared: ‘Tell me who is praising you, and I tell you who you are! Praised by the Berlin asphalt press, praised by the party of deserters, . . .’. Social Democrats reacted to this provocation by interrupting his speech with stormy protests and demands that he take back the latter remark. Goebbels tried to resume his speech by emphasizing the historical changes in press support: ‘Today the Jews of the Berlin asphalt press are proclaiming the Field Marshal their leader. These are the same Jews and Social Democrats who in 1925 poured buckets of scorn and abuse over the General Field Marshal.’¹⁷⁶ Continuing protests by Social Democrats about Goebbels’s use of the term ‘party of deserters’ led to an adjournment; Goebbels was subsequently barred from the session for allegedly having insulted the Reich president.¹⁷⁷ This kind of attack deeply troubled Hindenburg. Two days after Goebbels’s Reichstag speech, he sat down and produced a memorandum on his candidature which was circulated confidentially among Conservatives and Reichswehr circles. ‘The attacks which I have expected are already under way’, Hindenburg complained. ‘In the right-wing press and at rallies public opinion is stirred up against me with the allegation that I have accepted my candidature . . . from the hands of the Left or from a partisan ‘‘black–red coalition’’. This allegation is a blatant lie!’ In reality, Hindenburg claimed, he had followed the request of a wide range of right-wing parties and groupings ‘between Centre [party] and German Nationalist Party’, which included ‘a very large part of those voters which elected me into the office of Reich President in 1925.’¹⁷⁸ This was also the message which he proclaimed in his only contribution to the election campaign, a radio broadcast in early March.¹⁷⁹ Accordingly, the guiding theme of the pro-Hindenburg propaganda was the emphasis on ‘non-partisanship’ and the ‘reconciliation of differences’. Press propaganda was deemed inefficient in reaching voters ‘because of political counter-currents’. Instead, the emphasis was placed on visual communication, particularly on posters.¹⁸⁰ Over the following weeks, an unprecedented number of posters by the competing camps adorned the streets of Berlin; Goebbels described the election campaign as a ‘war of posters’.¹⁸¹ Apart from portraits and full-length photos of the imposing Reich president, the Hindenburg campaign built significantly on the public’s perception of partisan press agitation and political violence. In doing so, it tellingly adopted some of the terms and slogans which the anti-republican press had popularized over the previous thirteen years, especially the term ‘system’. Cars hired by the Hindenburg committees sported banners proclaiming ‘Against the system’ in great letters, followed by a small line stating ‘of eternal conflict: vote Hindenburg’.¹⁸² This was symptomatic of the dilemma of the Hindenburg campaign: trying to appeal


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Fig. 6.2. An election poster from spring 1932, calling on voters to support Hindenburg. The depiction of the violence and strife perpetrated by the political extremes visualized effectively the main theme of the Hindenburg campaign, non-partisanship. It was this public image of non-partisanship which motivated Hindenburg to take such offence at being forced by Brüning and Groener to ban the SA in April 1932.  Bundesarchiv, Plak 002-016-007.

to both the republican and anti-republican camp through a campaign aimed at arousing popular support, not least by damning violent partisanship. ‘Volksverhetzung’, incitement of the people, was a term that played a major role.¹⁸³ One particularly poignant poster showed a giant worker using a broom to sweep away hordes of clashing Communists and Nazis, with the caption ‘Enough now of Hitler’s incitement of the people! Vote Hindenburg’. Playing on the same theme of civil war, the poster ‘Stop the German self-destruction!’ showed two men engaged in a violent fist-fight.¹⁸⁴ The National Socialists, too, propagated the image of a German people engaged in strife and civil war. In his controversial Reichstag speech in late February, Goebbels made constant references to the spectre of civil war, sometimes claiming that the threat of civil war was growing by the day, at other points claiming that Germany was already in the midst of a civil war.¹⁸⁵ He was, in fact,

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simply stating what his Angriff had been writing for years. The competing propagandistic uses of the image of civil war only served to heighten the conflict between Social Democrats and the Brüning government over the treatment of the National Socialist SA. In early March, Otto Braun, the Social Democratic prime minister of Prussia, wrote to Brüning to complain about Nazi agitation: ‘. . . the language of the National Socialist press which can scarcely be outdone in terms of acrimony, which also indulges in untrue claims about the alleged murdering of party members by political opponents on an almost daily basis and which is thereby aiming to incite the lowliest instincts for revenge of the great masses, [all this] has created an alarming atmosphere in which political tensions are growing every day.’¹⁸⁶ A few days later, Groener received information from Hitler opponents in the Stennes camp that preparations were under way within the SA to attempt a coup should it become clear after the first round of elections that Hitler stood no chance of winning. He informed Severing, who put the Prussian police on special alert.¹⁸⁷ The conservative minister president of Bavaria, Held, had no knowledge of these developments, but he, too, urged Brüning to take measures against the SA. ‘I am afraid we are on the brink of revolution and civil war unless we ruthlessly suppress everything that furthers these’, Held wrote shortly after the first round of elections, at which Hindenburg had decisively beaten Hitler, but had narrowly missed an absolute majority.¹⁸⁸ This charged atmosphere of anxiety and fear of pending revolutionary action was the direct result of partisan press coverage of political violence, especially in 1930 and 1931 which had framed public perception of the legality of the growing National Socialist movement, either in positive or negative terms. It also constrained the room for further tactical manœuvring of the Reich government. A few days after the first round of presidential elections, Severing ordered house searches of Nazi party offices throughout Prussia. The material seized proved that on election day the Munich party headquarters had, indeed, ordered the SA to be on alert and ready for combat. Some documents showed that the SA was intending to steal Reichswehr weapons and were unwilling to be drawn into defence formations in case of a Polish invasion. The publication of the material shortly before the decisive vote in the presidential elections received massive press attention, and significantly increased the pressure on Groener to ban the SA after elections.¹⁸⁹ It also brought about a sea-change in opinion within the Reich government, which now decided to take decisive action. The Reichswehr was temporarily so incensed about the revelations that it agreed to Groener’s plan of banning the SA; it was widely felt that now ‘the psychological moment’ had come for such a move against the Nazis.¹⁹⁰ On 13 April, three days after his re-election as Reich president, Hindenburg signed an emergency decree stipulating the dissolution of the SA and SS. These organizations, the official announcement explained, constituted a ‘private army’ which had led to a ‘civil war-like situation’ which the state could not continue to tolerate.¹⁹¹


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H I N D E N BU RG ’ S N O N - PA RT I S A N S H IP It had required considerable effort by Brüning and Groener to convince a reluctant Hindenburg to sign this emergency decree. Hindenburg was deeply unhappy about the lack of electoral support among fellow nationalists and conservatives. For weeks, right-wing newspapers had been emphasizing socialist support for Hindenburg to delegitimize the propagandistic claim of Hindenburg’s nationalist non-partisanship. Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe published photos of proHindenburg mass rallies staged by the SPD-led Iron Front with masses of red flags, gleefully pointing out that these events had not been concluded with the singing of the German national anthem but that of the socialist International.¹⁹² On the day after his election, Hindenburg refused to accept congratulations by his press chief. ‘[W]ho voted for me?’, he allegedly complained. ‘I have been elected by Socialists, I have been elected by the Catholics . . . and I have been elected by the Berliner Tageblatt . . . My own people did not vote for me.’¹⁹³ Almost defiantly, he announced in his declaration to the German people that same day his intention to exercise his office ‘in a spirit of non-partisanship and equality’.¹⁹⁴ In this respect, the ban on the SA could not have come at a more inopportune moment. Hindenburg’s son Oskar tried to prevent it, claiming that it would only result once more in the political Right dragging his father through the mud.¹⁹⁵ Brüning was well aware that the decision would cause a media uproar. He asked a senior Social Democrat to exercise his moderating influence on the left-wing press to prevent their coverage becoming too triumphalist and thereby provoking the political Right even more.¹⁹⁶ Also, to accommodate Hindenburg’s concerns, the official explanation of the SA ban concluded with a passage emphasizing that this step had originated ‘in the strictly non-partisan intention of the Reich leadership to apply equal standards to all parties’.¹⁹⁷ As was to be expected, right-wing journalists strongly disagreed about the non-partisan nature of the SA ban. ‘We know the baiting in the left-wing press, which for weeks has not tired of presenting this ban as well-founded and necessary through false reports of all kinds’, the Deutsche Zeitung commented in a leading article.¹⁹⁸ The justification for the ban mentioned ‘numerous grave offences and excesses by the dissolved organizations’ but ignored the ‘fact’ that during the election campaign ‘the vast majority of murderous attacks’ had been committed by members of the Reichsbanner, Communists, or Social Democrats, noted the Berliner Börsen-Zeitung.¹⁹⁹ For any regular reader of a right-wing newspaper, this argument was both familiar and very convincing. In fact, the failure to dissolve the republican Reichsbanner at the same time as the SA became the focal point of right-wing criticism. Already days before the ban, early rumours had included speculations about whether or not the Reichsbanner would be banned alongside the SA.²⁰⁰ Until the last moment, right-wing newspapers warned against taking

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an allegedly one-sided step. Banning the SA would jeopardize Hindenburg’s much trumpeted neutrality only days after his re-election.²⁰¹ Once the ban was announced, headlines declared the state leadership to have joined the Left.²⁰² Berlin’s right-wing broadsheets immediately published all information they were able to find to prove that the Reichsbanner, too, was a ‘private army’ just like the SA, engaged in very similar activities, and therefore deserving the same treatment by the authorities.²⁰³ According to Groener and Brüning, these newspaper articles were produced with the clear intention of serving as argumentative evidence to sway the grumbling Hindenburg.²⁰⁴ They came to the president’s attention in a number of ways. He himself was a faithful reader of the very conservative Neue Preußische (Kreuz-)Zeitung, and had initiated repeatedly in the past political action on the basis of its political coverage.²⁰⁵ Numerous right-wing personalities remonstrated with him about the SA ban and passed on newspaper clippings to back up their claims against the Reichsbanner; similarly, opponents of Groener within the Reichswehr supplied Hindenburg with a collection of anti-Reichsbanner newspaper reports.²⁰⁶ Nor was this the first time that Hindenburg had received such compilations of right-wing news reports discrediting the republican Reichsbanner.²⁰⁷ Hindenburg took the negative publicity very seriously. He sent Groener an irritable letter, stating that he had received evidence that ‘organizations similar in nature to the one banned existed among other parties’, and that the non-partisan exercise of his office demanded that this material be seriously investigated. If the material were shown to be correct, the organizations in question ought to be banned, too. In a highly unsual move, he handed this letter to the press even before Groener received it. Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe published it on its front page, under the sensationalist headline ‘Hindenburg demands investigation into dissolution of Reichsbanner’.²⁰⁸ Relations between the Reich president and Groener soured quickly. Anticipating presidential concern over the Reichsbanner, Groener had immediately reacted to right-wing attacks by calling in the leader of the republican organization, Höltermann, and convincing him to announce the immediate self-dissolution of the Reichsbanner’s Defence Formations. Right-wing commentators felt that this was a disingenuous move to pre-empt further action on the Reichsbanner.²⁰⁹ The fact that Höltermann was rejecting in detail accusations against his organization at press conferences aroused annoyance in Hindenburg’s circles, as it was felt that Groener had leaked the material sent to him by the President. In reply to an official complaint, Groener pointed out that the material he had received primarily consisted of newspaper articles and that therefore it had not required indiscretion on his part to allow Höltermann to react to the various accusations.²¹⁰ At a meeting in late April, Hindenburg complained once more to Groener that the current situation consituted an ‘unequal’ treatment of SA and Reichsbanner. Groener agreed to some minor concessions but in essence maintained his position that further government action on the Reichsbanner was


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superfluous.²¹¹ For those on the political Right, the outcome was unambiguous: ‘Reichsbanner wins. Groener does not give in’, ran a headline in Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe.²¹² Hindenburg’s disenchantment with Groener reached its climax on 10 May 1932. On that day, Groener defended his decision to ban SA and SS but not Reichsbanner in the first Reichstag session after Hindenburg’s re-election. Interrupted by constant jeering from Nazi members of parliament who accused him of drawing on left-wing media inspiration, Groener labelled the SA a ‘state within the state’ and ‘a threat to state authority’, whilst describing the Reichsbanner as an organization designed for the protection of the Reich constitution.²¹³ Point by point, Groener dismissed the accusations raised in the material he had received from the Reich president.²¹⁴ This unequivocal attack on the National Socialists and the very public repudiation of Hindenburg’s anti-Reichsbanner intentions found warm words of praise in the republican press, but turned Groener into a persona non grata in the Reich president’s circles. ‘Politically he was dead after this speech’, Brüning commented in his memoirs.²¹⁵ Encouraged by complaints from Schleicher and other Reichswehr generals that Groener had allegedly violated the non-partisanship of the Reichswehr, Hindenburg informed Brüning the following day that he considered Groener no longer acceptable either as interior minister or defence minister. Brüning refused to ask Groner personally to step down and threatened to resign if Hindenburg insisted.²¹⁶ This refusal, in turn, irreperably damaged the relationship between chancellor and Reich president. Groener’s announcement to the press on 12 May that he had asked Hindenburg to relieve him from his office as defence minister in order to concentrate on his duties as interior minister further contributed to Hindenburg’s perception of insubordination. That same day, just before Hindenburg’s departure for a three-week holiday in East Prussia, Brüning met the Reich president and defended Groener once more with warm words. He encountered little sympathy. Hindenburg instructed the chancellor not to undertake any changes to the cabinet during his absence, and then left Berlin for his estate at Neudeck. Brüning knew at this moment that his dismissal was imminent.²¹⁷ Throughout May 1932, speculations were rife in the Berlin press over the future of the Brüning cabinet.²¹⁸ Right-wing newspapers called for Brüning’s resignation. Polemics became particularly intense when plans for land-reform were announced in mid-May. Key leaders of the agrarian lobby complained to Hindenburg and asked him to intervene. On 27 May, the DNVP Reichstag group published a declaration labelling the government’s land-reform plans as ‘complete bolshevism’. Brüning’s continuing dependence on Social Democratic support was a ‘deadly danger’ for Germany, declared Hugenberg’s Tag.²¹⁹ Hindenburg now had to act. As long as he refused to appoint National Socialists to the cabinet, any reorientation of the Reich government towards the political Right depended on the co-operation of the German Nationalists. In Hindenburg’s eyes, the refusal of DNVP and Stahlhelm to support his candidature for the presidency

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earler in the year had been the result solely of the influence of Hugenberg and his press.²²⁰ He was therefore not willing to go against the nationalist press once more. At the crucial meeting between Brüning and the Reich president on 29 May, Hindenburg announced that he would refuse to continue signing emergency decrees for the current government. According to Brüning’s state secretary, Pünder, who recorded Brüning’s report of the meeting only a few hours after the event, Hindenburg declared with tears in his eyes: ‘I finally have to move towards the Right now, the newspapers and the entire people demand so. But you have always refused this.’²²¹ The following day, the entire Brüning cabinet resigned. Of course, Hindenburg was wrong. Only the right-wing press had clamoured for a shift towards the Right. But these were the newspapers which mattered to Hindenburg: ‘his people’ were clearly not the readers of the 8-Uhr-Abendblatt, or other liberal or left-wing papers that, even in late May, still supported Brüning.²²² Historians have been at pains to point out the fateful influence of the camarilla around Hindenburg. The fact that Hindenburg’s perception of the German ‘public’ was primarily shaped by his reading of the Kreuz-Zeitung has largely been overlooked. Gustav Stresemann at least was deeply worried to find the former field marshal reading this reactionary paper when he made his first official visit to the newly elected president.²²³ Throughout his time as Reich president, Hindenburg’s perception of his own political standing was strongly influenced by his consumption of right-wing press narratives, which, in turn, conditioned his views of legitimate and necessary political action. It is telling that Hindenburg dressed up his authoritarian dismissal of Brüning with democratic rhetoric, referring to the views of a sub-set of right-wing papers as those of the press generally, and presenting this published opinion as a genuine indicator of public opinion more generally. Based on such a selective reading of newspaper texts, it was indeed possible to perceive Brüning as someone siding with the ‘Marxists’. RO L L I N G B AC K D E M O C R AC Y In June 1932, Brüning’s successor, Franz von Papen, lifted the SA ban and the standing prohibition on the wearing of uniforms. Almost instantly, newspapers reported of an explosion of street-violence throughout Germany. As usual, partisan coverage resulted in irreconcilable versions of events. Many provincial newspapers followed the lead of the Hugenberg papers, and demanded radical action from the new Reich government, especially towards Prussia, which was widely described as a hotspot of Communist rioting due to Social Democratic leniency.²²⁴ For many bourgeois newspaper readers, this demand appeared entirely legitimate. ‘The Communists have received order from Moscow to murder and plunder as much as possible; this order is made public in their


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newspapers and leaflets’, reported Elisabeth Gebensleben-von Alten, the wife of Brunswick’s deputy mayor and a keen reader of the right-wing Braunschweiger Landeszeitung to her daughter. ‘Such poor fatuous people! And National Socialists who walk on their own are attacked and are beaten . . . to death every day. Much, much more severe action has still to be taken against the Communists.’²²⁵ For those readers suspicious of the political Right, however, media reports of streetviolence allowed a totally different interpretation. Events in early July, according to the Social Democratic Vorwärts, suggested ‘that the behaviour of the SA over these last days are part of systematic preparations for the outbreak of civil war’.²²⁶ The new Reich chancellor, Franz von Papen, used the need to suppress violence as a pretext for a decisive attack on the constitutional order. On 17 July 1932, eighteen people were killed at the occasion of an SA demonstration through Altona, a working-class municipality on the Prussian side of the state border of Hamburg. Allegedly attacked by Communist roof-top snipers, police opened fire and engaged for hours with an invisible enemy. In some ways, the ‘bloody Sunday’ in Altona resembled the ‘blood May’ of 1929 in Berlin: most of the deaths were caused, as autopsy results later revealed, by ricocheting bullets fired from police guns.²²⁷ Media representations of the event, however, allowed multiple readings, and the prominence of the events in Altona constituted an ideal opportunity for Papen to put into effect a plan which had long been under discussion in conservative circles. On 20 July, a presidential emergency decree deposed the Social Democrat-led state government of Prussia, and replaced it with a commissioner responsible directly to the Reich. The Prussian government, it was argued, had shown itself unable, or unwilling, to cope with the ‘bloody disorders originating with the Communists’.²²⁸ This was not a claim which remained undisputed. Three months later, at the high court session in which the deposed Prussian cabinet sued for confirmation that the Reich’s action was unconstitutional, debate centred on mortality figures and the question of how near Prussia had come to civil war in summer 1932. While rejecting the accusation that the Prussian government had violated its duties, the judges decided that the situation in July had constituted an emergency situation justifying Reich intervention.²²⁹ ‘Herr von Papen exploited the fear of Communists of the German Bürger to play himself up as saviour, and to use this for political bargaining’, commented the former police president of Berlin, the Social Democrat Grzsesinksi, in 1933.²³⁰ Papen’s coup dealt a the final blow to the Weimar Republic. Already at the time, many contemporaries were aware of the political significance of the event. ‘Historical day! Finally reversal of fortune in Prussia’ ran a typical headline in one provincial newspaper.²³¹ Fourteen years after the revolution of 1918, parliamentary democracy was finally being rolled back. Looking back in 1933, the right-wing lawyer Carl Schmitt described Papen’s coup in Prussia as the beginning of ‘Year 1 of German politics’, which led via Schleicher to what Schmitt called the ‘first German people’s chancellor’, Adolf Hitler.²³²

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C O N C LU S I O N Economic depression and mass unemployment are insufficient to explain the radicalization of German society in the early 1930s. In his pioneering study of the unemployed in Marienthal in 1932, the Austrian social scientist Paul Lazarsfeld found apathy and resignation to be individuals’ predominant psychological reaction to unemployment.²³³ Britain and the United States equally experienced high unemployment levels during the Great Depression, and yet they did not witness a surge in concurrent street-violence. In Germany, a vicious circle of clashes and counter-strikes was kept in motion by partisan press coverage. ‘At Denzer’s we passed the time playing cards. Of course we discussed the recent political events and clashes in Berlin and the Reich’, one worker described the daily routine at a Communist tavern in Berlin in July 1932. Heated up by the consumption of alcohol, discussion of the opposition’s ‘crimes’ somewhere in Germany as reported in the daily press often resulted in the resolve to defend one’s own turf by physically attacking National Socialists in the locality.²³⁴ On the other side of the political divide, news reports of Communist violence motivated many young men to join the SA. Between November 1931, when public anxiety about a pending civil war reached a preliminary climax, and August 1932, in the wake of the bloody Reichstag election campaign, membership doubled from 227,000 to 455,000.²³⁵ Throughout this period, many democrats worried about the radicalizing influence of the Communist and National Socialist press. Articles in the radical press, according to the Social Democrat Carl Severing, set the tone and prepared the grounds for much of the political violence.²³⁶ Consequently, newspaper bans became a constant feature of political practice. In 1932, the Communist Rote Fahne was banned on more than a third of its publication days, and Goebbels’s Angriff proudly proclaimed itself to be Germany’s ‘most frequently banned daily’.²³⁷ But even repeated newspaper bans did little to curb street-violence, and only added legitimacy to the claim of victimization, one of the propagandistic pillars of both the KPD and NSDAP. Furthermore, many of those young men engaged in street-violence in the early 1930s were not necessarily readers of radical newspapers. Readers of Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe, of Münzenberg’s Welt am Abend, or even of Ullstein’s Berliner Morgenpost might well have deduced from their reading that radical action was called for in the face of the opposition’s militancy. People were so adrenalized by propaganda, senseless criticism, and reciprocal hatred that ‘we are now living in a state of latent civil war’, Dorothy von Moltke reported to her South African parents in July 1932.²³⁸ Yet if one considers the huge number of German men who were members of paramilitary organizations during the early 1930s, the number of people actually killed in political confrontations was surprisingly small. Official Prussian


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statistics counted 155 dead for 1932, including the victims of the ‘bloody Sunday’ in Altona. As historians of political violence in Weimar Germany have pointed out, this constituted only a fraction of the fatalities of 1919 and 1920, and hardly qualified for the label ‘civil war’. In the 1990s, the number of gang-related homicides resulting from fights over turf, status, and revenge was many times higher in Los Angeles County alone.²³⁹ The image of civil war which gained plausibility in Germany during the early1930s was based on excessive partisan press coverage which created the impression of ubiquitous and therefore uncontrollable violence, which, in turn, triggered massive fears in the population. ‘These excesses everywhere in Germany are terrible, one does not dare open the paper any longer with all these awful reports of murder attempts and attacks by Communists’, wrote one young woman in July 1932.²⁴⁰ For some contemporaries, such reports signified only the tip of an iceberg. ‘Of course the newspaper reports which we have come across are very fragementary’, German industrialists noted when complaining to Brüning about Communist violence in summer 1931, ‘in reality the number of excesses, as well as that of victims, is considerably higher!’²⁴¹ References to the opposition’s violence became a standard rhetorical device both for journalists and politicians. All this contributed to a widespread perception of public disorder which proved fateful to German democracy. As Dirk Blasius has recently pointed out, the National Socialists were levered into power on 30 January 1933 not in a power vacuum, but in an ‘order vacuum’. A ‘civil war hysteria’ afflicted contemporaries and contaminated political decisionmaking, Blasius argues. ‘Civil war’ became the political slogan of the year 1932; eventually, the question of civil war and civil peace decided the fate of the Weimar Republic.²⁴² This ‘civil war hysteria’, however, needs to be understood as a massive media panic, a press-induced over-reaction with politically disastrous effects. ‘Civil war’ was a slogan created and promoted by partisan editors and politicians intent on legitimizing their own ideology. From as early as January 1931, the spectre of civil war haunted German newspaper readers. This partly explains the right-wing passions triggered by Groener’s ban of the SA in April 1932. After a heated presidential election campaign in which ‘civil war’ had been the dominant theme, banning the major right-wing paramilitary force appeared as an unjustifiable act of political short-sightedness to all those who saw Communist terrorists as the main threat to law and order in Germany. Elisabeth Gebensleben-von Alten recorded widespread ‘exasperation’ about the ban among her middle-class peers: ‘even in circles which have so far been distant to the Hitler movement one is beginning to lean towards the movement’, she wrote at the height of the election campaign to the Prussian state parliament in late April 1932.²⁴³ Not surprisingly, none of the traditional bourgeois parties, the so-called Honoratiorenparteien, was able to benefit from the widespread perception of left-wing violence. It was the NSDAP that appeared as the most promising

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bulwark of bourgeois Germany. ‘The National Socialists certainly owe a major part of their growth to the outrage caused by the shameful murder attacks by Communists’, observed a right-wing journalist in November 1931.²⁴⁴ Bourgeois fear of Communism was grounded in the experience of the revolution of 1918-19, and it was stoked on a daily basis by right-wing journalists in the early 1930s. Similarly, on the Left, many young Germans—especially men—concluded from their newspaper reading that Social Democracy offered little in terms of active resistance to fascism and voted for the Communists instead. By summer 1932, these two radical parties attracted over 50 per cent of the popular vote. With militant radicalism against the ideological enemy as one of their attractions, the two camps could not join forces without losing significant parts of their electoral support, a fact demonstrated by the referendum of August 1931 and again at the Reichstag elections in November 1932, when the much-publicized Nazi participation in the Communist-led transport workers’ strike in Berlin cost the NSDAP much sympathy among its bourgeois supporters.²⁴⁵ But although most Germans in 1932 could not agree on the best way forward, on one issue there was widespread consensus: parliamentary democracy was deemed incapable of offering a way out of the perceived crisis.

7 Conclusion T H E I M AG I N AT I O N O F I N F LU E N C E After the revolution of 1918–19, public opinion assumed an importance in German politics that it had never had before. The new system was a parliamentary, democratic republic, as stated by Article 1 of the constitution hammered out in Weimar. This fundamentally altered the role of the press in German politics. ‘The masses’ had come to political power. And through the press, these masses could be influenced—this at least was the view of Oswald Spengler and his contemporaries. Journalists certainly felt they wielded more influence than did most party politicians. ‘What effect can even the greatest open-air meeting have’, one editor asked rhetorically, ‘as compared with the permanent influence a daily newspaper may exert on hundreds of thousands or even millions?’¹ Georg Bernhard, chief editor of the liberal broadsheet Vossische Zeitung, proudly summarized his conviction in the persuasive powers of the press when declaring in 1929 that the ‘German believes what his paper tells him’.² Ten years later, one of the first empirical studies of newspaper reception in Germany came to a very similar conclusion: ‘About 10 per cent of all newspaper readers believe what they read, but at least they analyse content critically. All other newspaper readers, however, accept every newspaper report as the pure truth.’³ Without first-hand experience of politics, readers’ views were shaped by press coverage. ‘The overwhelming majority of a nation knows of parliament only that which the newspaper reports’, the Berlin correspondent of the liberal Frankfurter Zeitung observed in 1927. ‘Reality is only the newspaper which people hold in their hands and which alone provides them with a view of the world . . . In a democratic state the press is by far the most important, indeed almost the only source of all opinions, sentiments and biases among the millions which ultimately have to make the decisions.’⁴ This confidence in the power of the press also motivated politicians and political interest groups to devote great attention to the press. They regarded the press as a tool, and press support as a prerequisite for electoral success. In many ways, this widespread utilitarian attitude to the institution of the press was carried over from the imperial era, but it was only now that the ‘mass production of public opinion’ assumed such crucial political importance.⁵ Yet

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contemporaries were also aware that public opinion was not exclusively a press product, and that the press itself reacted to trends in popular opinion. Ever since the publication of Ferdinand Tönnies’s Kritik der o¨ffentlichen Meinung from 1922 the question was debated as to whether there was such a thing as a (single) public opinion, and, if so, whether newspapers were creating or simply reflecting it.⁶ In defending Brüning’s emergency press decrees, the Social Democrat Carl Severing differentiated between the press as ‘maker of public opinion’ and as ‘mouthpiece of public opinion’.⁷ Journalists themselves felt this tension. During the controversy over several of George Grosz’s artworks in 1928, the art critic of Ullstein’s Vossische Zeitung, Max Osborn, criticized the publication of letters to the editor with an anti-Grosz slant. He conceded that they might reflect the view of the majority of the German population. But what was the ‘true and inner calling’ of a newspaper, he asked of his editor: ‘To follow the opinion of the masses? Or to lead them? To replace misled conventional opinion with a perspective of higher intellectual value?’ Obviously, Osborn conceived of himself as an opinion-former. In contrast, according to one of Osborn’s employers, Franz Ullstein, the press was not meant to lead public opinion but to mirror it.⁸ For one of the founding-fathers of German communication science, Karl Bücher, the truth lay somewhere inbetween these two positions: ‘The press becomes an organ of public opinion when it adopts currents of ideas emanating from the masses, providing them with shape and direction, [and] formulating demands towards the state on their basis . . . The people’s opinion only becomes ‘‘public opinion’’ by publication in newspapers.’⁹ But Bücher’s attempted synthesis of people’s, ‘public’, and published opinion failed to clarify the issue. For politicians, the centrality of the press in all of this was what mattered. Political actors throughout this period had a diffuse understanding of public opinion as a mixture of media opinion and public sentiment, as is evident in government files. Hermann Pünder, head of the Reich chancellory 1925–32, provided the head of government with a daily overview of the German press.¹⁰ In a typical letter written after his ‘usual breakfast reading’, Pünder informed the Reich chancellor about the latest press reactions to government policies, concluding that he and other government officials were ‘quite satisfied with the current state of public opinion’.¹¹ Without the availability of public opinion polls, newspapers served not only as sources of information about public opinion but even as surrogates for it.¹² Politicians thus turned into professional newspaper-readers. ‘I read mountains of newspapers every day’, noted Goebbels in his diary.¹³ Stresemann, too, engaged with a multitude of different papers, as is evident from his daily notes.¹⁴ In a libel trial against the reactionary Kreuz-Zeitung, Otto Braun stated his daily reading habits: ‘Every day, I read [various] publications of Social Democracy, of the Democrats, and the Deutsche Tageszeitung, of other newspapers I only read those sections which the press office marks for my attention.’¹⁵ His press office sent him masses of newspaper clippings covering the entire political spectrum, from the Communist

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Rote Fahne to Goebbels’s Angriff, which he read and annotated, as can be seen from his private papers.¹⁶ Braun was not an exception, newspaper-clipping collections figure largely in the private papers of many Weimar politicians. The Centre politician Wilhelm Marx, Hindenburg’s opponent for the presidency in 1925 and longest-serving Reich chancellor of the Weimar Republic, owned a collection of some 70,000 newspaper clippings.¹⁷ Articles dealing with individuals almost always reached the desk of the parliamentarian concerned. Caricatures in particular enjoyed a high degree of attention among politicians.¹⁸ Media reports served political decision-makers as an indicator for their own public standing, and as sounding boards for speculations about the reaction of the wider public to particular events and policies presented in the media.¹⁹ This was the reason why nobody was as affected by allegedly distorted newspaper reports as politicians, who often complained about being misrepresented in the press.²⁰ Political protagonists were most influenced by what they imagined the effect of press reports on the wider population to be. As modern media science has shown, this imaginary perception of press influence is affected by two further factors: the general overestimation of media effects on others; and the specific nature of media consumption by decision-makers. The role of propaganda in the outcome of the world war confirmed many contemporaries in their assumption that ‘the masses’ were helpless subjects of the persuasive and manipulative powers of the mass media.²¹ In fact, political actors usually considered press reports more important than the everyday newspaper-reader, because they assumed subconsciously that everyone else was following press coverage as closely and intensely as they were themselves.²² This was a misconception. We know from the Communist reader survey in 1924 that newspaper readers actively chose from a wide range of offerings, and generally showed much less interest in the political section of a newspaper.²³ Political decision-makers, on the other hand, were provided with newspaper clippings or press reports by their staff, in other words with a preselection and thematic concentration of news. Politicians thus suffered from a triple delusion: the mistaken belief that the press provided an accurate representation of people’s opinions; the assumption that the majority of the public was consuming similar amounts of news reports with an interest similar to their own; and the misconception that the population was reacting to reports as strongly as they imagined.²⁴ The people most affected by press reports were all those who, like politicians, had to deal with newspapers as part of their profession. This was true in particular of journalists. One editor recalled in his memoirs how his new job changed his reading habits: ‘What was new for me was the abundance of newspapers which could and had to be read, partly to keep generally informed and to observe the competitors, partly to find out where and how to respond with a leading article or a squib.’²⁵ Perceiving themselves as political actors in their own right, journalists felt called upon to counter negative publicity by ‘hostile’ papers. As described in the preceding chapters, this often led to a vicious circle of press polemics and

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recriminations. This system of self-reference resulted in a strongly antagonistic nature of published political discourse, particularly in Berlin’s elite political papers, those read primarily by decision-makers. In general, the tone in which political newspapers attacked each other was significantly more vicious than that of parliamentary discourse. This was not only a result of ideology but also of the job profile. The difference between politicians and political editors was that editors did not usually have to compromise. Friedrich Stampfer, chief editor of the SPD organ Vorwärts, explained to colleagues why he suffered under coalition politics: ‘When we are in opposition, it means good times for the editorial staff of Vorwärts. But the moment we are back in government, it hails attacks on them.’²⁶ In their daily work, journalists could cope without coalitions and compromise. They disliked being on the defensive, and they thrived on conflict. In his memoirs, Otto Braun describes how after Brüning’s assumption of office the elation of oppositional independence in the SPD press created great problems for his Prussian coalition with the Centre party. Opposition parties in the Prussian parliament frequently quoted aggressive SPD press attacks on Brüning, and lambasted Prussian Centre politicians for sticking to their Social Democratic coalition partners.²⁷ This was not an unusual practice. On the contrary, according to a close associate of Hugenberg, politicians derived the greatest part of their knowledge for parliamentary discussions from the press.²⁸ At the same time, the partisan coverage of parliamentary debates influenced politicians’ behaviour in parliament. Some politicians and editors complained about this partisanship, which always emphasized the contributions of speakers of a newspaper’s own political leaning, while suppressing or distorting the contributions of political opponents.²⁹ This made nonsense of parliamentary debate, as Tucholsky complained: ‘I know fully well that speeches in the Reichstag are given for public consumption—but there is no public! The Communist speaks for his party paper; the National Socialist too; the Hugenbergfollower too . . . So for whom does the man speak?’³⁰ In fact, all parliamentarians spoke for an imaginary public, one shaped primarily through their reading of politically supportive newspapers. Even the most radical and unpopular splinter group had some publication which suggested to its readers that they represented a significant political public. This ‘Potemkins’ public’ provided by partisan newspapers encouraged political decision-makers to pronounce and uphold minority positions regardless of the views of the wider population. Press reports had an immediate effect on parliament. In the context of late twentieth-century politics, media scientists have found numerous indications of the considerable impact of media coverage on policy-makers.³¹ Already in the 1920s, political actors interacted closely with the press. Published opinion found its way into parliament in the shape of particular terms and slogans, in specific lines of argument, or more generally by numerous references to news reports. Some of the worst parliamentary speeches were, it was said, based on cutting and pasting, ‘put together from a number of leading articles which the speaker

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has carefully cut from various newspapers and lined up more or less without coherence’.³² Further research into the relationship between press coverage and the language and priorities of parliamentary discourse will be needed to enhance our understanding of political communication in the 1920s and early 1930s. This would help to explain one of the crucial features of political culture in this period, the preponderance of conflict over consensus, from which parliamentary democracy constantly suffered even during the stable years of the Weimar Republic.³³ There are good reasons to believe that this parliamentary culture of antagonism was not simply a result of the lack of democratic experience prior to 1918, but was encouraged and practised on a daily basis on the pages of political newspapers. There is a wonderfully poignant visualization of this symbiotic relationship between journalists and politicans, of press and politics, in the Weimar Republic: George Grosz’s painting Pillars of Society from 1926. On the left, one of the five depicted establishment figures is a journalist with Hugenberg’s features. He carries four Berlin newspapers under his arm: the nationalist Deutsche Zeitung, Mosse’s tabloid 8-Uhr-Abendblatt, the Ullstein tabloid BZ am Mittag, and Hugenberg’s Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger. For Grosz, these were all part of one and the same reactionary establishment press. The headlines caricature their editorial policies: the sensationalist 8-Uhr-Abendblatt sells a ‘gruesome child murder’; the blood-stained capitalist Lokal-Anzeiger engages in its usual Communist-bashing (‘Tomorrow’s Communist demonstrations—Sufficient police protection’). There are bloodstains, too, on the palm branch that the journalist is holding in his left hand, a bitter iconographical twist to the traditional symbol of triumph and victory. On his head, the journalist wears a chamber pot, decorated by an Iron Cross in barely visible traces. This was meant as an allusion to the steel helmet worn by German soldiers during the First World War, which by 1926 had come to stand for right-wing reactionary politics as embodied in the veterans’ association, Stahlhelm. In Grosz’s painting, the establishment journalist thus appears as an anti-Communist ideological fighter. His pendant is the member of parliament, leaning on the Reichstag, on the painting’s right. Sporting the old imperial flag (symbol for the right-wing DNVP) as well as an anti-Spartacus leaflet from 1918–19 issued by the Social Democratic government, this politician embodies the establishment parties dominating the Reichstag. The top of his head is cut off, and allows us a view of his most important feature, his brain: a heap of steaming excrements. Clearly, the contents of the journalist’s chamber pot had been put to good use. T H E DY N A M I C S O F P O L I T I C A L C O M M U N I C AT I O N Paradoxically, newspapers wielded a considerable degree of influence because, like George Grosz, decision-makers strongly believed in the manipulative powers

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Fig. 7.1. George Grosz, Pillars of Society [Stützen der Gesellschaft]. Oil on canvas, 1926, 200 × 108 cm; Nationalgalerie Berlin.  The Estate of George Grosz, Princeton/New Jersey, USA.

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of the press. Published opinion thus acquired a political significance which was completely unrelated to its actual and immediate impact on the reading population. Of course, historians are unable to measure with precision press influence on the population at large; for the last six decades, media scientists have struggled to quantify the exact impact of any given media message on a media consumer. While media scientists have poll data, focus groups, and controlled experiments, historians rely on even more circumstantial material. This study has primarily been based on the analysis of commentaries and news coverage in contemporary newspapers, which provides us with an indication of media resonance, as it shows how individual editors engaged with news reporting found in different papers. Apart from newspapers, this study has drawn on contemporaries’ memoirs, letters, and private papers. Most of these, however, are from individual politicians or editors. Although they reflect an intensive preoccupation with press reporting, they cannot be taken to be representative of the general population during the Weimar Republic. There is a distinct lack of published sources for the everyday experience of ordinary Germans.³⁴ However, the years 1919–32 saw a multitude of electoral decisions, at Reichstag, state, local, and presidential elections, as well as several major referenda. As discussed in the preceding chapters, electoral recommendations by newspapers and electoral decisions by individual voters were not linked in a clear and unambiguous way. Especially towards the end of the 1920s and in the early 1930s, newspaper circulation and parliamentary representation seemed to be entirely unrelated. Apparently readers had abandoned their belief in newspaper content, as one editor observed in his memoirs, ‘when the masses bought, subscribed to and read liberal newspapers as before, but then voted absolutely anti-liberal’.³⁵ However, just because contemporaries did not slavishly follow the electoral recommendations of their newspapers, it would be too simplistic to conclude that the press had no influence on the wider population. Already in 1926, commenting on the revelation of Hugenberg’s press concern, the left-wing journal Weltbühne emphasized that press influence on public opinion was a very circumstantial process. ‘Newspapers do not make ‘‘public opinion’’, they are not in a position to do so. They can only win over the leaders, the spokespeople of lobbying groups, and with those the group of those led.’³⁶ Some thirty years after this observation, the communication scientists Paul Lazarsfeld and Elihu Katz published a pioneering work on the importance of interpersonal communication for the reception of political messages. According to Katz and Lazarsfeld, people’s reactions to particular media messages were significantly shaped by the influence of so-called ‘opinion leaders’. Media messages, they claimed, trickled down through these ‘opinion leaders’, who used the mass media more than the average person, had more social contacts, were perceived by others to be influential, and—in the case of political issues—had a higher social status.³⁷ The ‘two-step-flow model’ of Katz and Lazarsfeld is useful in an analysis of Weimar Germany’s political culture. Already prior to 1914, political

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discussions among workers were informed by newspaper-reading. As shown in Chapter 4, citizens who were politically active on a local level used information and arguments provided by their daily papers for their speeches at election rallies. Recent literature on rural Germany has emphasized the political importance of such ‘opinion leaders’ within the social hierarchy of small communities, where landowners, pastors, and schoolteachers had a disproportionate influence on political processes. In small provincial towns, too, the role of well-informed opinion leaders mattered greatly. Once local leaders, enjoying respectability and influence, had been won over to Nazism, further converts often followed rapidly. Such opinion leaders, who considered themselves political actors on a small scale, probably consumed and viewed the press in a manner similar to that of professional politicians, and were therefore equally susceptible to newspaper influence.³⁸ Factors such as social status, education, intensity of media consumption, interpersonal communications, and group membership indicate that media reception is, and was, a dynamic process taking place within a particular social context. At the same time, this social context and the perception of the socially and politically acceptable is itself influenced by the media. According to one leading communication theorist, people’s willingness to declare their political convictions in public depends on their perception of the dominant public view. For fear of social isolation, people tend to withhold their opinions if they perceive them to contradict the majority view. Based on this hypothesis of silence, a more vocal camp will generally appear to be stronger: ‘Observations made in one context spread to another and encouraged people either to proclaim their views or to swallow them and keep quiet until, in a spiraling process, the one view dominated the public scene and the other disappeared from public awareness as its adherents became mute.’³⁹ Noelle-Neumann calls this dynamic the ‘spiral of silence’. Within this process, the media play the deciding role: ‘I have never found a spiral of silence that goes against the tenor of the media.’⁴⁰ Often challenged and partly disproved, Noelle-Neumann’s ‘spiral-of-silence theory’ is still acclaimed as ‘the major theory on public opinion in the communications field’.⁴¹ Within the fragmented and polarized context of the Weimar press, ‘the tenor of the media’ was not one clearly discernible entity, but existed in countless different, contradictory, and mutually hostile communication networks. Newspaper-readers in Angermünde perceived a completely different kind of media tenor from those Berliners who primarily read Münzenberg’s Communist Welt am Abend. As the right-wing Angermünder Zeitung had no local competitors, its news coverage remained essentially unchallenged, and quite possibly set in motion a ‘spiral of silence’ process among supporters of parliamentary democracy in Angermünde. In Berlin, however, the Welt am Abend competed with many other papers, not least by engaging in competitive polemics in an attempt to undermine their credibility. Here, the press did not set in motion a ‘spiral

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of silence’. On the contrary, newspapers acted as amplifiers of elite conflicts, magnifying and reinforcing existing political divisions. However, even in this cacophony of contradictory press opinions, there was a certain amount of media consonance. There was one topic on which all newspapers agreed, namely the existence of political discord among the German population. The Social Democrat Paul Löbe was convinced that the press played an active role in nourishing this perception of conflict: ‘Whoever deplores the fateful dogmatism and baleful divisions of our people and the spiteful manner of political contest, always has to remember that one of the prime causes of this degeneration . . . is the press.’⁴² Many contemporaries both perceived and deplored the political cleavages which apparently ‘divided’ German society. The present state of affairs was compared unfavourably with the so-called ‘spirit of 1914’, the alleged national unity at the outbreak of war. As recent research has shown, the ‘August experience’ and the later memories of the ‘national community’ were themselves largely products of a partisan media.⁴³ They did, however, have a very real influence on contemporaries’ political expectations. Already in 1925, the Hindenburg election showed the rallying potential of a mixture of above-party patriotism under one ‘Führer’. Within a substantial part of the population, the search for new political foundations and new values resulted in a longing for a ‘Volksgemeinschaft’. In Nazi propaganda, ‘Volksgemeinschaft’ played a crucial role. Together with the leadership principle, it made up the NSDAP’s ‘positive’ alternative to the existing parliamentary ‘system’. As the only alternative to the KPD as an antiestablishment party, the Nazis were in a good position to benefit from an increasing political demand for patriotic unity from those protest voters who searched for a radical party, but who abhorred the Marxist concept of class struggle.⁴⁴

T H E W E I M A R R E P U B L I C I N T H E EY E S OF THE BEHOLDER Personal experience is crucial for the processing of information taken from the media.⁴⁵ However, in the case of parliamentary democracy in the Weimar Republic, personal experience was the exception. The vast majority of people, whether in Angermünde or Berlin, relied on newspapers for information on German politics. This did not mean that they simply took media representations for reality. They actively processed information, put it into the context of similar cases, and connected it to previous events. Most of their experience of context and previous events was received from the press, hence contemporaries interpreted political news predominantly on the basis of previous press reports. These interpretations led to personal conclusions and ideas, which again influenced

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individuals’ readings of further events.⁴⁶ Even those few journalists who were sceptical about the direct political impact on readers were aware that they were contributing to a continuous, dynamic process of opinion-formation: ‘The reader is induced to alter, to retouch the view of the world as it is presented by his newspaper so long until it conforms to his own views . . . The reader is able . . . to compare the image of world events and world affairs as reproduced by the newspaper with the ideal image offered by the newspaper writer and to set against this the world view produced by himself.’⁴⁷ Contemporaries did not adopt certain convictions and beliefs—such as the ineffectiveness of parliamentary democracy—because the press kept repeating such points. They arrived at such conclusions themselves, on the basis of their own daily observations of press reports, thereby forming their ‘own’ opinion.⁴⁸ In 1922, Ferdinand Tönnies described this exchange between published and personal opinion in his pioneering study of public opinion: ‘The average newspaper reader wants to find his own opinion . . . expressed, clarified, confirmed in ‘‘his’’ paper; in order to be encouraged and strengthened in turn in his own opinion.’⁴⁹ This was not just an academic’s opinion. In 1931, the chief editor of the right-wing Deutsche Tageszeitung complained that ‘a large part of the audience today does not demand information from the newspaper, but confirmation of their own opinion, sentiment, and cheap propaganda’.⁵⁰ The press was therefore not in a position to manipulate its readership at will, especially not when attempting to override existing convictions and assumptions. ‘Newspapers cannot . . . oppose abruptly a wide-spread opinion, because readers would run away in droves and [thereby] strip the paper of its resonance’, noted the Weltbühne already in 1926. However, it was convinced that newspapers did have a crucial influence: ‘But newspapers can indeed redirect a ‘‘people’s opinion’’, [they] can pave the way for gradual change.’⁵¹ One example of such a long-term media influence on the perception of political realities was the public standing of the Republic’s judiciary. Most Germans did not come into conflict with the law, and were therefore not in a position to make a personal judgement on the proper functioning of the legal system. However, since the publication of Ernst Gumbel’s book Zwei Jahre Mord in 1921, the accusation that judges passed sentences on the basis of their right-wing political preferences had become part of the public domain.⁵² Contemporaries did not have to read the book themselves to learn about its content, as it was widely quoted and discussed in, and partly decried by, the press; Gumbel himself became a contributor to Münzenberg’s Communist Berlin am Morgen. Once the floodgates of criticism had been opened, newspaper readers could pick and choose from a wide range of reports highlighting the judiciary’s failings. Contrary to what historical research into Weimar’s judiciary would make us believe, such reports were not exclusively left wing in character. The attempts by national and provincial governments to rectify obvious political abuse of the judicial system, often at the urging of Social Democrats and left-wing liberals, resulted in right-wing accusations of political interference

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with the judiciary’s independence, and found a literary equivalent to Gumbel in Gottfried Zarnow’s Gefesselte Justiz in 1930.⁵³ Goebbels’s Angriff printed numerous excerpts from it; other right-wing papers such as Hugenberg’s Tag, the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, the Deutsche Tageszeitung, and the Kreuz-Zeitung also devoted considerable coverage to it.⁵⁴ Everyone from the political Left to the political Right agreed on the existence of a ‘Justizkrise’, noted an editor in 1927.⁵⁵ This perception of crisis, however, was much influenced by the particular partisan press coverage of individual cases that journalists claimed were representative of the general situation. As a recent study has shown, political lawyers were fully aware of the propagandistic potential offered by such partisan media attention, and used the courtroom routinely as a stage for political demonstrations.⁵⁶ Newspaper reports always included references to trials of political opponents who had allegedly received minimal sentences, enabling readers to draw their own conclusions. ‘Large . . . sections of the German people take the simple facts, that the Communist Mordbrenner Hölz is running around freely . . . while the front-figher Schulz, who has been wounded sixty-four times in battle, is still serving his sentence, as evidence for the complete moral corruption of judiciary and Republic’, claimed the National Socialist Wilhelm Frick.⁵⁷ Frick’s statement highlights the fact that projected images did not necessarily have much grounding in reality; people were simply not in a position to ascertain their veracity. Those historians analysing the Weimar Republic’s judiciary all agree that National Socialists suffered least from German judges.⁵⁸ However, by news selection, contextualization, and repetition—or, in the terminology of media science, gate-keeping, framing and priming—the press offered a convincing image of a judiciary in crisis.⁵⁹ The inevitable result was that the legitimacy of the Weimar legal system, in the eyes of the population, was severely undermined.⁶⁰ Another example, even more crucial for the fate of Weimar democracy, was the mass-mediated threat of Communist violence. It is probable that readers’ reception of the press portrayal of the May riots in 1929 was informed by their views on the Spartacus uprising in 1919. Repeated news of alleged KPD putsch plans recalled the same precedents, and were seemingly substantiated by a plethora of reports on acts of violence by individual Communists. These were not simply media inventions. In the space of three months in 1931, the police and judiciary prosecuted over 2,000 incidents of political hooliganism by KPD members. This was not just the result of the political priorities of police and judiciary but also of the propagation of the ‘armed struggle against fascism’ by the KPD leadership.⁶¹ But the focus on Communist violence made it easy to agree with Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe reading of particularly spectacular acts of terror, such as the shooting of two police officers in Berlin in August 1931, as ‘planned preparations towards civil war’, and helped to confirm the convictions of all those who considered the Communists to be a far greater threat than the National Socialists.⁶²

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The vast majority of Germans did not personally experience Communist violence, as most incidents happened in bigger cities, and even here they were concentrated in particular hot spots.⁶³ Contemporaries’ perceptions of Communist violence largely relied on press reports, as with the May riots in 1929. These, in turn, provided some of the context for Hitler’s oath on the ‘legality’ of the Nazi movement at the Leipzig trial in September 1930. Among political decision-makers, the contrast between the ‘revolutionary’ appearance of the KPD and the ‘legal’ course of the NSDAP led to the conviction that the Nazis were the lesser evil.⁶⁴ Historians have since discovered that there was little substance behind the KPD’s media image of being a revolutionary threat. In fact, the KPD was far from being in a position to stage a coup throughout the late years of the Weimar Republic. However, even if only an imaginary threat, it roused real fears among many contemporaries. This was not without consequences. In the first important report on the NSDAP to Washington, the American diplomat Wiley noted that that party served its own interests by magnifying the danger of large-scale Communist uprisings.⁶⁵ Nazi propaganda did not rely on abstract political concepts, but effectively exploited the existing anxieties of newspaper-readers: just a few days before this diplomatic report was written, many newspapers had carried news on Communist preparations for a coup which the police had allegedly managed to prevent just in time.⁶⁶ A vote for the Nazis, Kershaw notes, could easily seem like common sense.⁶⁷ Newspaper readers in Weimar Germany suffered from an excess of partisan information. Facts did not always help to form an ‘objective’ picture of political events, as one editor pointed out: ‘At times of political high tension it often appears to the reader who is not hard-nosed enough to read the truth between the lines as if there were no established facts any longer. So diametrically opposed are the accounts of the situation in the papers of the various [political] parties.’⁶⁸ From 1931, ‘truth’ seemed to become an obsolete concept altogether among journalists.⁶⁹ Even those contemporaries who read several newspapers at once in order to gain an overview were left confused when faced with the rise of Nazism. ‘For us, who were reading newspapers which all contradicted each other, the outcome of this election was as dreadful as it was incomprehensible’, recalled the writer Frank Thiess in April 1932.⁷⁰ Others found it less difficult to deal with contradictory reports. Elisabeth Gebensleben-von Alten, the wife of Brunswick’s deputy mayor, was an early supporter of National Socialism. She experienced with enthusiasm the major Nazi rally in Brunswick in October 1931, at which two workers were killed by members of the SA. She emphatically dismissed reports on this incident printed by the local SPD organ, the Volksfreund, and complained in a letter to her daughter: ‘When I read this I think I have lost my mind. That such lying should be possible! We have known for a long time that the Social Democrats are untruthful, but this is now the limit!’ Her own experience she found reflected more accurately in her own newspaper: ‘It is right and truthful what the [Braunschweiger] Landeszeitung

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writes.’ All this helped her to assess other media messages: ‘The speech by the Chancellor [Brüning] has not made much of an impression on us nationalists. After all we experience here the facts and know that the national idea is on the march and is becoming ever stronger until its eventual triumph. And it is high time, too, because we have just seen once more how much bolshevism has already infected the people.’⁷¹ The difference between Thiess and Gebensleben-von Alten was that the latter had adopted powerful concepts which helped to structure her perception of events and politics. Contemporaries were only starting to realize the importance of such concepts in mass politics. In 1922, the American Walter Lippmann published his seminal work in which he identified emotionally loaded ‘stereotypes’ as the cornerstone of public opinion.⁷² German journalists were also beginning to understand the process of stereotyping. ‘Faced with a confusing abundance of news which assails it every day, public opinion takes refuge by concentrating certain judgements which it has passed once . . . into slogans’, explained one newspaper expert in 1927.⁷³ Not surprisingly, such slogans became an inflationary phenomenon in the early 1930s. ‘In every time of unrest, whether political or economic, certain phrases appear’, one contributor to Mosse’s 8-Uhr-Abendblatt noted, ‘[s]logans, which originate in newspapers, party offices or the regulars’ tables in pubs, [and] which spread like thick fog enshrouding and obscuring the actual situation’.⁷⁴ Media scientists have found that such slogans, or stereotypes, are essential for the reduction and structuring of social complexities and prerequisites for communication and action. As today, in the Weimar Republic stereotypes were shaped and spread primarily by the mass media. In co-operation with politicians, partisan editors worked hard to offer simple labels for complex events. A scandal, for example, only became a scandal because someone attached the label ‘scandal’ to a particular set of facts and managed to convince others to adopt the same term.⁷⁵ The terminology of Weimar scandal-mongering thus indicates the existence of a right-wing tenor in the Weimar press. It is no coincidence that the affairs involving Barmat and Sklarek were generally labelled ‘scandals’, while the Ruhr funds, events in the Landespfandbriefanstalt bank, or the embezzlement of Osthilfe funds were ‘scandals’ only in the left-wing press. ‘Barmat’ and ‘Sklarek’ joined and reinforced existing press products such as ‘Dolchstoß’, ‘Novembermord ’ and ‘Novemberrepublik’, ‘Parteibonze’ and ‘System’. Such labels personalized and dramatized politics. They were not, as is sometimes assumed, inventions of Nazi propaganda. For years, they had been part of a right-wing vocabulary which had gained credibility through partisan press coverage, and which had been spread by the media.⁷⁶ By spring 1929, the ‘Justizkrise’ had been joined by a ‘Krise des Parlamentarismus’, which further contributed to the Republic’s loss of legitimacy. In itself, however, this would not have sufficed to sound the death-knell of parliamentary democracy in Germany. Recent research into the German phenomenon of ‘Politikverdrossenheit’, or ‘political dissatisfaction’, has highlighted that there

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is normally a gulf between the actual living circumstances of individuals and their perceptions of the effectiveness of state and politics. The divide between an individual’s own, relatively secure, position and his pessimistic vision of the world about him means that such views tend to remain without consequence; they lack the impetus provided by self-interest and true personal concern. In a situation in which individuals are personally affected by developments, support for the political status quo is swiftly eroded.⁷⁷ From 1929, the crisis of the German economy that affected millions of voters supplied such a catalyst. The overall impression provided by the press was that of a time of crisis. Readers were likely to accept this when they found corroborative indications of it in their own daily experience. In early 1931, Victor Klemperer noted in his diary: ‘Everywhere, in the newspaper, in one’s own experiences, . . . the gloomy threat of the general situation.’⁷⁸ With the deterioration of contemporaries’ economic circumstances, individual perceptions of the state and personal experience of its shortcomings often fused and convinced many Germans to turn their anti-democratic convictions into a vote against democracy. S A L E S M E N O F I D E O LO G Y In May 1925, Reich Chancellor Hans Luther addressed the annual conference of the German Press Association, and proclaimed: ‘The German press is a Weltanschauungspresse, and it is proud of it.’ The drawback of partisanship, Luther admitted, was the tendency to create small communities of faithful readers who allegedly believed everything the paper printed. To counter the danger of one-sided information, he suggested one should read two or three newspapers in parallel. In fact, he admitted, the German press would benefit from more objectivity. On the whole, however, the Reich chancellor was satisfied with the status quo, and described the relationship between government and the German press as a ‘happy marriage’ without the possibility of divorce.⁷⁹ A year later, he had to resign after a vote of no confidence in the Reichstag triggered by an energetic campaign by pro-republican newspapers attacking his flag decree, which allegedly undermined the Republic’s colours, black, red, and gold.⁸⁰ It was not a case of a happy marriage suddenly turned sour. Rather, ideology and partisanship in the German press meant that those in power had to face a varying degree of published hostility. Not only during the crisis years of the Weimar Republic but right from its revolutionary inception and throughout its allegedly ‘golden’ years, press polemic abounded. Observers claimed that never before in the history of the German press had it been so bad.⁸¹ The Social Democrat Paul Löbe, president of the Reichstag, deplored the lack of objectivity and warned of the consequences of partisan polemics: ‘The overwhelming majority [of newspaper readers] . . . has to take note on a daily basis that those with a different political attitude are

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usually ignorants, more often dimwits or fools, sometimes even a scoundrel who is consciously working towards the demise of his own people.’⁸² Germans were aware of an alternative style of journalism, that of the Anglo-American press, with its perceived emphasis on objectivity, facts, and titillating sensations. This alternative, however, was dismissed as a policy informed by commercialism and, hence, insufficiently political.⁸³ Objective, factual reporting was anathema, argued one editor in a book on newspapers: ‘News which present events in such an unclouded and unbiased fashion are only suitable for academic treatments. Newspapers can neither use them nor do they need them.’⁸⁴ Although deploring the effects of a partisan press, German politicians largely agreed that a thoroughly objective press was undesirable as it was thought it would be too ‘boring’.⁸⁵ There was a widespread consensus that the press must be politicized in order to fulfil its function in society. Obviously, objectivity and partisanship are two mutually exclusive concepts. However, contemporaries seemed convinced that they could be reconciled, by appealing to journalists’ sense of responsibility and decency.⁸⁶ These pleas were bound to fall on deaf ears in times of political controversy, when readers could generally not trust the information provided by their papers. What they were offered, in the words of a former editor of the liberal Berliner Tageblatt, was ‘moulded truth’.⁸⁷ As one Hugenberg editor explained, the term ‘lie’, with its moral implications, was not appropriate: ‘If the objective is an honest and good one, the distortion of a fact has to be accepted for marketing purposes.’⁸⁸ Recriminations in the press, however, always aimed at the moral condemnation of the opposite camp. ‘The left-wing press . . . remains true to its method of lying and falsifying and of obfuscating the true facts of the case’, was the typical complaint of a right-wing editor during the Magdeburg trial in 1924.⁸⁹ It was always the ‘others’ who got it wrong: Communist papers attacked the ‘bourgeois press’ for lying; Goebbels castigated the ‘Jewish-Marxist press’; liberal and SPD papers denounced the ‘Rechtspresse’. These accusations do not only indicate the lack of reliability in news reporting in this period. They also highlight the structure of political cleavages in the German press. The label ‘Linkspresse’ used by the right-wing press to denigrate an imaginary collective of liberal and left-wing newspapers was not without an element of truth. Political cleavages were indeed apparent in the careers of various Berlin editors. Left-wing intellectuals changed swiftly between liberal, left-wing, and Münzenberg’s Communist newspapers, but never worked for right-wing papers. Kurt Tucholsky, for example, wrote for both the Ullstein and the Communist Münzenberg publishing house. Ullstein also recognized the talents of Franz Höllering, editor of Münzenberg’s successful Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung, and poached him. He became chief editor of Ullstein’s BZ am Mittag in 1930, only to be fired in December 1931 to appease the Reich government. Another prominent left-wing Ullstein editor sacked in 1931, the film reviewer Heinz Pol, joined Münzenberg’s Welt am Abend in 1932. In the early 1920s, Carl von

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Ossietzky was an editor at Mosse’s Berliner Volks-Zeitung before moving on to the left-wing weekly journal Weltbühne. Kurt Caro, who had left the Welt am Abend in May 1929 in protest over KPD interference, became Otto Nuschke’s successor at Mosse’s Berliner Volks-Zeitung. One of the Republic’s best-known cartoonists, Ludwig Wronkow, recalled the financial advantages of being a leftliberal journalist in those years: ‘After the Berliner Volks-Zeitung had printed one of my cartoons, I’d run over to Münzenberg and sell it to him [too].’⁹⁰ Within the ‘Rechtspresse’, too, journalists felt that they belonged to a wider political family. Many Hugenberg editors had a military background, useful conservative patrons and connections, or had worked for lesser right-wing newspapers before joining the Scherl company. One of Hugenberg’s star polemicists, Adolf Stein, had been poached from the industrialist Hugo Stinnes’s Tägliche Rundschau in the early 1920s.⁹¹ When Goebbels started publishing his Angriff in 1927, he employed Julius Lippert as chief editor, who had previously worked for the völkisch Deutsches Tageblatt.⁹² These interchanges were possible because of a general political consensus which existed in right-wing editorial offices, a shared Weltanschauung. According to Tucholsky, all editorial offices were staffed through a system of self-selection: ‘Whoever joins the editorial staff of the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung knows in advance what is awaiting him there; he would not apply in the first place if he did not agree with the principles of the politics which are promoted there.’⁹³ The same was true of Hugenberg’s editorial staff. ‘A person, a Social Democrat, who could have worked for Vorwärts, would not have felt comfortable’, explained one editor of Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe.⁹⁴ Only Mosse’s Berliner Tageblatt, Germany’s most prestigious newspaper, proved attractive beyond political convictions. Even Goebbels applied for a position on the paper before his political career took off. Nor was he the only one; in 1927, Theodor Wolff claimed that he was receiving numerous applications from members of Hugenberg’s staff.⁹⁵ Generally, however, there existed a clear and unbridgeable political division between left- and right-wing editorial staff. G OV E R N I N G T H E P R E S S The Weltanschauung basis of journalism was, in fact, at the core of a structural crisis of the German media system. Reaching a wider reading public through the fragmented and partisan German press proved very difficult for Weimar politicians, who became increasingly frustrated by the omissions, distortions, and polemics that dogged their efforts and decried their achievements. As a consequence, they soon discovered the advantages of a new communication technology, radio broadcasting. This offered the advantages of state control and, despite a regional set-up, an attractive degree of centralization.⁹⁶ The first indication of the growing importance of radio broadcasting for state propaganda

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came in October 1929, when the SPD-led Reich government took to the airwaves in an attempt to counter the press campaign unleashed by Hugenberg. Brüning and Groener, too, tried to address the nation directly through the new medium on several occasions. Tellingly, Papen’s government declaration in early June 1932 was the first not to be delivered in the Reichstag but through radio; later that year, speeches by Papen were broadcast by all German radio stations after his Prussia coup, at the occasion of the dissolution of the Reichstag in September, and prior to the Reichstag elections of November.⁹⁷ However, the effectiveness of such broadcasts was still limited. Of over sixtytwo million Germans, only three to four million listeners were registered between 1929 and 1932. In order fully to exploit the propagandistic potential of radio after 1933, the Nazis had to promote cheap receivers, the so-called ‘Volksempfänger’, and not until 1939 did 70 per cent of German homes have a radio. Also, even more than in the case of the press, audiences used the new medium primarily for entertainment, and particularly disliked to be troubled by lectures or speeches of any kind.⁹⁸ ‘We newspaper people . . . know a thing or two about the little interest of audiences for the speeches of our people’s tribunes’, commented a journalist on the suggestion of regularly broadcasting parliamentary debates in early 1929.⁹⁹ For politicians, the ‘public’ proved an elusive audience. The dysfunctional relationship between the press and politics was also evident in the numerous efforts by politicians to curtail press freedom. Of course, the history of the media has always been the history of state attempts to control the media, too, and restrictions on the freedom of the press during the Weimar years were in many ways the latest manifestations of a long German tradition of state censorship and media manipulation.¹⁰⁰ But the so-called ‘Republikschutzgesetz’, the ‘Law for the Protection of the Republic’, was of a different nature. With it, democrats tried to protect themselves from the worst excesses of press polemics which had created the climate in which the murders of Erzberger and Rathenau had taken place.¹⁰¹ No other Western liberal democracy in this period witnessed this joining of democratic forces, from Socialists to Liberals, intended to pass a law curtailing press freedom. This pro-republican legislation, however, proved ineffective. While opening the door to the persecution of the Communist press, the Republic’s conservative judiciary rarely handed out harsh sentences against the right-wing press. Over 200 libel suits filed by Friedrich Ebert showed that many editors considered going to trial a calculable risk. Also, radical papers often appointed members of parliament as their managing editors to benefit from their immunity. Even when immunity was lifted after a cumbersome process, managing editors rarely had to spend time in prison. As press insults were considered political offences, each of the many political amnesties helped radical editors to get off the hook. As Goebbels demonstrated, delaying proceedings and waiting to be elected into a new parliament with

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renewed immunity was often all that was needed to escape any punishment whatsoever.¹⁰² The predominance of right-wing and anti-SPD bourgeois papers meant that Social Democratic governments in particular were faced with a hostile press. Social Democrats were convinced that their party suffered from negative press coverage, and therefore made various attempts to fight back. Prior to the Reichstag elections in 1928, the Prussian government took action against some anti-republican Kreisblätter.¹⁰³ These local district dailies depended largely on the income generated through the publication of district and local authorities’ news and decrees. By withdrawing the status of a semi-official publication, the government could cause the financial ruin of these papers. Faced with the vicious press campaign against the Young Plan in 1929, the SPD Reich government issued a decree stipulating that official announcements and advertisements would only be published in newspapers which did not ‘denigrate the politics of government and government members in an unobjective and spiteful manner’.¹⁰⁴ Hugenberg’s Scherl publishing house was severely affected by this decision. In a time of collapsing advertising revenues due to economic recession, the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger lost an estimated additional RM 400,000 in 1930 because of the withdrawal of official announcements.¹⁰⁵ However, neither financial nor judicial measures really had much effect on editorial policies and press polemics. By the early 1930s, after years of exposure to ubiquitous polemics, democratic politicians had become sceptical about the freedom of the press. The SPD prime minister of Prussia, Otto Braun, thought it had developed into a ‘freedom for lying and slander’ and ‘the most poisonous weapon against democracy’.¹⁰⁶ It is therefore not surprising that Social Democrats joined forces with Brüning in 1931 to curtail press freedom further. Even liberal newspapers recognized the government’s justification for acting against the press. ‘In order to protect itself effectively against lies and slander, the state has to be allowed to compromise basic rights, like the freedom of the press’, stated Mosse’s Berliner Tageblatt in July 1931.¹⁰⁷ At the same time, it recognized that Germany was going down a dangerous road. It estimated that up to 100 newspapers were banned per month in the whole of Germany. The method of ‘systematic newspaper bans’, it pointed out, was the same used in dictatorships in Italy and the Soviet Union. Unease with the government’s growing power over the press increased in the wake of Brüning’s second emergency decree ‘against excesses in the press’ in the wake of the banking crisis of summer 1931. Liberals realized that the decree was aimed against the radical press, but there was no guarantee that the legislation could not be used against democratic newspapers, too. Mosse’s Berliner Tageblatt proclaimed the ‘end of freedom’.¹⁰⁸ Democrats faced the dilemma that once they had acknowledged that the partisan nature of the press necessitated brakes on the freedom of opinion, there was little they could do to prevent an increasingly authoritarian use of these press controls. In August 1931, when the Social Democratic Prussian government

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under Otto Braun applied the new press emergency decree to fight the extremist referendum calling for the dissolution of the Prussian parliament, the decree was changed immediately by the Brüning government. Länder authorities were now only allowed to enforce announcements in agreement with the Reich interior minister. Two months later, another emergency decree threatened journalists with prosecution for high treason if they revealed confidential government plans. In November 1931, the prison sentence against Carl von Ossietzky, chief editor of the left-wing Weltbühne, signalled that even die-hard democrats now had to be careful about what they wrote. According to one liberal journalist, from autumn 1931 Germany featured a wholesale ‘press persecution and press suppression law’.¹⁰⁹ Under the Papen government, state prosecution of the press reached a preliminary climax. Tools designed to reign in the radical press were now increasingly used against democratic newspapers, too. One of the first acts of the new Reich government under von Papen was to suppress the SPD party organ Vorwärts for a caricature criticizing the lifting of the SA ban. Other prominent vicitims were left-liberal mass papers critical of Nazism. Mosse’s Berliner Volks-Zeitung was proscribed twice, in July and in September 1932. Mosse’s 8-Uhr-Abendblatt was forbidden for a caricature showing Papen being asked by his wife at dinner what emergency decrees he had issued that day.¹¹⁰ From 30 January 1933, Hitler’s government simply expanded a wellestablished government practice. The Communist Rote Fahne, which had called for a general strike on 31 January, was immediately banned; three days later, Vorwärts was suppressed for exhorting its readers to defend their rights as citizens.¹¹¹ By this stage, such bans were no longer considered a political novelty, but a continuation of authoritarian press politics. However, the new government soon began to prepare legislation to resolve, once and for all, the problems caused by the partisan press. Hitler’s and Goebbels’s annoyance about the ‘increasingly impertinent tone of the Jewish gutter press’ led to the emergency decree ‘For the Protection of the German People’ of 4 February 1933. It permitted bans for ‘incorrect news’; Nazi Reich interior minister Frick decided on what was considered incorrect.¹¹² ‘Now we also have a lever against the press’, Goebbels gloated in his diary, ‘and now bans will pop like crazy. Vorwärts and 8-UhrAbendblatt, all those Jewish organs which caused us so much trouble and grief, will disappear all at once from the streets of Berlin.’¹¹³ Indeed, apart from the KPD and SPD organs, Mosse’s 8-Uhr-Abendblatt and Ullstein’s Tempo were banned for several days in February 1933. The free space for the media in Germany was finally liquidated by the Nazi version of the Republikschutzgesetz, the decree ‘For the Protection of People and State’ of 28 February 1933, issued immediately after the Reichstag fire. Vorwärts and Rote Fahne were not to appear again. Just prior to the final democratic Reichstag elections of 5 March 1933, editors all over Germany knew that their papers could be banned at the whim of a government official.¹¹⁴

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C O N S E QU E N C E S The extinction of press freedom in Germany in the early 1930s has to be seen as the result of an endogenous crisis of a political-media system; a crisis which had smouldered ever since the revolutionary establishment of the Weimar Republic. As the preceding chapters have demonstrated, the dysfunctional relationship between press and politics played a crucial role in the undermining of the political legitimacy of parliamentary democracy, in bringing about Hitler, and with Hitler the end of press freedom. But with or without Hitler, any government in charge after 1933 would have had to address the structural crisis of German Weltanschauung journalism. Ultimately, this crisis was solved only through the Allied occupation forces after 1945. Not only did they eliminate all branches of the Nazi communication system but also all miserable remnants of the traditional German press. There was widespread consensus on the the significance of this tabula rasa for a policy of democratization and reorientation; media policy became one of the central themes of occupation policies. The resulting structural transformation of the German press was so fundamental, that—contrary to most of the recent research emphasizing lines of continuity between the Third Reich and the Federal Republic—it is indeed possible to be describing the post-1945 situation as the ‘hour zero of the press’.¹¹⁵ The adage has it that newspapers provide the first draft of history. Indeed, some of the confusion and conflict evident in the Weimar press has trickled down into historians’ accounts of the Weimar Republic. Wessel, for example, was not a pimp; his murderer really was a member of the KPD.¹¹⁶ News was the result of a complex process of partisan selection, interpretation, and presentation within a media context of competing and mutually hostile communication networks. Historians can compensate for this partisanship by the time-consuming effort of collecting, comparing, and analysing material from a wide range of different sources, to extract historical ‘evidence’ which holds up to objective examination. Contemporaries, however, mainly had to make do with one source on a day-today basis, despite numerous calls from political experts that everyone ought to be reading at least two papers for a balanced overview.¹¹⁷ This does not mean that historical facts and events are of no relevance, on the contrary. The fact that Wessel was, indeed, murdered by a Communist allowed Goebbels to turn him into a party martyr, whilst the name Kütemeyer fell into oblivion. The Weimar judiciary was particularly right wing; there were several cases of corruption; there were, indeed, twenty different Reich governments between February 1919 and January 1933. Events matter as they constitute the starting-point for the process of ‘story-building’ in the media.¹¹⁸ However, historians always need to remind themselves that contemporaries in Weimar Germany perceived these events through the prism of a partisan press. It may be, as Rosenhaft has declared

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in her analysis of Communist violence, that ‘spontaneous risings are more the stuff of politicians’ fantasies than of historical reality’.¹¹⁹ However, as Lippmann had pointed out as early as 1922, ‘only our assumptions about reality count’.¹²⁰ Politicians’ ‘fantasies’ had very real political consequences, as did contemporaries’ perception of the political legitimacy of the Weimar Republic. The tradition of partisan reporting in Germany contributed significantly to the polarization of Weimar society and the escalation of political conflict. Conventional explanations of the fate of the Weimar Republic have focused on its ‘deficiencies’ in terms of an anti-republican army, judiciary, bureaucracy, and industry. These groups had greatly differing aims and ambitions, but they were bound together by their concurrent consumption of right-wing press narratives denigrating the achievements of parliamentary democracy. The partisan daily press was the key to the construction of this imagined community, and was crucial in sustaining and intensifying the ideological politics of this period. For lack of material evidence, historians have long tended to underestimate the impact of such media consumption on popular perceptions. Historical ‘facts’, however, were open to various interpretations already at the time at which they occurred. Conflicting accounts of events left their marks. Did Erzberger sacrifice German national interests? Was Ebert guilty of high treason; was the German army stabbed in the back? Were the Barmat and Sklarek scandals evidence of Social Democratic corruption? As with the Reichstag fire of February 1933, various readings of each event were offered and developed, and supported contradictory interpretations. One should not confuse the historian’s duty to ascertain facts with his ability to construct a definitive account of events which contemporaries would have accepted. Especially in a polarized society such as Weimar Germany, perceptions of what had apparently happened were often more important than what had really happened. However, it would be wrong to mistake the existence of an ideology-based, partisan press as being specifically German: despite its difference from the Anglo-American press, the Weimar press did not go down a journalistic German Sonderweg. In the 1930s, during the Spanish Civil War, George Orwell had similar experiences with the press: ‘[I]n Spain . . . I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened.’¹²¹ In a time of extreme political polarization, partisan news reporting is the rule, not the exception. The comment that truth becomes the first casualty in times of war has now attained the status of a cliché, substantiated by numerous studies.¹²² The Spanish experience left Orwell greatly troubled, because it gave him the

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feeling that the very concept of objective truth was fading out of the world, with consequences not just for the present but also for the future: ‘I saw . . . history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘‘party lines’’ ’.¹²³ It was the tragedy of the Weimar Republic that it was never able to break out of this vicious circle of partisan press reporting and ideological conflict.

Notes I N T RO D U C T I O N 1. Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes (Munich, 1922), ii. 579–81. 2. For the origins of the term ‘fourth estate’, see Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford, 2nd edn. 1989), v. 407; and Frank Bösch, ‘Volkstribune und Intellektuelle: W. T. Stead, Maximiliam Harden und die Transformation des politischen Journalismus in Deutschland und Grossbritannien’, in Clemens Zimmermann (ed.), Politischer ¨ Journalismus, Offentlichkeiten und Medien im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Ostfildern, 2006), 100–2. 3. See Jürgen Falter and Michael Kater, ‘Wähler und Mitglieder der NSDAP. Neue Forschungsergebnisse zur Soziographie des Nationalsozialismus 1925 bis 1933’, GG, 19 (1993), 155–77; Richard F. Hamilton, Who Voted for Hitler? (Princeton, NJ, 1982); Jürgen Falter, Hitlers Wähler (Munich, 1991), 327–39, 374. 4. See John A. Leopold, Alfred Hugenberg. The Radical Nationalist Campaign against the Weimar Republic (New Haven, 1977), 60. For typical accounts emphasizing the importance of Hugenberg’s press support, see Erich Eyck, Geschichte der Weimarer Republik (Zurich, 1962), i. 279, 350; Anthony Nicholls, Weimar and the Rise of Hitler (London, 1991 edn.), 114; Ian Kershaw, Hitler. 1889–1936: Hubris (London, 1998), 350. 5. Modris Eksteins, The Limits of Reason: The German Democratic Press and the Collapse of Weimar Democracy (Oxford, 1975), 192, 314. 6. Otto Groth, Die Zeitung. Ein System der Zeitungskunde (Mannheim, 1928), i. 207. 7. For an overview, see Karl Christian Führer, ‘Neue Literatur zur Geschichte der modernen Massenmedien Film, Hörfunk und Fernsehen’, Neue Politische Literatur, 46 (2001), 216–43; idem, ‘Auf dem Weg zur ‘‘Massenkultur’’? Kino und Rundfunk in der Weimarer Republik’, Historische Zeitschrift, 262 (1996), 739–81. 8. Karl Christian Führer, ‘A Medium of Modernity? Broadcasting in Weimar Germany, 1923–1932’, Journal of Modern History, 69 (1997), 731. 9. Newspaper circulation calculated to be 25 million for 1932 in Eberhard Georgii, ‘Zur Statistik der deutschen Zeitungen’, in Handbuch der deutschen Tagespresse (Berlin, 1932), 20; estimated at over 20 million for 1931, in Hans Kapfinger, ‘Die Struktur der katholischen Presse’, in Johann W. Naumann (ed.), Die Presse und der Katholik (Augsburg, 1932), 218. For a critique of these, see Karl Christian Führer, ‘Die Tageszeitung als wichtigstes Massenmedium der nationalsozialistischen Gesellschaft’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 55 (2007), 411–34, here 413–15. 10. For 352 million cinema ticktes sold in 1929, see Führer, ‘Auf dem Weg zur ‘‘Massenkultur’’?’, 746–7. 11. See Führer, ‘Tageszeitung’. 12. Max Weber, ‘Geschäftsbericht’, in Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie, Verhandlungen des Ersten Deutschen Soziologentages vom 19.–22. Oktober 1910 in Frankfurt am Main ( Tubingen, 1910), 39–62.

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Notes to pages 4–5

13. See Rüdiger vom Bruch, ‘Zeitungskunde und Soziologie. Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der beiden Disziplinen’, in Manfred Bobrowsky and Wolfgang Langenbucher (eds.), Wege zur Kommunikationsgeschichte (Munich, 1987), 138–50; Stefanie Averbeck, Kommunikation als Prozess. Soziologische Perspektiven in der Zeitungswissenschaft 1927–1934 (Münster, 1999), 46. 14. Otto Groth, Die Zeitung. Ein System der Zeitungskunde, 4 vols. (Mannheim, 1928–1930). 15. The recent adoption of the label ‘communication science’ by many institutes formerly operating under the name Publizistikwissenschaft underscores this self-understanding as a social science. On the distinction, see Gerhard Malet¨ zke, Kommunikationswissenschaft im Uberblick: Grundlagen, Probleme, Perspektiven (Opladen, 1998), 21–2. 16. Typical in this respect are the sweeping surveys of several centuries of press development with handbook character, like Heinz-Dietrich Fischer (ed.), Deutsche Zeitungen des 17. bis 20. Jahrhunderts (Pullach and Munich, 1972); Heinz-Dietrich Fischer (ed.), Handbuch der politischen Presse 1480–1980 (Dusseldorf, 1981); Jürgen Wilke, Grundzüge der Medien- und Kommunikationsgeschichte: von den Anfängen bis ins 20. Jahrhundert (Cologne, 2000). Cf. Kurt Koszyk, ‘Kommunikationsgeschichte als Sozialgeschichte’, in Max Kaase and Winfried Schulz (eds.), Massenkommunikation. Theorien, Methoden, Befunde (Opladen, 1989), 46–56. 17. Kurt Koszyk, Anfänge und frühe Entwicklung der sozialdemokratischen Presse im Ruhrgebiet 1875–1908 (Dortmund, 1953); idem, Zwischen Kaiserreich und Diktatur. Die sozialdemokratische Presse von 1914 bis 1933 (Heidelberg, 1958); idem, Deutsche Presse im 19. Jahrhundert. Geschichte der deutschen Presse Teil II (Berlin, 1966); idem, Deutsche Pressepolitik im Ersten Weltkrieg (Dusseldorf, 1968); idem, Deutsche Presse 1914–1945. Geschichte der deutschen Presse Teil III (Berlin, 1972). 18. Dankwart Guratzsch, Macht durch Organisation. Die Grundlegung des Hugenbergschen Presseimperiums (Dusseldorf, 1974); John A. Leopold, Alfred Hugenberg: The Radical Nationalist Campaign against the Weimar Republic (London, 1977); Heidrun Holzbach, Das ‘System Hugenberg’. Die Organisation bürgerlicher Sammlungspolitik vor dem Aufstieg der NSDAP (Stuttgart, 1981); Klaus Wernecke and Peter Heller, Der vergessene Führer Alfred Hugenberg. Pressemacht und Nationalsozialismus (Hamburg, 1982). 19. See Nachlass Georg Bernhard, in Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde (BArchL), N2020 Bernhard, Nr.22, ff. 18, 22, 25; and Eksteins, Limits of Reason, 117. 20. Eksteins, Limits of Reason, 224–6. The diaries of Ernst Feder, one of the political editors of Mosse’s Berliner Tageblatt, provide a good chronicle of these tensions: Ernst Feder, Heute sprach ich mit . . . Tagebücher eines Berliner Publizisten 1926–1932 (Stuttgart, 1971). 21. Bernd Sösemann, Das Ende der Weimarer Republik in der Kritik demokratischer Publizisten. Theodor Wolff, Ernst Feder, Julius Elbau, Leopold Schwarzschild (Berlin, 1976); Bernd Sösemann, Theodor Wolff: Tagebücher 1914–1919 (Berlin, 1984); Bernd Sösemann, Theodor Wolff: Ein Leben mit der Zeitung (Berlin, 2001). 22. Eksteins, Limits of Reason. ¨ 23. Matthias Lau, Pressepolitik als Chance. Staatliche Offentlichkeitsarbeit in den Ländern der Weimarer Republik (Wiesbaden, 2003).


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24. Paul Hoser, Die politischen, wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Hintergründe der Münchener Tagespresse zwischen 1914 und 1934. Methoden der Pressebeeinflussung, 2 vols. (Frankfurt am Main, 1990); Michael Meyen, Leipzigs bürgerliche Presse in der Weimarer Republik. Wechselbeziehungen zwischen gesellschaftlichem Wandel und Zeitungsentwicklung (Leipzig, 1996); Gerd Meier, Zwischen Milieu und Markt. Tageszeitung in Ostwestfalen 1920–1970 (Paderborn, 1999). 25. Peter de Mendelssohn, Zeitungsstadt Berlin. Menschen und Mächte in der Geschichte der deutschen Presse (Berlin, 1959). 26. Peter Fritzsche, Reading Berlin 1900 (Cambridge, Mass., 1996). 27. Mendelssohn, Zeitungsstadt Berlin, 9. 28. Eksteins, Limits of Reason, p. vii. For typical studies of press coverage, see Florian Stadel, Die letzten freien Reichstagswahlen 1930/32 im Spiegel der deutschen Presse (Aachen, 1997); Kaaren Moores, Presse und Meinungsklima in der Weimarer Republik. Eine publizistikwissenschaftliche Untersuchung (Mainz, 1997); Heiko Harald Döscher, Hitlers Marsch in das Bewußtsein des Wählers: die Rolle der Zeitung (1932/33). Heimatpresse im Märkischen Sauerland 1932/33 als Quelle für den zeitgenössischen Zeitungsleser am Beispiel der Lokalzeitung ‘Allgemeiner Anzeiger’ und ‘Halversche Zeitung’ in Halver, Provinz Westfalen, Deutschland. Rekonstruktion eines zeitungswisschenschaftlich, zeitungskundlich und praxisbedingten Erkenntnisprozesses (Frankfurt am Main, 1996); Martina Pietsch, Zwischen Verachtung und Verehrung: Marschall Jósef Pilsudski im Spiegel der deutschen Presse 1926–1935 (Weimar, 1995); Burkhard Asmuss, Republik ohne Chance? Akzeptanz und Legitimation der Weimarer Republik in der deutschen Tagespresse zwischen 1918 und 1923 (Berlin, 1994); Peter Schumann, Die deutschen Historikertage von 1893 bis 1937: die Geschichte einer fachhistorischen Institution im Spiegel der Presse (Göttingen, 1975). 29. Letter Rickert to Hugenberg, 30 June 1925, in Bundearchiv Koblenz (BArchK), N1231 Hugenberg, Nr. 25, f. 319. 30. Guratzsch, Macht durch Organisation, 342. 31. Cf. Meyen, Leipzigs bürgerliche Presse, 20–1. 32. Fritzsche, Reading Berlin 1900, 16–18; Bernhard Fulda, ‘Industries of Sensationalism: German Tabloids in the Interwar Period’, in Corey Ross and Karl Christian Führer (eds.), Mass Media, Culture and Society in Twentieth-Century Germany (Manchester, 2006), 188–9. 33. Rudolf Stöber, Die erfolgsverführte Nation. Deutschlands o¨ffentliche Stimmungen 1866–1945 (Stuttgart, 1998), 227, 269; Richard J. Evans (ed.), Kneipengespräche im Kaiserreich. Stimmungsberichte der Hamburger Politischen Polizei 1892–1914 (Hamburg, 1989), 30; Philipp Müller, Auf der Suche nach dem Täter. Die o¨ffentliche Dramatisierung von Verbrechen im Berlin des Kaiserreichs (Frankfurt, 2005), 316–17. For a highly informative analysis of newspaper reception based on pub conversations in Wilhelmine Germany, see Frank Bösch, ‘Zeitungsberichte im Alltagsgespräch: Mediennutzung, Medienwirkung und Kommunikation im Kaiserreich’, Publizistik, 49 (2004), 319–36. 34. See Wilhelm Mommsen, ‘Die Zeitung als historische Quelle’, in Emil Dovifat (ed.), Beiträge zur Zeitungswissenschaft. Festgabe für Karl d’Ester zum 70. Geburtstag (Münster, 1952), 165–72; Hans Bohrmann, ‘Methodenprobleme einer Kommunikationsgeschichtsschreibung’, in Bobrowsky, Wege zur Kommunikationsgeschichte, 44–8; Asmuss, Republik ohne Chance?, 18–22.

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35. Harold D. Lasswell, Nathan Leites, et al., Language of Politics: Studies in Quantitative Semantics (New York, 1949). Cf. Hansjörg Bessler, Aussagenanalyse. Die Messung von Einstellungen im Text der Aussagen von Massenmedien (Bielefeld, 1970), 39. ¨ 36. Cf. Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Für eine qualitative Inhaltsanalyse’, Asthetik und Kommunikation, 7 (1972), 53–8. 37. e.g. Ian Budge, Hans-Dieter Klingemann, et al., Mapping Policy Preferences. Estimates for Parties, Electors and Governments 1945–1998 (Oxford, 2001). 38. For a cogent critique of this study, see Anne Schmidt on Bernhard Rosenberger, Zeitungen als Kriegstreiber? Die Rolle der Presse im Vorfeld des Ersten Weltkrieges (Cologne, 1998), in H-Soz-u-Kult 06.04.1999. 39. Jeffrey Verhey, The Spirit of 1914: Militarism, Myth and Mobilization in Germany (Cambridge, 2000). 40. Cf. Frank Bösch, ‘Katalysator der Demokratisierung? Presse, Politik und Gesellschaft vor 1914’, in Frank Bösch, and Norbert Frei (eds.), Medialisierung und Demokratie im 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 2006), 25–47; idem, ‘Volkstribune und Intellektuelle’; idem, ‘Krupps ‘‘Kornwalzer’’: Formen und Wahrnehmungen von Korruption im Kaiserreich’, Historische Zeitschrift, 281 (2005), 337–79; idem, ‘Das Private wird politisch: Die Sexualität des Politikers und die Massenmedien des ausgehenden 19. Jahrhunderts’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 52 (2004), 781–801; idem, ‘Historische Skandalforschung als Schnittstelle zwischen Medien-, Kommunikations- und Geschichtswissenschaft’, in Fabio Crivellari (ed.), Die Medien der Geschichte: Historizität und Medialität in interdisziplinärer Perspektive (Konstanz, 2004), 445–64. 41. Müller, Auf der Suche nach dem Täter. 42. See Fritzsche, Reading Berlin 1900, 1. 43. The notion that communication systems shape events has also been advanced for the origins of the French Revolution, see Robert Darnton, ‘An Early Information Society: News and the Media in Eighteenth-Century Paris’, American Historical Review, 105:1 (2000), 1–17. 44. Cf. Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, ‘Wirkung der Massenmedien auf die Meinungsbildung’, in Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, Winfried Schulze, and Jürgen Wilke (eds.), Das Fischer-Lexikon Publizistik Massenkommunikation (Frankfurt am Main, 2000 edn.), 518–71. 45. Hildegard Kriegk, ‘Die politische Führung der Berliner Boulevardpresse’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Berlin, 1941, 37. 46. Some confusion, however, seems to reign as to the details of Napoleon’s comment. Some historians have him referring to Görres’s Rheinischer Merkur as ‘the fifth European great power’ (‘Görres, Joseph v.’, in Historische Kommission bei der Bayrischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (ed.), Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (Leipzig, 1879), ix. 382); others quote him on the same subject as talking about the ‘sixth great power’ (e.g., Koszyk, Deutsche Presse im 19. Jahrhundert, 26–7); Goebbels—never one to be trumped easily—quoted Napoleon as calling the press the ‘seventh great power’, see Joseph Goebbels, Kampf um Berlin (Munich, 1936 edn. [1932]), 189. 47. Joseph Eberle, Grossmacht Presse. Enthüllungen für Zeitungsgläubige; Forderungen für Männer (Vienna, 3rd edn. 1920 [1912]), 19.


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48. See W. Phillips Davison, ‘The Third Person Effect in Communication’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 47 (1983), 1–15; Richard M. Perloff, ‘Third Person Effect Research 1983–1992. A Review and Synthesis’, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 5 (1993), 167–84. 49. Winfried Schulz, ‘Der Kommunikationsprozess—neubesehen’, in Jürgen Wilke (ed.), Fortschritte der Publizistikwissenschaft (Freiburg and Munich, 1993), 37. 50. e.g. the newspaper clipping collections of the Reichslandbund, in BArchL, R8034 II; of the Deutsche Reichsbank, in BArchL, R2501; of the National Socialist Deutsche Arbeits Front, in BArchL, NS5 VI; or that of the Centre politician and Reich Chancellor Wilhelm Marx, in Nachlass Wilhelm Marx, Stadtarchiv Köln. CHAPTER 1 1. Jürgen Wilke, Grundzüge der Medien- und Kommunikationsgeschichte. Von den Anfängen bis ins 20. Jahrhundert (Cologne, 2000), 259–76. See Otto Groth, Die Zeitung. Ein System der Zeitungskunde (Journalistik) (Mannheim, 1928), i. 203–8. 2. Emil Dovifat, Die Anfänge der Generalanzeigerpresse (Berlin, 1928). 3. These figures are from a study of the Bremen region by Rolf Engelsing, Massenpublikum und Journalistentum im 19. Jahrhundert in Nordwestdeutschland (Berlin, 1966), 285. See also Stephan Schreder, Der Zeitungsleser (Vienna, 1936), 29. 4. Groth, Zeitung, i. 226. 5. Eberhard Georgii, ‘Zur Statistik der deutschen Zeitungen’, in Handbuch der deutschen Tagespresse (Berlin, 1932), 18. See also Walter Schütz, ‘Zeitungsstatistik’, in Emil Dovifat (ed.), Handbuch der Publizistik (Berlin, 1969), ii. 360–1. These numbers include sub-editions, so-called Kopfblätter, and weekly papers. 6. Groth, Zeitung, i. 251, 257. 7. Ibid., 252. Cf. Horst Heenemann, ‘Die Auflagenhöhe der deutschen Zeitungen. Ihre Entwicklung und ihre Probleme’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Leipzig, 1929, 70–86; Jeffrey Verhey, The Spirit of 1914: Militarism, Myth and Mobilization in Germany (Cambridge, 2000), 75. 8. Georgii, ‘Statistik’, 20. Another estimate is over 20 million for 1931, see Hans Kapfinger, ‘Die Struktur der katholischen Presse’, in Johann Wilhelm Naumann (ed.), Die Presse und der Katholik (Augsburg, 1932), 218. For a critique of these, see Karl Christian Führer, ‘Die Tageszeitung als wichtigstes Massenmedium der nationalsozialistischen Gesellschaft’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 55 (2007), 411–34, here 413–15. 9. For a more detailed discussion of this point, see www.hist.cam.ac.uk/academic staff/further details/fulda-press-and-politics.html 10. Peter de Mendelssohn, Zeitungsstadt Berlin. Menschen und Mächte in der Geschichte der deutschen Presse (Berlin, 1959), 56–92, 114–77. 11. See Friedrich Luft, ‘Berliner Illustrirte’, in Joachim W. Freyburg and Hans Wallenberg (eds.), Hundert Jahre Ullstein (Berlin, 1977), ii. 87–117. 12. Cf. Mendelssohn, Zeitungsstadt, 243. 13. See also Thomas Friedrich, ‘Die Berliner Zeitungslandschaft am Ende der Weimarer Republik’, in Diethard Kerbs and Henrick Stahr (eds.), Berlin 1932. Das letzte Jahr der Weimarer Republik (Berlin, 1992), 61. 14. Groth, Zeitung, i. 133.

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15. See Friedrich Stamper, Erfahrungen und Erkenntnisse. Aufzeichnungen aus meinem Leben (Cologne, 1957), 209. 16. Heinz-Dietrich Fischer (ed.), Handbuch der politischen Presse 1480–1980 (Dusseldorf, 1981), 229. 17. Hans Wolter, Generalanzeiger—Das pragmatische Prinzip. Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte und Typologie des Pressewesens im späten 19. Jahrhundert (Bochum, 1981), 8, 161–4. 18. 1913: 49.2%; 1917: 49.8%, according to Groth, Zeitung, ii. 468. 19. Dankwart Guratzsch, Macht durch Organisation. Die Grundlegung des Hugenbergschen Presseimperiums (Dusseldorf, 1974), 293–6. 20. ‘Idealist’ in the sense advanced by Fritz Stern, ‘The Political Consequences of the Unpolitical German’, in Fritz Stern, The Failure of Illiberalism (London, 1972), 3–25. 21. This is not to say that political papers did not carry advertisments at all, they just carried significantly fewer. 22. Groth, Zeitung, i. 274–6. 23. There are hardly any sources for the workings of any ‘Korrespondenzen’: see Koszyk, Deutsche Presse im 19. Jahrhundert. Geschichte der deutschen Presse Teil II (Berlin, 1966), 21. For news agencies like ‘Wolffs Telegraphen Bureau’ (WTB) and Hugenberg’s ‘Telegraphen Union’ ( TU), see Jürgen Wilke, Telegraphenbüros und Nachrichtenagenturen in Deutschland (Munich, 1991). 24. For the following, see also Bernhard Fulda, ‘Industries of Sensationalism: German Tabloids in the Interwar Period’, in Corey Ross and Karl Christian Führer (eds.), Mass Media, Culture and Society in Twentieth-Century Germany (Manchester, 2006), 183–203. 25. Zeitungswissenschaf, 12 (1 December 1938): ‘Der Zeitungsabsatz in den historischen Septembertagen’. 26. Karl Bücher, ‘Der Zeitungsvertrieb’, in idem, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Zeitungskunde ( Tubingen, 1926), 196–7. 27. Quoted in Peter Fritzsche, Reading Berlin 1900 (Cambridge, Mass., 1998), 179. 28. Hildegard Kriegk, ‘Die politische Führung der Berliner Boulevardpresse’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Berlin, 1941, 8; Albrecht Blau, Der Inseratenmarkt der deutschen Tageszeitungen (Berlin, 1932), 59–60; Groth, Zeitung, iii. 142–3; Bücher, ‘Zeitungsvertrieb’, 207. 29. Quoted in Kurt Koszyk, Zwischen Kaiserreich und Diktatur. Die sozialdemokratische Presse von 1914 bis 1933 (Heidelberg, 1958), 100. 30. See Walther G. Oschilewski, Zeitungen in Berlin (Berlin, 1975), 146,162; for Welt am Abend, see Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde (BArchL), SAPMO, RY1 KPD, I/2/707–139; for publication times, see Mendelssohn, Zeitungsstadt, 268–9. 31. Hans Brennert, director of the Nachrichtenamt Berlin, speaks of ‘30 Alt-Berliner und gegen 50 Bezirksblätter’, in Hans Brennert and Erwin Stein (eds.), Probleme der neuen Stadt Berlin. Darstellung der Zukunftsaufgaben einer Viermillionenstadt (Berlin, 1926), 539. He probably included non-daily Bezirksblätter in his count. The number of 147 different newspapers is a myth created by Mendelssohn, Zeitungsstadt, 306, and taken up throughout secondary literature. For a detailed critique, see Thomas Friedrich, ‘Die Berliner Zeitungslandschaft am Ende der Weimarer Republik’, in Diethard Kerbs and Henrick Stahr (eds.), Berlin 1932. Das letzte Jahr der Weimarer Republik (Berlin, 1992), 59–60.


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32. Adult meaning over 20 years of age, see Berthold Grzywatz, Arbeit und Bevölkerung im Berlin der Weimarer Zeit (Berlin, 1988), 438. For the characterization ‘unersättlichsten Zeitungsleser der Welt’, see Mendelssohn, Zeitungsstadt, 496. 33. Brennert and Stein (eds.), Probleme, 540. 34. For a contemporary analysis of this phenomenon, see Wilhelm Carlé, Weltanschauung und Presse. Eine soziologische Untersuchung (Leipzig, 1931). 35. Arthur Koestler, Arrow in the Blue (London, 1952), 171. 36. Ibid. 37. Quoted in Michael Groth, The Road to New York: The Emigration of Berlin Journalists, 1933–45 (Munich, 1984), 50. 38. Paul Harms, Die Zeitung von heute. Ihr Wesen und ihr Daseinszweck (Leipzig, 1927), 45. 39. Koszyk, Zwischen Kaiserreich und Diktatur, 67–9, 84–5. 40. Guratzsch, Macht durch Organisation, 294–6. 41. Koszyk, Zwischen Kaiserreich und Diktatur, 36–42. 42. Eksteins, Limits of Reason, 29, 73. For a literary perception of press propaganda, see Karl Kraus, Die letzten Tage der Menschheit (Vienna, 1957 edn. [1922]). 43. Letter Weber to Hugenberg, 5 July 1918, ‘Entwurf einer nationalen Pressekonzentration’, BArchK, N1231 Hugenberg, Nr. 30, ff. 49–50. 44. See also George G. Bruntz, Allied Propaganda and the Collapse of the German Empire in 1918 (New York, 1972 edn. [1938]), 1–3; Alice Goldfarb Marquis, ‘Words as Weapon: Propaganda in Britain and Germany during the First World War’, Journal of Contemporary History, 13 (1978), 467–98. 45. See Reinhard Rürup, Probleme der Revolution in Deutschland 1918/19 (Wiesbaden, 1968). 46. Groth, Zeitung, i. 736. For a listing of newspapers’ party affiliation by contemporaries, see Politisches Archiv Auswärtiges Amt Berlin (PolArchAA), R122416, reply to letter of 18 June 1924. 47. e.g. the catalogues of advertisment agencies Mosse, Ala, and Sperling. For problems with the political categorization, see Norbert Frei, Nationalsozialistische Eroberung der Provinzpresse.Gleichschaltung, Selbstanpassung und Resistenz in Bayern (Stuttgart, 1980), 25. 48. Karin Herrmann, Der Zusammenbruch 1918 in der deutschen Tagespresse. Politische Ziele, Reaktion auf die Ereignisse und die Versuche der Meinungsführung in der deutschen Tagespresse während der Zeit vom 23. September bis 11. November 1918 (Münster, 1958). 49. See Stampfer, Erfahrungen und Erkenntnisse, 231–2; Mendelssohn, Zeitungsstadt Berlin, 224–7; Koszyk, Deutsche Presse im 19. Jahrhundert, 36–8; Jürgen Wilke, Unter Druck gesetzt. Vier Kapitel deutscher Pressegeschichte (Cologne, 2002), 129–98. 50. Wilhelm Kaupert, ‘Die deutsche Tagespresse als Politicum’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Heidelberg, 1932, 15. See also Joseph Eberle, Großmacht Presse. Enthüllungen für Zeitungsgläubige. Forderungen für Männer (Vienna, 1920 edn. [1912]), 14–20. See also Groth, Zeitung, i. p. vii; Eksteins, Limits of Reason, 70–4. 51. Georg Bernhard, ‘The German Press’, in Der Verlag Ullstein zum Welt-ReklameKongress 1929 (Berlin 1929), 58.

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52. Quoted in Eksteins, Limits of Reason, 110. 53. Fritz Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), 66. For a typical example, see Peter Fuchs, ‘Das Kampfblatt—Die Rheinische Zeitung von 1892 bis 1933’, in Gerhard Brunn, Sozialdemokratie in Köln (Cologne, 1986), 122. 54. Michael Klein, Georg Bernhard: Die politische Haltung des Chefredakteurs der ‘Vossischen Zeitung’ 1918–1930 (Frankfurt, 1999). 55. Excellent on Goebbels’s long-standing feud with the vice-president of the Berlin police force: Dietz Bering, Kampf um Namen. Bernhard Weiß gegen Joseph Goebbels (Stuttgart, 1991). 56. For just one out of numerous examples of this practice in the Barmat affair, see Rote Fahne, 169, 29 November 1924: ‘Elf Fragen an den Vorstand der SPD.’ 57. See also memoirs of former Rote Fahne editor Alexander Abusch, Der Deckname. Memoiren (Berlin, 1981), 78, 168. 58. The Kölnische Volkszeitung stated in 1908 it was using 172 different papers: Groth, Zeitung, i. 382. 59. Information on SPD newspaper (distribution and print circulation), in Rote Fahne publishing files, BArchL, SAPMO, RY1 KPD, I/2/707–117, ff. 147–8. 60. Wilke, Medien- und Kommunikationsgeschichte, 288. 61. ‘Die deutsche Presse. Ihre parteipolitische Einstellung’, reply to request of 18 June 1924, PolArchAA R122416, unpaginated. 62. The list is drawn from Lagebericht, 28 December 1920, BArchL, R43I-2465, f. 47. 63. Berliner Tageblatt, Tägliche Rundschau, Deutsche Zeitung, Deutsche Tageszeitung, Der Tag [Berliner] Lokal-Anzeiger, Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Zeit, Vossische Zeitung, [Berliner] Morgenpost, [Neue Preussische] Kreuzzeitung, Vorwärts, Freiheit, Rote Fahne, Germania. Though only dated ‘15/8’ the document’s context and the inclusion of the Freiheit (which ceased publication in October 1922) points at 1922: BArchL, R43I-2465, f. 299. 64. Groth, Zeitung, i. 238. 65. See Führer, ‘Tageszeitung’, 416–17; Frei, Provinzpresse, 26, 262. 66. See also Groth, Zeitung, i. 238. 67. Oschilewski, Zeitungen, 104–5; Koszyk, Deutsche Presse 1914–1945, 139. 68. BArchL, R43I–2465, f. 299. 69. See also Mendelssohn, Zeitungsstadt, 234. 70. Sperling 1926, 378. Catalogues like the Sperling, or those by Mosse or Ala, normally gave the circulation figure of the previous year’s third quarter as provided by the publisher. 71. Sperling 1927, 419. 72. Minutes of press conference 24 November 1926, in PolArchAA, R28529, f. 268. Cf. Koszyk, Deutsche Presse 1914–1945, 143–53. 73. Wolfgang Ruge, ‘Die ‘‘Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung’’ und die Brüning-Regierung. Zur Rolle der Großbourgeoisie in der Vorbereitung des Faschismus’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 16:1 (1968), 20–1. 74. See the advertisement in Zeitungs-Katalog der R. Mosse Annoncen-Expedition (Berlin, 1931), 27. See also Sperling 1930, 470, which gives 60,000.


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75. After 1933, when forced to publish their print edition, some publishers chose to print many copies more than actually sold, to hide falling circulation: DeutschlandBericht der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands (Sopade) 1934–40 (Frankfurt am Main, 1980 edn.), vol. 3 (1936), 813. 76. According to Mosse’s Annoncenexpedition, the prices for private and commercial advertisements (Anzeigenteil/Reklameteil) were 30 Pf and 120 Pf per mm in 1925, and 40 Pf and 300 Pf in 1930. 77. Ruge, ‘Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung’, 20; BArchK, N1231 Hugenberg, Nr. 273, f. 19. 78. Frei estimates figures were exaggerated 20–25% on average; see Frei, Provinzpresse, 261–2. In the course of my own work, an analysis of figures given in 1932 and 1934 for a sample of Prussian newspapers has come up with a slighly higher percentage. 79. See Table 1.1. 80. Total circulation of Vossische Zeitung, Berliner Tageblatt and Berliner Volks-Zeitung was c.300,000 in 1930. 81. See Goebbels’s diary entry of 20 October 1929, in Ralf Georg Reuth (ed.), Joseph Goebbels Tagebücher 1924–1945 (Munich, 1992), i. 417. 82. See Russell Lemmons, Goebbels and Der Angriff (Lexington, 1994), 41. 83. Vorwärts, no.150, 30 March 1931: ‘Hitler baut ab.’ See also Kaupert, ‘Tageszeitung als Politicum’, 124. 84. Carin Kessemeier, Der Leitartikler Goebbels in den NS-Organen ‘Der Angriff ’ und ‘Das Reich’ (Münster, 1967), 50. See also Lemmons, Angriff, 35. 85. Letter Klitzsch to Hugenberg, 4 April 1923, BArchK, N1231 Hugenberg, Nr. 200, f. 8. 86. Hugenberg speech to Wirtschaftsvereinigung, 1 July 1927, BArchK, N1231 Hugenberg, Nr. 113, f. 90. 87. BArchL, SAPMO, RY1 KPD, I/2/707–134, ff. 30–54. 88. The term used is ‘Hetze’ or ‘Hetzerei’, BArchL, SAPMO, RY1 KPD, I/2/707–134, ff. 31, 33, 34, 44, 48. 89. Ibid., f. 30. 90. Ibid., ff. 54 and 49. Further complaints of this kind, ff. 31, 34, 36, 47. This view, incidentally, was very similar to that held by Communist journalists themselves. At a Reich conference of Communist editors in 1927, participants mentioned in their self-criticism an unreadable Communist style with incomprehensible acronyms and boring leading articles full of stereotypes: see minutes of editors’ conference of 24 September 1927 in Berlin, BArchL, SAPMO, RY1 KPD, I/2/707-116, ff. 141, 144–5, 147–9. 91. BArchL, SAPMO, RY1 KPD, I/2/707–134, f. 34. 92. Ibid., f. 52. 93. Ibid., f. 33. 94. Ibid., f. 46. 95. Ibid., f. 35. 96. Ibid., f. 51. 97. Ibid., f. 34. 98. Ibid., f. 36. 99. Ibid., f. 35. 100. Ibid., f. 51.

234 101. 102. 103. 104.

105. 106. 107.

108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123.

124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130.

Notes to pages 27–30 BArchL, SAPMO, RY1 KPD, I/2/707–134, f. 31. Ibid., f. 46. Ibid., f. 47. Jürgen Falter, Thomas Lindenberger, and Siegfried Schumann (eds.), Wahlen und Abstimmungen in der Weimarer Republik. Materialien zum Wahlverhalten 1919–1933 (Munich, 1986), 83; for 1928, see Heinrich August Winkler, Der Schein der Normalität. Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik 1924 bis 1930 (Berlin, 1988), 528, fn. 5. Report of Otto Braun to party conference in 1917, see Koszyk, Zwischen Kaiserreich und Diktatur, 100. Wilhelm Sollmann, Wir und die Leserwelt (Berlin, 1926), 4. Ibid., 7. See also the anecdote told by the long-serving head of the Reich government’s press office, in Walter Zechlin, Pressechef bei Ebert und Hindenburg und Kopf. Erlebnisse eines Pressechefs und Diplomaten (Hanover, 1956), 154; and the findings of the newspaper reception survey conducted in 1937, in Alfred Schmidt, Publizistik im Dorf (Dresden, 1939), 84. Ibid., 9–10. Ibid., 7–8. Ibid., 12. Ibid. Ibid., 11–12. Ibid., 11. Ibid., 14. Ibid., 10. Ibid., 8. Koszyk, Kaiserreich und Diktatur, 172. Ibid., 165–6; Jörg Matthies, ‘Zur Entwicklung des SPD-Zentralorgans ‘‘Vorwärts’’, Berlin, 1922–33’, unpublished diploma thesis, University of Leipzig, 1987, 70–1. See also Sollmann, Leserwelt, 5–6. Koszyk, Kaiserreich und Diktatur, 170–1. Gerhard Eisfeld and Kurt Koszyk (eds.), Die Presse der deutschen Sozialdemokratie. Eine Bibliographie (Bonn, 1980), 42. Koszyk, Kaiserreich und Diktatur, 171. Burkard Treude, Konservative Presse und Nationalsozialismus. Inhaltsanalyse der ‘Neuen Preussischen (Kreuz-) Zeitung’ am Ende der Weimarer Republik (Bochum, 1975), 16–28. Kreuz-Zeitung, 74, 13 February 1929: ‘Unsere Zeitung’. Treude, Konservative Presse, 20, 28–32. Vorwärts, 255, 2 June 1925: ‘Der ‘‘Geist’’ der ‘‘Zeit’’.’ See also BArchL, R 8034 II, Nr. 2275. Vorwärts, 304, 2 July 1929: ‘Sanft entschlafen. Das Ende des ‘‘Deutschen Tageblattes’’.’ Groth, Zeitung, ii. 268. See also Mendelssohn, Zeitungsstadt, 236; Koszyk, Deutsche Presse 1914–1945, 279. Oschilewski, Zeitungen, 104. Groth, Zeitung, ii. 268.


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131. In 1930–1 circulation was under 10,000. See also Koszyk, Deutsche Presse 1914–1945, 243. 132. See report of 22 April 1931, in BArchL, R1501, 25791, f. 438. An edition for Northern Germany and one for Berlin reappeared 1 January 1933; Mendelssohn, Zeitungsstadt, 308–9. See also Lemmons, Goebbels, 35. 133. According to information in Völkischer Beobachter, 128, 8 May 1931: ‘Pleite bei der Germania’. 134. Diary entry of 8 May 1929, in Ernst Feder, Heute sprach ich mit . . . Tagebücher eines Berliner Publizisten 1926–1932 (Stuttgart, 1971), 213. 135. Mostly by mismanagement, see Margret Boveri, Wir lügen alle. Eine Hauptstadtzeitung unter Hitler (Freiburg, 1965), 30–3, 214–19; Eksteins, Limits of Reason, 224–31, 258–9. 136. Heinz Ullstein, Rise and Fall of the House of Ullstein (New York, 1943), 158; Feder’s diary entry of 12 August 1929, in Feder, Heute sprach ich mit, 221; SpringerArchiv, Jödicke-Unterlagen, ‘Anmerkungen zu Mendelssohn’, 21. See also letter of Louis Ullstein to Georg Bernhard, 19 November 1927, in which he complains: ‘. . . Schliesslich bringen ja wir die grossen Opfer für die Vossische Zeitung nicht nur zu Ihrem Ruhme! . . . ’, in BArchL, N2020 Bernhard, Nr. 22, f. 38. 137. See also Werner Wirthle, Frankfurter Zeitung und Frankfurter Societäts-Druckerei GmbH. Die wirtschaftlichen Verhältnisse 1927–39 (Frankfurt, 1977), 19–36; Koszyk, Deutsche Presse 1914–1945, 139–51. 138. Ruge, ‘Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung’, 20. 139. BArchK, N1231 Hugenberg, Nr. 269 (1926), Nr. 270 (1927), Nr. 300 (1928), Nr. 271 (1929), Nr. 273 (1930), Nr. 274 (1931), Nr. 275 (1932). 140. Groth, Zeitung, iii. 424–48. 141. Ibid., 433–4, 448. 142. BArchK, N1231 Hugenberg, Nr. 300 Bilanzen 1928, f. 61. 143. BArchK, N1231 Hugenberg, Nr. 275, Geschäftsbericht 1932, f. 38. 144. Ullstein Aktiengesellschaft Berlin, Geschäftsbericht für das Geschäftsjahr 1925, and following years. 145. e.g. letter of Carl Misch, political editor of the Vossische Zeitung, of 10 February 1931, in which he writes of a meeting with Heinz Ullstein: ‘In der Unterhaltung [ . . . ] kam zudem die alte Vorstellung des Verlages zum Vorschein, dass die BZ ein ungeheuer wichtiges und entscheidendes Blatt sei, dagegen: wer liest schon die Voss?’; BArchL, N2193 Misch, Nr. 13, f. 154. 146. Eksteins, Limits of Reason, 104–5. 147. Ibid. See also Mendelssohn’s criticism that Mosse paid a ‘Phantasiepreis’, in Hans Wallenberg (ed.), Berlin Kochstrasse (Berlin, 1966), 168. The Welt am Abend claimed Mosse had paid RM 3 million for a share of 60%; see also WaA, 17, 21 January 1927: ‘Mosse kauft das 8-Uhr-Abendblatt.’ 148. For a comparison of advertisement space in Nachtausgabe and 8-Uhr-Abendblatt, see Scherl Geschäftsbericht 1927, BArchK, N1231 Hugenberg, Nr. 270, f. 20. Income from advertisement of the NA was RM 744,000 that year, but private advertisements were 50% cheaper in the 8UA: advertising income for the 8UA is estimated at RM 0.55–1.1 million; plus at least RM 4 million for copy sales. 149. Wahrmund [pseud.], Gericht u¨ ber Hugenberg (Dillingen, 1932), 102.

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150. Quoted in Theoder Lüddecke, Die Tageszeitung als Mittel der Staatsführung (Hamburg, 1933), 89. See also Wernecke and Heller, Hugenberg, 112; Leo Wegener, Hugenberg. Eine Plauderei (Munich, 1930), 20. 151. Valeska Dietrich, Alfred Hugenberg. Ein Manager in der Publizistik (Berlin, 1960), 54; Wernecke and Heller, Hugenberg, 108–9. 152. Letter Stein to Hugenberg, 14 May 1919, BArchK, N1231, Nr. 27, f. 317. 153. Quoted in Heidrun Holzbach, Das ‘System Hugenberg’. Die Organisation bürgerlicher Sammlungspolitik vor dem Aufstieg der NSDAP (Stuttgart, 1981), 202, fn. 225. 154. For ‘Red Hugenberg’, see Michael Hepp, Kurt Tucholsky (Reinbek, Hamburg, 1998), 116; Kriegk, ‘Berliner Boulevardpresse’, 126; Lüddecke, Tageszeitung, 61 fn. 2. More generally, see Rolf Surmann, Die Münzenberg-Legende. Zur Publizistik der revolutionären deutschen Arbeiterbewegung 1921–1933 (Cologne, 1982). 155. Babette Gross, Willi Münzenberg. Eine politische Biographie (Stuttgart, 1967), 175; but giving the wrong date: the transfer of ownership and the subsequent legal complications happened in November 1925, see Vorwärts, 539, 11 November 1925: ‘Der Streit um die ‘‘Welt’’ ’. Cf. the Communist planning for the WaA throughout 1925, in BArchL, SAPMO, RY1 KPD, I/2/707–139: Welt am Abend, 1924–8, 33, ff. 1–34. 156. Mendelssohn, Zeitungsstadt, 264–5. 157. According to the report of the Agitprop Unit Berlin for the period 5 January–15 February 1926, in BArchL, SAPMO, RY1 KPD, I/3/1/2–96, f. 94. 158. Minutes of editors’ conference of 24 September 1927 in Berlin, BArchL, SAPMO, RY1 KPD, I/2/707-116, f. 141. 159. BArchL, SAPMO, RY1 KPD, I/2/707–140, f. 74. See also Vorwärts, 8, 5 January 1928: ‘Kommunistischer Leserschwund’. 160. BArchL, SAPMO, RY1 KPD, I/2/707–134, f. 146. 161. e.g. WaA, 213, 12 September 1929, and NA, 213, 12 September 1929. 162. Kurt Hiller, ‘Goldne ‘‘Abend’’-Sonne’, Weltbühne, 27, 3 July 1928. 163. e.g. Zeitungs-Verlag, 24, 11 June 1932: ‘Kleinstadt-Zeitung heute’, 419. 164. Minutes of editors’ conference of 24 September 1927 in Berlin, BArchL, SAPMO, RY1 KPD, I/2/707–116, f. 142. 165. BArchL, SAPMO, RY1 KPD, I/2/707–134, ff. 46, 51. 166. See Markus Mende, Sensationalismus als Produktgestaltungsmittel (Cologne, 1996). 167. Kurt Hiller, ‘Goldne ‘‘Abend’’-Sonne’, Weltbühne, 27, 3 July 1928. 168. Deutsche Tageszeitung, 501, 23 October 1928, in BArchL, R 2501, 3822. 169. Gerhard Schultze-Pfaelzer, ‘Neue Formen des Meinungskampfes in der aktualisierten Zeitung’, Deutsche Presse, 23 (1928), 277. 170. Eksteins, Limits of Reason, 235–6. See also Oschilewski, Zeitungen, 144, 153. 171. Walter Matuschke in Freyburg and Wallenberg (eds.), Hundert Jahre Ullstein, iii. 32. 172. Eksteins, Limits of Reason, 122; Oschilewski, Zeitungen, 171. 173. For ‘Asphaltblüte’, see Der Jungdeutsche, 13 September 1928: ‘Ein feines Tempo’, quoted in Kriegk, ‘Berliner Boulevardpresse’, 212. For ‘jüdische Hast’, see SpringerArchiv, Jödicke-Unterlagen, ‘Anmerkungen zu Mendelssohn’, 14. 174. Joseph Goebbels, Kampf um Berlin. Der Anfang (Munich, 9th edn. 1936 [1932]), 198. For an analysis of the composition of Angriff, see also Kessemeier, Leitartikler Goebbels, 51–5; Lemmons, Goebbels, 27, 32–3.

Notes to pages 36–42 175. 176. 177. 178. 179. 180.

181. 182. 183. 184. 185. 186. 187. 188. 189.

190. 191. 192.

193.

194. 195. 196. 197. 198. 199. 200. 201. 202.

203.

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Angriff, 88, 1 November 1930. Goebbels, Kampf um Berlin, 28. Goebbels, Kampf um Berlin, 188. See also Lemmons, Goebbels, 22. Lemmons, Goebbels, 32–4. See Martin Plieninger, ‘Die Kampfpresse’, in Zeitungswissenschaft, 2, 15 March 1933, 67. See Bernhard Fulda, ‘Die vielen Gesichter des Hans Schweitzer. Politische Karikaturen als historische Quelle’, in Gerhard Paul (ed.), Visual History. Die Historiker und die Bilder. Ein Studienbuch (Göttingen, 2006), 206–24. e.g. Deutsche Illustrierte, 45, 6 November 1934, 13; Gunter d’Alquen, ‘Mjölnir, der Zeichner des Nationalsozialismus’, Völkischer Beobachter, 66, 7 March 1934. Kriegk, ‘Berliner Boulevardpresse’, 62, and 121–4. Bering, Kampf um Namen, 134, 434, fn. 357. For an exemplary analysis, see Bering, Kampf um Namen, 241–352. See below, Ch. 5. See also Christian Engeli, Gustav Böss. Oberbürgermeister von Berlin (Stuttgart, 1971), 245–6. See NA, 104, 4 May 1928; BArchK, N1231 Hugenberg, Nr. 271, Geschäftsbericht 1929, f. 11. BArchK, N1231 Hugenberg, Nr. 270, f. 3; and Nr. 271, f. 11. Kriegk, ‘Berliner Boulevardpresse’, 1–2, 4–5. Alexander Wilde, ‘Republikfeindschaft in der Berliner Bevölkerung und der Wandel der kommunalen Selbstverwaltung um 1931’, in Otto Büsch (ed.), Beiträge zur Berliner Demokratie (Berlin, 1988), 108. Mendelssohn, Zeitungsstadt, 310–18. Friedrich, ‘Berliner Zeitungslandschaft’, 66. See, e.g., Assmuss, Republik ohne Chance?, 29–32. Five of the eight papers are elite papers. The choice of Ullstein’s BZ am Mittag —arguably the most non-political of all Berlin tabloids until 1929—reflects Assmuss’s ignorance of Berlin’s tabloid press. Subsequent calculations all from Falter, Wahlen und Abstimmungen, 44 and Otto Büsch and Wofgang Haus (eds.), Berlin als Hauptstadt der Weimarer Republik 1919–1933 (Berlin, 1987), 323. Winkler, Schein der Normalität, 527. Ibid., 534. Ibid., 528. BArchK, N1231, Nr. 270, f. 3; Nr. 271, f. 3. In December 1930, circulation stood at 213,000: Nr. 274, f. 4. Hamilton, Who Voted for Hitler?, 69, 73–5; and Wilde, ‘Republikfeindschaft’, 124. Lemmons, Goebbels, 34–5. Springer-Archiv, Jödicke-Unterlagen, ‘Anmerkungen zu Mendelssohn’, 19. ‘Pink’ was the colour associated with the DDP. Falter, Wahlen und Abstimmungen, 83. Hans Mathias Kepplinger, Die Demontage der Politik in der Informationsgesellschaft (Freiburg, 1998), 199–200. See also Glasgow Media Group, Bad News (London, 1976); Glasgow Media Group, More Bad News (London, 1980). Falter, Hitlers Wähler, 326, 374.

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204. Meier, Zwischen Milieu und Markt, 337. 205. See, e.g., Hans A. Muenster, Jugend und Zeitung (Berlin, 1932), 68–9; Ignaz Wrobel [Kurt Tucholsky], ‘In der Provinz’, Freiheit, 16 May 1920, repr. in Gerold-Tucholsky and Raddatz (eds.), Tucholsky, ii. 328; Frank Thiess, Freiheit bis Mitternacht (Vienna, 1965), 21, 326. 206. Koszyk, Deutsche Presse 1914–1945, 139–51; Gerald Feldman, Hugo Stinnes. Biographie eines Industriellen 1870–1924 (Munich, 1998), 697, 716, 726; Mendelssohn, Zeitungsstadt, 232–3. See also Koszyk, Deutsche Presse 1914–1945, 142. 207. Winkler, Schein der Normalität, 640. 208. e.g. Friedrich, ‘Berliner Zeitungslandschaft’, 66.

CHAPTER 2 1. Gustav Kauder, ‘ ‘‘Bezett-Bezett am Mittag!’’ ’, in 50 Jahre Ullstein. 1877–1927 (Berlin, 1927), 208–9; Heinz Ullstein, Rise and Fall of the House of Ullstein (New York, 1943), 128. 2. For Wilhelm II as a media star, see Martin Kohlrausch, Der Monarch im Skandal: Die Logik der Massenmedien und die Transformation der wilhelminischen Monarchie (Berlin, 2005); Christopher Clark, Kaiser Wilhelm II (London, 2000). 3. See Alex Hall, Scandal, Sensation and Social Democracy: The SPD Press and Wilhelmine Germany 1890–1914 (Cambridge, 1977); Frank Bösch, ‘Katalysator der Demokratisierung? Presse, Politik und Gesellschaft vor 1914’, in Frank Bösch and Norbert Frei (eds.), Medialisierung und Demokratie im 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen 2006), 25–47. 4. See Walter Mühlhausen, Friedrich Ebert 1871–1925. Reichspräsident der Weimarer Republik (Bonn, 2006), 101–4. 5. See Klaus Epstein, Matthias Erzberger and the Dilemma of German Democracy (Princeton, 1959), 269–83. 6. For an overview of press reactions, see the newspaper clipping collection in BArchL, R 8034 II, Nr. 8802. For examples of right-wing press coverage, see Deutsche Tageszeitung (DTZ ), 575, 11 November 1918: ‘Die Waffenstillstandsbedingungen’; DTZ, 595, 22 November 1918: ‘Unsere Feinde und die Waffenstillstandsbedingungen’; for the relative lack of anti-Erzberger polemics at this time, see DTZ, 658, 28 December 1918: ‘Staatssekretaer Erzberger u¨ ber den Voelkerbund’. 7. e.g. Neue Freie Presse, 195, 17 December 1918: ‘Die Verlängerung des Waffenstillstandes’; DTZ, 647, 20 December 1918: ‘Neue unerhörte Forderungen der Franzosen’. 8. e.g. Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (DAZ ), 25, 17 January 1919: ‘Deutschlands Vergewaltigung’. For an account of the negotiations leading to the second prolongation, see Matthias Erzberger, Erlebnisse im Weltkrieg (Stuttgart, 1920), 348–58; and Epstein, Erzberger, 330–5. 9. See also DTZ, 30, 17 January 1919: ‘Die Verlängerung des Waffenstillstandes unterzeichnet’, DTZ, 36, 20 January 1919: ‘Ein neues Ruhmesblatt der Waffenstillstandskommission’, BLA, 27, 22 January 1919: ‘Verfrühtes Hoffen’. 10. DTZ, 39, 22 January 1919: ‘Warum nicht: Nein sagen!’ See also DTZ, 36, 20 January 1919: ‘Ein neues Ruhmesblatt der Waffenstillstandskommission’.


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11. Neue Preussische Kreuz-Zeitung (KrZ ), 46, 26 January 1919: ‘Die Kundgebungen in Berlin’. 12. Helmut Trotnow, ‘ ‘‘. . . Es kam auf einen mehr oder weniger nicht an’’. Der Mord an Rosa Luxemburg und Karl Liebknecht und die Folgen fuer die Weimarer Republik’, in Hans Wilderotter (ed.), Die Extreme beruehren sich. Walther Rathenau 1867–1922 (Berlin, 1993), 209–20, here 211. 13. Heinrich August Winkler, Weimar 1918–1933. Die Geschichte der ersten deutschen Demokratie (Munich, 1998 [1993]), 56–60. 14. Trotnow, ‘Der Mord’, 211–14, 218. 15. See also diary entry of 16 January 1919, in Harry Graf Kessler, Tagebücher 1918–1937 (Frankfurt am Main, 1971), 106. 16. DTZ, 30, 17 January 1919: ‘Die Verlängerung des Waffenstillstandes unterzeichnet’. 17. Theodor Eschenburg, Matthias Erzberger. Der grosse Mann des Parlamentarismus und der Finanzreform (Munich, 1973), 63–77; Epstein, Erzberger, 182–213. 18. Friedrich Hussong, Matthias Erzberger, Wege und Wandlungen (Leipzig, 1917). See Epstein, Erzberger, 246. 19. See also Winkler, Weimar, 69–71. 20. Reichsbote, 92, 21 February 1919: ‘Die Stellung des Zentrums’. 21. Germania (G), 355, 7 August 1919: ‘Berlin, 6 August’. 22. See, e.g., E.[rnst] R.[eventlow], ‘Der nationale Geist’, in DTZ, 583, 15 November 1918. 23. DTZ, 641, 17 December 1918: ‘Die ‘‘erdolchte’’ deutsche Armee’. 24. Friedrich Freiherr Hiller von Gaertringen, ‘ ‘‘Dolchstoss-Diskussion’’ und ‘‘Dolchstosslegende’’ im Wandel von vier Jahrzehnten’, in Waldemar Besson et al. (eds.), Geschichte und Gegenwartsbewußtsei (Göttingen, 1963), 127; Joachim Petzold, Die Dolchstosslegende. Eine Geschichtsfälschung im Dienst des deutschen Imperialismus und Militarismus (Berlin, 1963), 25–8; and Boris Barth, Dolchstosslegenden und politische Desintegration. Das Trauma der deutschen Niederlage im Ersten Weltkrieg 1914–1933 (Dusseldorf, 2003), 324–5. 25. Diary entries of 4, 9, and 12 February 1919 (for Kessler), 8 February 1919 (for Hilferding), in Harry Graf Kessler, Tagebücher 1918–1937 (Frankfurt am Main, 1961), 118, 122, 124, 126. 26. Vossische Zeitung (VZ ), 85, 15 February 1919: ‘Die Waffenstillstandskommission’. 27. Verhandlungen der verfassungsgebenden deutschen Nationalversammlung, 18 February 1919, Vol. 326, 132–6. 28. Vorwärts (V ), 91, 19 February 1919: ‘Waffenstillstandsdebatte in Weimar. Stürmische Abrechnung mit der Schwerindustrie’; BT, 78, 19 February 1919: ‘Die Waffenstillstandsinterpellation in der Nationalversammlung’; Berliner Morgenpost, 50, 19 February 1919: ‘Die mißglückte Erzberger-Hetze’. 29. e.g. BT, 82, 21 February 1919: ‘Der Sitzungsbericht’. 30. See also Deutsche Zeitung (DZ ), 81, 19 February 1919: ‘Erzberger auf der Anklagebank.’; DZ, 82, 20 February 1919: ‘Nochmals Erzberger’; Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger (BLA), 79, 19 February 1919: ‘Der Kampf um Erzberger’; Tägliche Rundschau (TR), 92, 20 February 1919: ‘Wir’. 31. Ostpreussische Zeitung, 61, 2 March 1919: ‘Offener Brief an Matthias Erzberger’.

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32. Kölnische Zeitung, 9 March 1919, quoted in Epstein, Erzberger, 300. 33. See the caricature in Kladderadatsch showing Erzberger on the look-out for ships carrying food supplies: Kladderadatsch, 8, 23 February 1919: ‘Das Lebensmittelschiff ’. 34. Diary entry of 1 March 1919, in Kessler, Tagebücher, 142. 35. e.g. Simplicissimus, 33, 12 November 1918: ‘Die neuen Männer’; Ulk, 10, 7 March 1919: ‘Die Häupter unserer Lieben’; Kladderadatsch, 10, 9 March 1919: ‘Von den Waffenstillstandsverhandlungen’; ibid., 15, 13 April 1919: ‘Typen aus dem Weimarer Hoftheater’. 36. Verhandlungen der verfassungsgebenden deutschen Nationalversammlung, 12 May 1919, Vol. 327, 1084. See also Epstein, Erzberger, 304. 37. Epstein, Erzberger, 304–24. 38. e.g. DTZ, 272, 2 June 1919: ‘Eine Richtigstellung Erzbergers’. 39. BT, 262, 10 June 1919. 40. Berliner Zeitung am Mittag, 22 June 1919: ‘Kabinett Erzberger, genannt Bauer’. 41. DTZ, 303, 24 June 1919: ‘Der Erzberger-Friede’. 42. Diary entry of 22 June 1919, in Kessler, Tagebücher, 185–6. 43. Ibid. 44. VZ, 318, 25 June 1919: ‘Der letzte Widerstand’; DZ, 287, 25 June 1919: ‘Die Reichswehr will nicht ehrlos werden’. 45. See also Epstein, Erzberger, 52–5. 46. Kreuz-Zeitung (KrZ ), 300, 1 July 1919: ‘Die Juli-Resolution, der Anfang des moralischen Zusammenbruchs’. 47. Ibid. 48. DAZ, 2 July 1919: ‘Die Juliresolution und Dr. Helfferich’. 49. KrZ, 304, 3 July 1919: ‘Juliresolution, U-Bootkrieg und Herr Erzberger’. 50. e.g. DZ, 305, 4 July 1919: ‘ ‘‘Der Krebsschaden Erzberger’’ ’. 51. See also DAZ, 4 July 1919: ‘Juliresolution, U-Bootkrieg und Herr Erzberger’; KrZ, 307, 5 July 1919: ‘Nochmals Herr Erzberger’; DAZ, 6 July 1919: ‘Nochmals Herr Dr. Helfferich’; KrZ, 311, 7 July 1919: ‘Ein echter ‘‘Erzberger’’ ’. 52. See also KrZ, 322, 13 July 1919: ‘Der erste deutschnationale Parteitag’. 53. Ibid. 54. DZ, 322, 14 July 1919: ‘Der zweite Tag’. See also DTZ, 340, 14 July 1919: ‘Der Deutschnationale Parteitag’. 55. See also DAZ, 348, 23 July 1919: ‘ ‘‘Der Grosse Schlag des Herrn Helfferich’’ ’; in reply to Helfferich’s article in KrZ, 337, 21 July 1919: ‘Das ‘‘Reichsnotopfer’’ und Herr Erzberger’. For Erzberger’s tax reform, see Epstein, Erzberger, 334–48. 56. BT, 337, 24 July 1919: ‘Wedels Anklage gegen Erzberger’; TR, 357, 24 July 1919: ‘Erzberger—der Reichsschädling’; KrZ, 343, 24 July 1919: ‘Der indiskrete Herr Erzberger’; VZ, 375, 25 July 1919: ‘Erzbergers Mission in Wien’. 57. See also Verhandlungen der verfassungsgebenden deutschen Nationalversammlung, 25 July 1919, 328, 1912–25, esp. 1919. 58. Hermann Benz and Wolfgang Graml (eds.), Die revolutionäre Illusion. Zur Geschichte des linken Flügels der USPD. Erinnerungen von Curt Geyer (Stuttgart, 1976), 121. It was the only parliamentary debate mentioned in the memoirs of the Independent Socialist and journalist Curt Geyer.


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59. See also Verhandlungen der verfassungsgebenden deutschen Nationalversammlung, 25 July 1919, Vol. 328, 1940–1. 60. See also DTZ, 364, 27 July 1919: ‘Wetterfahne’. 61. BT, 341, 26 July 1919: ‘Erzbergers Anklagerede’; VZ, 375, 26 July 1919: ‘Erzbergers Sieg u¨ ber die Deutsch-Nationalen’. 62. V , 377, 26 July 1919: ‘Entlarvung der Alldeutschen!’; V , 377, 26 July 1919: ‘Der Schleier wird gelüftet!’; V , 382, 29 July 1919: ‘Die Abrechnung geht weiter’; V , 386, 31 July 1919: ‘Ludendorffs Annexionsprogramm’. 63. DTZ, 363, 26 July 1919: ‘ ‘‘Der Friedensfuehler’’ ’. 64. KrZ, 347, 26 July 1919: ‘Erzbergers Entlastung-Offensive’. 65. See TR, 364, 28 July 1919: ‘Der Staatsgerichtshof für Erzberger!’; DTZ, 368, 29 July 1919: ‘Painleve u¨ ber Erzbergers Lügen’; TR, 367, 30 July 1919: ‘Ribot u¨ ber das angebliche Friedensangebot’, ‘Graf Westarp u¨ ber Erzberger’; DTZ, 371, 31 July 1919: ‘Erzberger, wie er leibt und lügt’; DZ, 356, 1 August 1919: ‘Wieder eine Erzberger-Lüge richtiggestellt!’; DZ, 358, 2 August 1919: ‘Der Vatikan gegen Erzberger’; TR, 376, 4 August 1919: ‘Ein vernichtendes Urteil u¨ ber Erzberger’; TR, 381, 6 August 1919: ‘Auch die Engländer stellen Erzberger bloss’. 66. V , 378, 26 July 1919: ‘Das Echo’. 67. DTZ, 371, 31 July 1919: ‘Was lehrt die Weimarer Debatte?’ 68. VZ, 376, 26 July 1919: ‘Maueranschlag der Erzbergerrede’; VZ, 381, 29 July 1919: ‘Gegen den Anschlag der Erzbergerred’; VZ, 382, 30 July 1919: ‘Das Vertrauen zu Erzberger’. 69. KrZ, 385, 16 August 1919: ‘Der Mann mit der eisernen Stirn’. 70. TR, 370, 31 July 1919: ‘Die Anklagerede v. Graefes gegen Erzberger!’ 71. KrZ, 351, 29 July 1919: ‘Die Wahrheit marschiert!’; see also TR, 366, 29 July 1919: ‘Beabsichtigte Klage Helfferichs gegen Erzberger’. 72. KrZ, 360, 2 August 1919: ‘Das doppelte Gesicht.’; KrZ, 366, 6 August 1919: ‘Die Schildkröte’. 73. Karl Helfferich, Fort mit Erzberger! Flugschriften des ‘Tag’ Nr. 8 (Berlin, 1919). 74. See also DTZ, 407, 19 August 1919: ‘Helfferichs Beweggründe fuer den Kampf gegen Erzberger. Ein Schreiben an den Reichspräsidenten’. 75. KrZ, 393, 20 August 1919: ‘Endlich’. 76. Kladderadatsch, 31, 3 August 1919: ‘Mr. Erzbergère’. 77. e.g. Heinrich Frenzel, Erzberger, der Reichsverderber! (Leipzig, 1919); Max Taube, Erzberger, der Totengräber des Deutschen Reiches (Berlin, 1919); A. Friedrich, Die Wahrheit u¨ ber die Waffenstillstandsverhandlungen. Wie Erzberger das deutsche Volk abfertigt (Berlin, 1919); Bruno Marwitz, Herrn Erzbergers ‘Enthüllungen’. Eine Kampfschrift gegen Erzberger (Berlin, 1919); Anonymous, Erzberger als Enthüller. Die Wahrheit u¨ ber das englische Friedensangebot (Berlin, 1919). 78. e.g. V , 398, 6 August 1919: ‘Kesseltreiben’; G, 355, 7 August 1919: ‘Berlin, 6. August’. 79. See also TR, 377, 4 August 1919: ‘Rheinische Kundgebung gegen Erzberger’; Magdeburger Zeitung, 554, 5 August 1919: ‘Ein Zentrumsvorstoss gegen Erzberger’. 80. DTZ, 420, 26 August 1919: ‘Dr. Helfferich gegen Erzberger’. 81. TR, 381, 6 August 1919: ‘Ein Volksgericht u¨ ber Erzberger’. See also V , 398, 6 August 1919: ‘Kesseltreiben’.

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82. e.g. reader’s letter to Stuttgarter Neuen Tagblatt, repr. in DZ, 307, 5 July 1919: ‘Zum Kapitel ‘‘Erzberger’’ ’. 83. For a typical example, see KrZ, 34, 19 January 1920: ‘Stimmugsbild Prozess Erzberger’. 84. See also V , 36, 20 January 1920: ‘Helfferich redet Flugblatt 49’. 85. See also Niels Albrecht, Die Macht einer Verleumdungskampagne. Antidemokratische Agitationen der Presse und Justiz gegen die Weimarer Republik und ihren ersten Reichspräsidenten Friedrich Ebert vom ‘Badebild ’ bis zum Magdeburger Prozeß (Bremen, 2002), 95–6. 86. See Otto Groth, Die Zeitung. Ein System der Zeitungskunde (Journalistik) (Mannheim, 1928), Vol.1, 942–50; Daniel Siemens, ‘A popular expression of individuality’: Kriminalität, Justiz und Gesellschaft in der Gerichtsberichterstattung von Tageszeitungen in Berlin, Paris und Chicago, 1919 bis 1933 (Berlin, 2005), 101–6; Walter Holiczki, Die Entwicklung der Gerichtsberichterstattung in der Wiener Tagespresse von 1848 bis zur Jahrhundertwende (Vienna, 1972), 91–2. 87. KrZ, 36, 20 January 1920: ‘Prozess Helfferich-Erzberger’. See also DAZ, 49, 27 January 1920: ‘Prozess Erzberger gegen Helfferich’. 88. See also KrZ, 40, 22 January 1920: ‘Der Fall Thyssen im Prozess ErzbergerHelfferich’; KrZ, 41, 23 January 1920: ‘Erzberger vor und nach dem Ausscheiden aus dem Thyssen-Konzern’; KrZ, 44, 24 January 1920: ‘Die politische und geschäftliche Tätigkeit Erzbergers’; KrZ, 45, 25 January 1920: ‘Erzbergers Beziehungen zu Thyssen’. For a sympathetic account of Erzberger’s activities for Thyssen, see Epstein, Erzberger, 413–19. 89. KrZ, 49, 27 January 1920: ‘Der Anschlag gegen Erzberger’. 90. KrZ, 48, 27 January 1920: ‘Ein Aufruf der Reichsregierung’. See also the minutes of the Reich cabinet meeting of 26 January 1920, in Akten der Reichskanzlei: Weimarer Republik. Das Kabinett Bauer: 21 Juni 1919 bis 27 Maerz 1920 (Boppard, 1980), 562. 91. e.g. G, 43, 27 January 1920: ‘Berlin, den 26. Januar’; V , 48, 27 January 1920: ‘Irrsinn und Verhetzung’; V , 49, 27 January 1920: ‘Die Partei Meuchelmörder’; VZ, 48, 27 January 1920: ‘Der Revolveranschlag auf Erzberger’. DAZ, 48, 27 January 1920: ‘Die Reichsregierung zum Mordanschlag auf Erzberger’. 92. V , 49, 27 January 1920: ‘Wie gehetzt wurde’. 93. See the range of press reactions summarized in V , 49, 27 January 1920: ‘Die Freude der Reaktionäre’. 94. KrZ, 49, 27 January 1920: ‘Der Anschlag gegen Erzberger’. 95. Quoted in V , 404, 27 August 1921: ‘Vergebliche Ableugnung’. 96. Diary entry of 27 January 1920, in Victor Klemperer, Leben sammeln, nicht fragen wozu und warum (Berlin, 1996), i. 222. 97. See also VZ, 96, 21 February 1920: ‘Der Revolveranschlag auf Erzberger’; KrZ, 96, 21 February 1920: ‘Der Anschlag auf Erzberger vor dem Schwurgericht’; KrZ, 97, 22 February 1920: ‘Der Anschlag auf Erzberger vor dem Schwurgericht’. 98. DAZ, 97, 22 February 1920: ‘Das Attentat auf Erzberger’; VZ, 96, 21 February 1920: ‘Der Revolveranschlag auf Erzberger’. 99. For a discussion of the documents’ origins, see Epstein, Erzberger, 431–3; Verhandlungen des Reichstags, cccxlix., 4 May 1921, 3593; and KrZ, 82, 14 February 1920: ‘Beschlagnahme einer Erzberger-Broschüre’.


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100. See also KrZ, 97, 22 January 1920: ‘Die Steuererklärung des Reichsfinanzministers’; KrZ, 98, 23 February 1920: ‘Die Steuererklärung des Reichsfinanzministers’. 101. See also Epstein, Erzberger, 366; VZ, 102, 25 February 1920: ‘Erzberger vorläufig beurlaubt’. 102. See also VZ, 133, 12 March 1920: ‘Helfferich zu 300 Mark verurteilt’. 103. VZ, 134, 13 March 1920: ‘Der Jubel der Rechten’; TR, 133, 12 March 1920: ‘Das Urteil im Erzberger-Prozess’. 104. See also Epstein, Erzberger, 367–8, 434. 105. V , 133, 12 March 1920: ‘Das Urteil im Helfferich-Prozess’. 106. ‘A’ [Adolf Stein], Gerichtstage u¨ ber Erzberger. 19. Januar bis 12. März 1920 (Berlin, 1920). 107. Statement Heinrich Schultz, 23 January 1950, repr. in Gotthard Jasper, ‘Aus den Akten der Prozesse gegen die Erzberger-Mörder’, VfZ, 10 (1962), 430–53, here 449. 108. Ibid. 109. VZ, 120, 15 May 1920: ‘Erzbergers Kandidatenrede’; BT, 225, 15 May 1920: ‘Erzberger kandidiert. Eine Vertrauenskundgebung des schwäbischen Zentrums’. See also Epstein, Erzberger, 371. 110. See also www.gonschior.de/weimar/Wuerttemberg/Uebersicht RTW.html (last accessed 1 August 2006). 111. Otto Büsch, Berlin als Hauptstadt der Weimarer Republik: 1919–1933 (Berlin, 1987), table 4, 26. 112. Epstein, Erzberger, 371–2, 383. 113. e.g. KrZ, 274, 15 June 1921: ‘Erzberger redivivus’; DTgbl, 39, 18 June 1921: ‘Gegen Erzberger!’ 114. DAZ, 370, 10 August 1921: ‘Erzbergers ‘‘Christlicher Solidarismus’’ ’. 115. DTZ, 379, 16 August 1921: ‘Der Kampf mit Erzberger’. 116. Letter Heinrich Tillessen to his brother Werner, Regensburg, 12 March 1921, repr. in Jasper, ‘Aus den Akten’, 444–5. 117. Statement Heinrich Schultz, 2 March 1950, repr. in Jasper, ‘Aus den Akten’, 451. 118. Quoted in Martin Sabrow, Der Rathenau-Mord. Rekonstruktion einer Verschwörung gegen die Republik von Weimar (Munich, 1994), 23, fn. 46. 119. Statement Heinrich Schultz, 2 March 1950, repr. in Jasper, ‘Aus den Akten’, 451. 120. Epstein, Erzberger, 384–6. 121. G, 422, 27 August 1921: ‘Das Opfer der deutschnationalen Hetze’. See also G, 425, 28 August 1921: ‘Die Partei der Meuchelmörder’. 122. V , 403, 27 August 1921: ‘Nationalistischer Mord!’ 123. VZ, 402, 27 August 1921: ‘Meuchelmord’. 124. Berliner Volks-Zeitung (BVZ ), 404, 28 August 1921: ‘Zwischen den Schlachten’. 125. See also TR, 401, 28 August 1921: ‘Wochenschau’. 126. Deutsches Tageblatt (DTgbl), 99, 27 August 1921: ‘Mildernde Umstände?’ 127. Oletzkoer Zeitung, 27 August 1921, quoted in Verlag der ‘‘Unitas GmbH’’, Der Erzberger-Mord. Dokumente menschlicher und politischer Verkommenheit (Buehl, 1921), 15. 128. Volksstimme (Nuremberg, Munich), 31 August 1921, quoted in Der ErzbergerMord, 14.

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129. See also BZaM, 200, 27 August 1921: ‘Reichstagspräsident Loebe u¨ ber Erzberger’. 130. Kölnische Volkszeitung (KVZ ), 619, 1 September 1921: ‘Die Kundgebungen im Reich’; Rote Fahne (RF ), 401, 1 September 1921: ‘Der Massenaufmarsch im Lustgarten’. See also Gotthard Jasper, Der Schutz der Republik: Studien zur staatlichen Sicherung der Demokratie in der Weimarer Republik 1922–1933 ( Tubingen, 1963), 37–8; Marie-Luise Ehls, Protest und Propaganda: Demonstrationen in Berlin zur Zeit der Weimarer Republik (Berlin, 1997), 75. 131. TR, 401, 28 August 1921: ‘Wochenschau’. 132. See also Jasper, Schutz der Republik, 36–8; Ehls, Protest und Propaganda, 75–7. 133. Jasper, Schutz der Republik, 52–3. 134. For the significance of the theatrical nature of political trials, see Henning Grunwald, Political Justice in the Weimar Republic: Party Lawyers, Political Trials and Judicial Culture (Münster, 2007). 135. See also Ian Kershaw, Hitler. 1889–1936: Hubris (London, 1998), 126–7; Georg Franz-Willing, Ursprung der Hitlerbewegung 1919–1922 (Preussisch-Oldendorf, 1974), 97. 136. e.g. notes for speech on 13 November 1919, in Eberhard Jäckel and Axel Kuhn (eds.), Hitler. Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen 1905–1924 (Stuttgart, 1980), 92. 137. Ibid., 158–60, 266, 353–5, 370. 138. See also notes for speech on 4 January 1921, ‘Dummheit oder Verbrechen’; Völkischer Beobachter, 21 April 1921: ‘Die Justicia mit den verbundenen Augen’; police report of speech on 3 May 1921, ‘Erzberger und Genossen’: ibid., 291–3, 364, 373. 139. Notes for the speech on 8 September 1921, ‘Matthias von Buttenhausen’, and Völkischer Beobachter, 14 September 1921: ‘Aus der Bewegung’; quoted ibid., 477, 479. For the posters, see Der Erzberger-Mord, 30. 140. See also report of [NSDAP] Ortsgruppe Munich, 1 October 1921, ibid., 497. 141. Franz-Willing, Ursprung, 340. 142. Quoted in Franz-Willing, Ursprung, 338. 143. Franz-Willing, Ursprung, 223. 144. e.g. BZaM, 297, 28 October 1922: ‘Fascisten-Aufstand in Oberitalien’; BM, 259, 29 October 1922: ‘Fascisten-Revolution in Italien’; BZaM, 299, 30 October 1922: ‘Mussolinis Einzug in Rom’; BM, 260, 31 October 1922: ‘Mussolini Ministerpräsident’; BLA, 479, 31 October 1922: ‘Mussolinis Empfang beim König’; BM, 261, 1 November 1922: ‘Fascistenparade in Rom’. 145. BLA, 479, 31 October 1922: ‘Faschistensieg’. See also BM, 259, 29 October 1922: ‘Die Fascisten’. 146. BLA, 43, 20 November 1922: ‘Diktator und Parlament’. 147. See also Franz-Willing, Ursprung, 342–3. 148. Der Deutsche, 264, 17 November 1922: ‘Die nationalsozialistische Bewegung’. See also Franz-Willing, Ursprung, 250. 149. BLA, 552, 13 December 1922: ‘Hitler’. 150. BZaM, 317, 17 November 1922: ‘Hitler–Mussolini’. 151. BM, 277, 19 November 1922: ‘Die Nationalsozialistische Arbeiter-Partei in Preussen verboten’.


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152. e.g. BLA, 516, 21 November 1922: ‘Die nationalsozialistische Bewegung’; BM, 279, 22 November 1922: ‘Die Bayerische Reigerung schützt die Nationalsozialisten’; BLA, 552, 13 December 1922: ‘Hitler’. 153. Carl Christian Bry, ‘Mussolinchen in Blau-Weiß’, in Argentinische Tag- und Wochenblatt, 24 December 1922, repr. in Carl Christian Bry, Der Hitler-Putsch. Berichte und Kommentare eines Deutschland-Korrespondenten (1922–1924) für das ‘Argentinische Tag- und Wochenblatt’ (Nördlingen, 1987), 59–66. 154. KrZ, 581, 28 December 1922: ‘Die nationalsozialistische Bewegung in Bayern’. 155. BT, 20, 12 January 1923: ‘Selbstzerfleischung’; DAZ, 19, 12 January 1923: ‘Hitlers Hassgesang’. 156. See also V , 24, 16 January 1923: ‘Bayerische ‘‘Kraftprobe’’?’; V , 25, 16 January 1923: ‘Der Münchener Brandherd’; V , 26, 17 January 1923: ‘Ernste Tage für Bayern’; BT, 25, 16 January 1923: ‘Gefahrmomente?’; BT, 31, 19 January 1923: ‘Der abgesagte Putsch’; Berliner Volks-Zeitung (BVZ ), 26, 16 January 1923: ‘Hitler vor der ‘‘Aktion’’. Der Ruf nach der Diktatur’; BVZ, 29, 18 January 1923: ‘Vor der Aktion der Hitler-Banden’. 157. BM, 23, 27 January 1923: ‘Ausnahme-Zustand in Bayern’; BLA, 45, 27 January 1923: ‘Ausnahmezustand in Bayern’. 158. See also BLA, 45, 27 January 1923: ‘Ausnahmezustand in Bayern’; BLA, 47, 28 January 1923: ‘Die heutigen Kundgebungen in München’; BLA, special edn. no.4, 2 January 1923: ‘Keine Zwischenfälle in München’. 159. See also BVZ, 47, 28 January 1923: ‘Zurückweichen vor Hitler?’; V , 47, 29 January 1923: ‘Die Münchener Posse’; BT, 50, 30 January 1923: ‘Bayern im Ausnahmezustand’; BT, 51, 31 January 1923: ‘Weshalb die bayerische Regierung nachgab’; V , 53, 1 February 1923: ‘Die fascistische Nebenregierung’; BT, 55, 2 February 1923: ‘Die bayerische Regierung und die Nationalsozialisten’. 160. e.g. BT, 329, 15 July 123: ‘Die Eröffnung des Deutschen Turnfestes in München’; BT, 332, 17 July 1923: ‘Deutschvölkische Störenfriede’; BT, 335, 19 July 1923: ‘Das Spiel mit dem Bürgerkrieg’; BVZ, 335, 19 July 1923: ‘Gegen die Bürgerkriegshetze’. 161. Rote Fahne (RF ), 10, 13 January 1923: ‘Hitler ruft zum Kampf!’; V , 288, 22 June 1923: ‘Hitlers Auslandsmillionen’. 162. Friedericus, 31, August–September 1923: ‘Adolf Hitler’. 163. Deutsches Tageblatt (DTgbl), 112, 14 August 1923: ‘Adolf Hitler!’ 164. See also newspaper clipping collection in Bundesarchiv Berlin (BArchB), R8034 II, ff. 8–9. 165. See also report of 24 January 1923, in Ernst Ritter (ed.), Reichskommissar für ¨ Uberwachung der o¨ffentlichen Ordnung und Nachrichtensammelstelle im Reichsministerium des Innern. Lageberichte (1920–1929) und Meldungen (1929–1933). Bestand R134 des Bundesarchivs, Koblenz, veröffentlicht als Microfiche-Ausgabe (Munich, 1979), ff. 19/17–18. 166. BM, 230, 27 September 1923: ‘Ernennung v. Kahrs zum bayrischen Diktator’. See also BT, 452, 26 September 1923: ‘Die Treibereien der Rechtsradikalen’; BT, 453, 27 September 1923: ‘Ausnahmezustand in Bayern’; BVZ, 453, 27 September 1923: ‘Wagen es die Hitlerbanden doch?’; BT, 454, 27 September 1923: ‘Die Maßnahmen gegen die Putschisten in Bayern’.

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167. See also Winkler, Weimar, 223; Wolfgang Boewig, Der Hitler-Putsch. Vorgeschichte, Verlauf und Prozeß (Bingen, 1994), 32–6; Harold Gordon, Jun., Hitler and the Beer Hall Putsch (Princeton, 1972), 227–31. 168. e.g. BT, 519, 4 November 1923: ‘Drohungen der bayerischen Verbände’; BT, 520, 5 November 1923: ‘An der bayerisch-thüringischen Grenze’; BT, 521, 6 November 1923: ‘Die Lage’. 169. e.g. BM, 267, 9 November 1923: ‘Hitler-Umsturz in München’. 170. e.g. BLA, special edition, 9 November 1923: ‘Kahr und Lossow gegen HitlerLudendorff ’; BT, 528, 9 November 1923: ‘Der Kampf Kahrs und Lossows gegen Ludendorff und Hitler’. 171. BLA, 506, 10 November 1923: ‘Der Putsch und seine Nutzniesser’; BT, 529, 10 November 1923: ‘Das Ende der Hanswurstiade’; BVZ, 528, 9 November 1923: ‘Münchener Karneval’. 172. See also BM, 269/74, 17 November 1923: ‘Was ist geschehen?’; BLA, 507, 16 November 1923: ‘Das Kabinett Stresemann vor dem Sturz’; BT, 530, 16 November 1923: ‘Das Programm des Währungskommissars’. 173. e.g. BLA, 48, 29 January 1924: ‘Der grösste politische Prozess’. 174. See also BT, 48, 29 January 1924: ‘Vor dem Hitler-Prozess’; BT, 50, 30 January 1924: ‘Hitler-Prozess und Amtsgeheimnis’; BLA, 53, 31 January 1924: ‘Hitlers Verteidiger mahnen zur Ruhe’; BT, 61, 5 February 1924: ‘Der fatale Prozeß’; V , 59, 5 February 1924: ‘Prolog zum Ludendorff-Prozess’; BLA, 63, 6 February 1924: ‘Seltsame Behauptungen aus München’; DAZ, 61, 6 February 1924: ‘Hitler-Prozess und politische Reinigung in Bayern’; V , 69, 10 February 1924: ‘Verschiebung des Hitler-Prozesses’; BT, 83, 18 February 1924: ‘Rücktritt Kahrs und Lossows’; BLA, 85, 19 February 1924: ‘Kahr, der Prozess und die Krähen’; BLA, 93, 23 February 1924: ‘Hindenburg zum Hochverratsprozess gegen Ludendorff ’; BLA, 94, 24 February 1924: ‘Die Vorbereitung des Hitlerprozesses’; BLA, 95, 25 February 1924: ‘Vor Beginn des Hitler-Prozesses’; BLA, 96, 26 February 1924: ‘Um die Blutenburger Strasse’; DTZ, 95, 26 February 1924: ‘Vor dem Münchener Prozeß’. 175. e.g. the diary entry of Dorothy von Moltke of 5 March 1924, in Dorothy von Moltke, Ein Leben in Deutschland. Briefe aus Kreisau und Berlin 1907–1934 (Munich, 1999), 93. 176. Bernd Steger, ‘Der Hitlerprozeß und Bayerns Verhältnis zum Reich 1923/24’, VfZ, 25 (1977), 441–66; Otto Gritschneder, Bewährungsfrist für den Terroristen Adolf H. Der Hitler-Putsch und die bayerische Justiz (Munich, 1990), 47; Kershaw, Hitler, 214. 177. See also Lothar Gruchmann Reinhard and Weber (eds.), Der Hitler-Prozeß 1924—Wortlaut der Hauptverhandlung vor dem Volksgericht München (Munich, 1997–8), 4 vols. 178. e.g. Tag, 50, 27 February 1927: ‘Der Angeklagte als Kläger’; BLA, 98, 27 February 1924: ‘Der Mann’; DTZ, 148, 27 March 1924: ‘Das Schlusswort der Angeklagten’; BLA, 150, 28 March 1924: ‘Hitlers Geheimnis’. 179. On Hans Schweitzer’s double-life as caricaturist for both Hugenberg and Goebbels, see Bernhard Fulda, ‘Die vielen Gesichter des Hans Schweitzer. Politische Karikaturen als historische Quelle’, in Gerhard Paul (ed.), Visual History. Die Historiker und die Bilder. Ein Studienbuch (Göttingen, 2006), 206–24. The special


180. 181. 182. 183.

184.

185. 186. 187. 188. 189. 190. 191.

192.

193.

194. 195. 196. 197. 198. 199.

200. 201.

202.

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correspondent of the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, Job Zimmermann, also joined the National Socialists in later years, see Goebbels’s diary entry on 12 August 1930, in Ralf Georg Reuth (ed.), Joseph Goebbels Tagebücher 1924–1945 (Munich, 1992), ii. 505. DTZ, 97, 27 February 1924: ‘Die Vernehmung Hitlers’. See also DTZ, 148, 27 March 1924: ‘Das Schlusswort der Angeklagten’, 1 and 3. DTZ, 97, 27 February 1924: ‘Der erste Verhandlungstag’ See also BLA, 97, 26 February 1924: ‘Im Gerichtssaal’. e.g. DTZ, 103, 1 March 1924: ‘Die Vernehmung Ludendorffs’; BLA, 104, 1 March 1924: ‘Ludendorff als Ankläger’, ‘ ‘‘Der Preusse Ludendorff ’’ ’; KrZ, 148, 27 March 1924: ‘Vor der Urteilsverkündung im Hitlerprozess’. e.g. BLA, 157, 1 April 1924: ‘Das Volksgericht hat gesprochen’; Tag, 80, 2 April 1924: ‘Ludendorff freigesprochen’; KrZ, 156, 1 April 1924: ‘General Ludendorff freigesprochen’; BM, 80, 2 April 1924: ‘Das Urteil von München’. See also BLA, 104, 1 March 1924: ‘Ludendorff als Ankläger’. V , 149, 28 March 1924: ‘Der deutsche Messias’. Kershaw, Hitler, 216–17, 235, 239. KrZ, 151, 1 April 1924: ‘Das Urteil im Hitlerprozess’. See also BLA, 158, 2 April 1924: ‘Rückblick und Ausschau’. BT, 157, 1 April 1924: ‘Justizbankerott’; G, 114, 1 April 1924: ‘Milde fuer Hochverraeter’; V , 158, 2 April 1924: ‘Deutschlands Justizschande’. Walter Görlitz and Herbert A. Quint, Adolf Hitler. Eine Biographie (Stuttgart, 1953), 226. For similar scenes already prior to the verdict, see BM, 76, 28 March 1924: ‘Blumensegen für Hitler und Ludendorff ’. See also Albrecht Tyrell, Vom ‘Trommler’ zum ‘Führer’. Der Wandel von Hitlers Selbstverständnis zwischen 1919 und 1924 und die Entwicklung der NSDAP (Munich, 1975), 157–60; Kershaw, Hitler, 169–70, 219. This is an argument put forward in Albrecht Tryell, ‘Wie er der ‘‘Führer’’ wurde’, in Guido Knopp (ed.), Hitler heute. Gespräche u¨ ber ein deutsches Trauma (Aschaffenburg, 1979), 20–48, here 34–5; and repeated by Kershaw, Hitler, 218. Carl Christian Bry, ‘Mussolinchen in Blau-Weiß’, Argentinische Tag- und Wochenblatt, 24 December 1922, repr. in Bry, Hitler-Putsch, 61. See also Deutsches Tageblatt, 91, 24 April 1924: ‘Hitlers und Ludendorffs Dank’. Kershaw also notes Hitler’s new status after the trial, but does not consider this as a result of media coverage: Kershaw, Hitler, 223–4. Ibid., 228. Report of 16 April 1924, in Ritter (ed.), Reichskommissar, ff. 23–32. See also Jürgen Falter, Thomas Lindenberger, and Siegfried Schumann, Wahlen und Abstimmungen in der Weimarer Republik. Materialien zum Wahlverhalten 1919–1933 (Munich, 1986), 41, 133. For his views on a parliamentary strategy, see Görlitz and Quint, Hitler, 228–30; Kershaw, Hitler, 228–9. BT, 363, 1 August 1924: ‘Aus Hitlers Festungshaft’; Mecklenburger Warte, 17, 5 August 1924: ‘Eine Bitte Adolf Hitlers’. For the flow of visitors, see also Kershaw, Hitler, 223. See also BLA, 195, 24 April 1924: ‘T. U. München, 24 April’.

248 203. 204. 205. 206. 207. 208. 209. 210. 211. 212.

Notes to pages 71–77 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (transl. Ralph Manheim, London, 1998 edn.), p. lxv. Kershaw, Hitler, 241. Quoted ibid., 262. BT, 593, 14 December 1924: ‘Prozesse’. Joseph Eberle, Großmacht Presse. Enthüllungen für Zeitungsgläubige. Forderungen für Männer (Vienna, 1920 [1912]), 18. See also Kurt Baschwitz, Der Massenwahn, seine Wirkung und seine Beherrschung (Munich, 1923), 38, 244; or Otto Groth’s discussion of the importance of audiences and the limits of press influence, in Vol.1 of his 4-vol. study, Die Zeitung, 91–167. See also Hitler, Mein Kampf, 426. Ibid., 219. Ibid. See Goebbels’s diary entry of 17 November 1928, in Ralf Geort Reuth (ed.), Joseph Goebbels Tagebücher (Munich, 1992), i. 334. CHAPTER 3

1. Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz Berlin-Dahlem (GStAPK), I. Hauptabteilung, Re 84a Nr. 15855, 6–9. 2. e.g. Vossische Zeitung (VZ ), 553, 21 November 1924: ‘Bartels–Kutisker– Holzmann–Grünberg—Die Korruptionsaffäre des Tages’. For the Kutisker affair, see Friedrich Karl Kaul, Verdienen wird gross geschrieben. Der Pitaval der Weimarer Republik (Berlin, 1954), i. 13, and ‘Urteil vom 30.6.1926 gegen Iwan Kutisker und Gen.’, in Landesarchiv Berlin (LAB), Re 358 Akten des Generalstaatsanwalts am Landgericht Berlin, Nr. 62, Bd. 1, unpaginated. 3. Rote Fahne (RF ), 160, 18 November 1924: ‘Neuer Ia-Skandal!’, and 163, 22 November 1924: ‘Der Fall Bartels’. 4. RF, 162, 21 November 1924: ‘Der Konterrevolutionär Bartels, der Vertrauensmann der SPD-Führer’. 5. e.g. Deutsche Zeitung (DZ ), 525, 21 November 1924: ‘Kutisker und Boruch Holzmann’; DZ, 533, 26 November 1924: ‘Kutiskers Inflationsgewinne’. 6. DZ, 525, 21 November 1924: ‘Kutisker und Boruch Holzmann’. 7. See DZ, 526, 22 November 1924: ‘Jüdische Geldherrscher’; and DZ, 528, 23 November 1924: ‘Arbeit für den Staatsanwalt!’ 8. RF, 165. 25 November 1924: ‘Die Barmat-Geschäfte der Seehandlung’. 9. RF, 169, 29 November 1924: ‘Kutisker’ and ‘Elf Fragen an den Vorstand der SPD. (Was die SPD-Arbeiter nicht wissen dürfen.)’ The ‘Panama affair’ was a major corruption scandal in France in 1892 which helped to topple the Ribot government, see Jean-Yves Mollier, Le scandale de Panama (Paris, 1991). 10. e.g. DZ, 536, 28 November 1924: ‘Um die Preußische Staatsbank herum’; KrZ, 562, 29 November 1924: ‘Was die sozialdemokratischen Arbeiter nicht wissen dürfen’. 11. V , 564, 29 November 1924: ‘Die Flut der Verleumdungen’. 12. e.g. RF, 170, 30 November 1924: ‘Der Familienkonzern der SPD’. 13. V , 567, 2 December 1924: ‘Kommunistische Spekulation’. 14. V , 567, 2 December 1924: ‘Hugenberg freut sich’. 15. RF, 172, 3 December 1924: ‘Die Barmat-Sozialisten gestehen!’

Notes to pages 77–81 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22.

23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

34.

35. 36. 37. 38.

249

RF, 172, 3 December 1924: ‘Fritz Ebert jun’. RF, 173, 4 December 1924: ‘Brüder Barmat & Co.’ DTztg, 570, 4 December 1924: ‘Nieder der Kapitalismus! Neues von Barmat’. In 1921, Hugenberg had taken over as a majority shareholder of the BMZ, but this was not public knowledge. See Heidrun Holzbach, Das ‘‘System Hugenberg’’. Die Organisation bürgerlicher Sammlungspolitik vor dem Aufstieg der NSDAP (Stuttgart, 1981), 272. For polemical articles, see DZ, 546, 4 December 1924: ‘Barmat und die Sozialdemokratie’; KrZ, 572, 5 December 1924: ‘Die ostjüdischen Prozente der roten Parteikasse—Die Fettgeschäfte Barmats.’; Tag, 292, 5 December 1924: ‘Schützt die Republik!’ V , 575, 6 December 1924: ‘Eine vorsichtige Wahllüge.’ e.g. reference to Berliner-Börsen-Zeitung in DTbl, 282, 6 December 1924: ‘Der Sumpf’. RF, 174, 5 December 1924: ‘Barmat, der Finanzier der 2. Internationale’. Cf. DZ, 550, 6 December 1924: ‘Barmats Einfluß auf die Sozialdemokratie’. Rightwing papers also found it convenient to blame eventual misinformation on the Communists, Cf. DTztg, 575, 7 December 1924: ‘Scheidemann und Barmat’. V , 577, 7 December 1924: ‘Es lebe die Sozialdemokratie! Untergang der Lügenbrut!’ SPD 26% (7.9 m); KPD 9% (2.7 m); DNVP 20.5% (6.2 m). For a thorough analysis of the election results, see Heinrich August Winkler, Der Schein der Normalität. Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik 1924 bis 1930 (Berlin, 1988), 216–22. Hagen Schulze, Otto Braun oder Preußens demokratische Sendung. Eine Biographie (Berlin, 1977), 463. Winkler, Schein der Normalität, 218. WaA, 155, 3 December 1924: ‘Barmat, seine Partei und die Republik’. See RF, 175, 6 December 1924: ‘Der Großschieber Barmat und die SPD’. The Berliner Morgenpost had mentioned them once, but did not follow it up: BM, 281, 22 November 1924: ‘Untersuchung gegen die Preußische Staatsbank’. See the files ‘SPD et al’, Nr. 4828–4832, or ‘SPD und Finanzen’, Nr. 4919–21, in Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde (BArchL), R8034 II, Reichslandbund. Winfried Steffani, Die Untersuchungsausschüsse des Preußischen Landtages zur Zeit der Weimarer Republik (Dusseldorf, 1960), 171. Ibid. See minutes of session 48 of the investigating committee of the Prussian Landtag, 7 October 1925, Sammlung der Drucksachen Preussischer Landtag, II. Wahlperiode, Nr. 1375, 2810. See Heilmann’s testimonial at the investigating committee, 9 March 1925, Sammlung der Drucksachen, Nr. 484, 1012; and the committee’s final report, 12 October 1925, Nr. 1480, 2949. Gerald Feldman, Hugo Stinnes. Biographie eines Industriellen 1870–1924 (Munich, 1998), 936–7. For Reich coalition negotiations, see Winkler, Schein der Normalität, 222–8. NA, 255, 4 December 1924: ‘Der 27 fache Raubmörder’. For a detailed account of the trial, see Walter Mühlhausen, Friedrich Ebert 1871–1925. Reichspräsident der Weimarer Republik (Bonn, 2006), 936–66.

250

39.

40.

41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

53.

54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

Notes to pages 81–84 Cf. Gotthard Jasper, ‘Der Magdeburger Prozeß’, in Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Friedrich Ebert 1871/1971 (Bonn, 1971), 109–20. See Mühlhausen, Ebert, 789–91, 914–15; and Walter Mühlhausen (ed.), Friedrich Ebert. Sein Leben, sein Werk, seine Zeit (Heidelberg, 1999), 310–11, 328; for the various forms of defamation, see Wolfgang Birkenfeld, ‘Der Rufmord am Reichspräsidenten. Zu Grenzformen des politischen Kampfes gegen die frühe Weimarer Republik 1919–1925’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, 5 (1965), 453–500, esp. 473–5. According to Mühlhausen, the number of libel trials initiated by Ebert was around 200, see Mühlhausen, Ebert, 934 fn. 109. For Gansser, see Konrad Bastobbe, Der Prozeß des Reichspräsidenten Friedrich Ebert 1924 in Magdeburg (Magdeburg, 1997), 9; Karl Brammer, Der Prozeß des Reichspräsidenten (Berlin, 1925), 6, 29; and Mühlhausen, Ebert, 937–9. Cf. V , 581, 10 December 1924: ‘Gegen die Verleumder des Reichspräsidenten’. Michael Miltenberger, Der Vorwurf des Landesverrats gegen Reichspräsident Friedrich Ebert. Ein Stück deutscher Justizgeschichte (Heidelberg, 1989), 9 Brammer, Prozeß, 129; Bastobbe, Prozeß, 9. Birkenfeld, ‘Rufmord’, 471–2. Quoted in Brammer, Prozeß, 27; V , 580, 9 December 1924: ‘Der Reichspräsident als Kläger’. Even the Nachtausgabe considered him ‘nicht gerade ein Geistesriese’, NA, 289, 9 December 1924: ‘Die Akten der Revolution’. For the criminal record, see BT, 584, 9 December 1924: ‘Eine Beleidigung des Reichspräsidenten’. Bastobbe, Prozeß, 9–10. The Nachtausgabe stated Rothard had nearly ‘chickened out’ after his interrogation: NA, 289, 9 December 1924: ‘Die Akten der Revolution’. Bastobbe, Prozeß, 12. Cf. V , 581, 10 December 1924: ‘Gegen die Verleumder des Reichspräsidenten’. NA, 289, 9 December 1924: ‘Die Akten der Revolution’. e.g. DZ, 558, 10 December 1924: ‘Das Gericht im Hause Ebert’. for a surprisingly frank admission. e.g. V , 582, 10 December 1924: ‘Weltgeschichte vor dem Schöffengericht’; BT, 591, 13 December 1924: ‘Verhandlungen gegen den Reichspräsidenten’. V , 580, 9 December 1924: ‘Der Reichspräsident als Kläger’. e.g. DZ, 556, 9 December 1924: ‘Beginn des Ebert-Prozesses’, NA, 289, 9 December 1924: ‘Der Ebert-Prozeß in Magdeburg’, KrZ, 580, 10 December 1924: ‘Eberts Rolle im Januarstreik’, KrZ, 591, 17 December 1924: ‘Immer neue Widersprüche im Ebert-Prozeß’. The B.S. correspondence provided its material to the Vorwärts, Kreuz-Zeitung, Deutsche Zeitung. Other news agencies covering the trial were Telegraphen-Union and Nachrichtenbureau, see KrZ, 583, 12 December 1924: ‘Der Zeuge Syrig’. DZ, 557, 10 December 1924: ‘Eberts Rede im Treptower Park’. DZ, 558, 10 December 1924: ‘Die Aufforderung zur Kriegsdienstverweigerung’. V , 581, 10 December 1924: ‘Gegen die Verleumder des Reichspräsidenten’. V , 582, 10 December 1924: ‘Weltgeschichte vor dem Schöffengericht’. Mosse’s Berliner Tageblatt started its coverage with the neutral headline ‘Eine Beleidigung des Reichspräsidenten—Der Ebert-Rothardt-Prozeß.’ See BT, 584, 9 December 1924. Two days later it titled ‘Die Verleumder des Reichspräsidenten’,


59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

66.

67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

72. 73. 74. 75. 76.

77.

78.

79.

251

BT, 588, 11 December 1924. Throughout most of the trial, it reported of ‘Der Prozeß des Reichspräsidenten’. See BT, 585 and 586 of 10 December, 589 of 12 December, 593 of 14 December 1924, 597 of 17 December 1924. KrZ, 581, 11 December 1924: ‘Angriffe auf Richter Schöffen und Zeugen’. Ibid., cf. DZ, 559, 11 December 1924: ‘Eberts Getreue’. V , 583, 11 December 1924: ‘ ‘‘Zuchthäusler’’ Ebert—Die Deutschnationalen in ihrem Element’. DZ, 560, 11 December 1924: ‘Ebert streitet ab, Syrig bleibt fest’. NA, 290, 10 December 1924: ‘Gerichtssitzung bei Ebert’. B.S. proceedings, repr. in V , 586, 12 December 1924: ‘15 weitere Zeugen geladen’. KrZ, 584, 12 December 1924: ‘Hermann Müller als Zeuge’, under the subheadline ‘Beeinflussungsversuche der Linkspresse’; KrZ, 585, 13 December 1924: ‘Fortsetzung der Zeugenvernehmung im Ebertprozeß’. Cf. DZ, 562, 12 December 1924: ‘Eberts Genosse Hermann Müller’ and sub-headline ‘Der ‘‘Vorwärts’’ läßt nicht locker’. KrZ, 583, 12 December 1924: ‘Der Zeuge Syrig. Wie die ‘Vossische Zeitung’ lügt und fälscht’; DZ, 561, 12 December 1924: ‘Der vereitelte U-Bootkreuzer-Krieg’. Cf. V , 588, 13 December 1924: ‘Der Verleumdungsprozeß’. e.g. the attack on Ullstein’s BZ am Mittag, in DZ, 564, 13 December 1924: ‘Der schweigsame Reichspräsident’. Brammer, Prozeß, 53. Ibid., 69. The German phrase was ‘Haltet ruhig aus! Eure Arbeitsbrüder . . . stehen fest zu Euch’. NA, 295, 16 December 1924: ‘Sensationelle Wendung im Ebert-Prozeß’. V , 593, 17 December 1924: ‘Der Zeugenaufmarsch in Magdeburg. Die Verleumder in der Klemme’ and ‘Ein erledigter Verleumder. Pfarrer Koch’s Kronzeuge des Meineids und Diebstahls beschuldigt’. V , 594, 17 December 1924: ‘Syrig, Koch & Co. Die deutschnationale Zeugenfabrik’. DZ, 569, 17 December 1924: ‘R.-A. Landsberg gegen den Vorsitzenden’; KrZ, 591, 17 December 1924: ‘Immer neue Widersprüche im Ebert-Prozeß’. V , 594, 17 December 1924: ‘Syrig, Koch & Co.’ V , 594, 17 December 1924: ‘Der Zettelschreiber von Treptow’. KrZ, 592, 17 December 1924: ‘ ‘‘Stellungsbefehlen ist nicht Folge zu leisten!’’—Ein neuer Kronzeuge im Ebert-Prozess’. Cf. DZ, 570, 17 December 1924: ‘GroßKampftag in Magdeburg’. V , 595, 18 December 1924: ‘Anstiftung zum Meineid?’ and ‘Nach Syrig/Gobert’; V , 596, 18 December 1924: ‘Gobert, der Erhardtmann! Seine Aussage—ein Racheakt!’ BT, 599, 18 December 1924: ‘Der ‘‘Kronzeuge’’ der ‘‘Kreuzzeitung’’ ’; 600, 18 December 1924: ‘Die ‘‘Kronzeugen’’ ’; 601, 19 December 1924: ‘Der Kronzeuge der Deutschnationalen’. DZ, 571, 18 December 1924: ‘Die ‘‘schwankende Haltung’’ der SPD’; KrZ, 593, 18 December 1924: ‘Munitionsmangel an der Front. Munitionsstreik—ein Verbrechen’.

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80. e.g. DZ, 573, 19 December 1924: ‘Vertagung des Ebert-Prozesses?’ BT, 601, 19 December 1924: ‘Der Kronzeuge der Deutschnationalen’ for examples of keeping news about Gobert from readers. 81. Brammer, Prozeß, 122–7. 82. V , 604, 23 December 1924: ‘Das Urteil im Magdeburger Prozeß’. 83. e.g. BT, 608, 23 December 1924: ‘Das Urteil im Magdeburger Prozeß’; VZ, 590, 23 December 1924: ‘Das Magdeburger Urteil—Eine politische Unmöglichkeit’. 84. BT, 608, 23 December 1924: ‘Das Urteil im Magdeburger Prozeß’. 85. e.g. BBZ, 602, 23 December 1924: ‘Die Wahrheit marschiert!’ 86. KrZ, 602, 23 December 1924: ‘Die verurteilte Sozialdemokratie’, NA, 301, 23 December 1924: ‘Der Spruch von Magdeburg’. 87. DZ, 580, 23 December 1924: ‘ ‘‘Vorsätzlicher Landesverrat!’’ ’. Cf. KrZ, 602, 23 December 1924: ‘Die verurteilte Sozialdemokratie’. 88. V , 605, 24 December 1924: ‘Das Urteil u¨ ber das Urteil’; BBZ, 603, 24 December 1924: ‘Das Echo des Magdeburger Urteils’. 89. BT, 609, 24 December 1924: ‘Das unmögliche Magdeburger Urteil’. 90. KrZ, 603, 24 December 1924: ‘Wie sie schimpfen’. 91. DZ, 582, 24 December 1924: ‘Ebert oder Yorck?’ 92. DZ, 581, 24 December 1924: ‘Das Ergebnis von Magdeburg’. 93. Akten der Reichskanzlei. Weimarer Republik. Die Kabinette Marx I und II, Vol.II (Boppard, 1973), 1245–7. 94. Ibid., 1247. 95. e.g. BT, 610, 24 December 1924: ‘Das Reichskabinett für Ebert’. 96. DZ, 582, 24 December 1924: ‘Beileidsbesuch bei Ebert’. 97. A point explicitly made in DZ, 563, 13 December 1924: ‘Das ‘‘Trauerspiel’’ von Magdeburg’. 98. e.g. DZ, 569, 17 December 1924: ‘Eine Fälschung des ‘‘Vorwärts’’ ’; KrZ, 583, 12 December 1924: ‘Wie die ‘‘Vossische Zeitung’’ lügt und fälscht’. 99. KrZ, 587, 14 December 1924: ‘Wie sie fälschen’. 100. KrZ, 583, 12 December 1924: ‘Wie die ‘Vossische Zeitung’ lügt und fälscht’. 101. Letter Stein to Hugenberg, 14 May 1919, BArchK, N1231 Hugenberg, Nr. 27, f. 317. 102. Letter Hugenberg to Stinnes, 16 February 1921, BArchK, N1231 Hugenberg, Nr. 27, ff. 419–20. 103. Letter Klitzsch to Hugenberg, 15 December 1922, BArchK, N1231 Hugenberg, Nr. 590, f. 156. 104. BT, 585, 10 December 1924: ‘Der Prozeß des Reichspräsidenten’. Also Brammer, Prozeß, 36. 105. NA, 296, 17 December 1924: ‘Der Zettel an Ebert’. 106. Geschäftsbericht 1926, BAK, N1231 Hugenberg, Nr. 269, f. 33. 107. BT, 593, 14 December 1924: ‘Prozesse’; BT, 603, 20 December 1924: ‘ ‘‘Landesrettung, nicht Landesverrat’’ ’. 108. BT, 608, 23 December 1924: ‘Das Urteil im Magdeburger Prozeß’. 109. Quoted in BT, 599, 18 December 1924: ‘Der ‘‘Kronzeuge’’ der ‘‘Kreuz-Zeitung’’ ’. 110. Karlludwig Rintelen, Ein undemokratischer Demokrat: Gustav Bauer (Frankfurt am Main, 1993), 227.


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111. e.g. the Reichsgetreidestelle, the Reichsfettstelle, and the Reichsfleischstelle: Kaul, Pitaval, 16. 112. Sammlung der Drucksachen, Nr. 1375, 2810. 113. Richter had received two loans from two of Barmat’s companies, as well as various other small gifts, according to the report of the state prosecution of 5 June 1925, in LAB, Re 358–421, Vol.8, unpaginated. 114. Cf. BLA, 14, 9 January 1925: ‘Urkunden gegen Barmat—und andere’. Cf. BVZ, 18, 11 January 1925: ‘Redliche Republik’ for Barmat’s connection to Franz Krüger. 115. See BLA, 14, 9 January 1925; DTztg, 14, 9 January 1925; taken up in Josef Kaufhold, Der Barmat-Sumpf (Berlin, 1925), 6. This was untrue, he had once received a photo, but without dedication or signature. See minutes of session 48 of the Prussian investigating committee, 7 October 1925, Sammlung der Drucksachen, Nr. 1375, 2806. 116. letter to Prussian minister of justice, 9 December 1924, in Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz (GStAPK), Re84a–15855, 7. For a contemporary comment on the crucial role of the state prosecution in triggering the Barmat scandal, see see DTbl, 8, 10 January 1925: ‘Der Augiasstall’. For Kussmann’s political crusade, see GStAPK, Re84a-15856, ff. 60e, 115, 132; his defence Re84a–15855, f. 9. Cf. Vorwärts: V , 445, 20 September 1925: ‘Deutschnationale Justizkorruption’; V , 152, 31 March 1925: ‘Staatsanwalt Kussmann’. Cf. Kussmann’s reply, in a letter to the Kammergericht, 3 April 1925; GStAPK, Re84a–15856, f. 60g and f. 121. For predictions and advance knowledge of pending arrests, see BLA, 612, 27 December 1924: ‘Drei neue Verhaftungen in der Affäre Kutisker’; BLA, 615, 29 December 1924: ‘Das Panama der Preußischen Staatsbank’; BLA, 619, 31 December 1924: ‘Auch die Inhaber des Barmatkonzerns verhaftet’; BLA, 1, 1 January 1925: ‘Das preußische Finanz-Panama’. 117. BT, 5, 3 January 1925: ‘Die Affäre Barmat–Kutisker’; FZ, 35, 14 January 1925: ‘Der Berliner Finanzskandal’; V , 23, 14 January 1925: ‘Die Quellen der Hetze’, in Ministry of Justice files: GStAPK, Re84a–15855, 102–3. The most convincing case for the existence of a connection between state prosecution and Berliner LokalAnzeiger in GStAPK, Re84a–15855, 16–21. Cf. report of 23 February 1925 on the same issue, GStAPK, Re84a–15856, 21. 118. See GStAPK, Re84a–15856 for increasing criticism of Kussmann, Re84a–14650 for the investigation on his connections with the right-wing press. For official explanation, Cf. V , 306, 1 July 1925: ‘Barmat-Verfahren und Staatsanwaltschaft’. 119. V , 352, 28 July 1925: ‘Haussuchungen bei Justizbeamten’. 120. BT, 446, 20 Se 1925: ‘Die Hintergründe der Barmat-Hetze’. 121. Germania, 348, 29 July 1925: ‘Die Bekämpfer der Korruption’. 122. Letter of 5 May 1925, repr. in Germania, 348, 29 July 1925: ‘Die Bekämpfer der Korruption’. 123. 5 May 1925, repr. in V , 364, 4 August 1925: ‘Bang wird bange’. 124. On Kussmann’s role in the staging of the arrest, see GStAPK, Re84a–15855, 9; and Re84a–15856, 166. 125. BM, 1, 1 January 1925: ‘Verhaftung der Leiter des Barmat-Konzerns. (Wegen Verdachts der Verbindung mit Kutisker—Vierhundert Polizeibeamte aufgeboten—Vernehmungen Tag und Nacht’. Cf. NA, 306, 31 December 1925: ‘Die

254

126.

127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132.

133.

134. 135. 136. 137.

138. 139.

140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146. 147. 148.

Notes to pages 91–93 sensationelle Verhaftung der Barmats’. Scherek, head of the APP, described in his report of 2 January 1925 the journalistic frenzy of this affair ‘bei der stündlich die wildesten Gerüchte und ununterbrochen neue Versionen den Redaktionen zugetragen werden’: GStAPK, Re84a–15855, 19. Cf. V , 1, 1 January 1925: ‘Die Festnahme der Barmats’. Adolf Stein published his weekly columns in a book every year—his column of 15 January 1925 appeared in Rumpelstilzchen [pseud. for Adolf Stein], Haste Worte (Berlin, 1925), 153: ‘ . . . an jedem Stammtisch ist er heute Held des Tagesgesprächs’. V , 4, 3 January 1925: ‘Eine deutschnationale Unterstellung’. Vossische Zeitung quoted in V , 76, 14 February 1925: ‘Rund um den Skandal’. BVZ, 619, 31 December 1924: ‘Die Gebrüder Barmat verhaftet’. BLA, 619, 31 December 1924: ‘Auch die Inhaber des Barmatkonzerns verhaftet’. RF, 1, 1 January 1925: ‘Die Brüder Barmat verhaftet’; and, again quoting from the Rote Fahne, DTbl, 2, 3 January 1925: ‘Verdächtiger Eifer’. BVZ, 619, 31 December 1924: ‘Die Gebrüder Barmat verhaftet’. For regional papers, see AZ, 1, 2 January 1925: ‘Der Fall Kutisker’; BA, 1, 1 January 1925: ‘Der Kreditskandal’. For the significance of the Barmat scandal for right-wing politics, see Stephan Malinowski, ‘Politische Skandale als Zerrspiegel der Demokratie. Die Fälle Barmat und Sklarek im Kalkül der Weimarer Rechten’, in Wolfgang Benz (ed.), Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung, 5 (Frankfurt am M., 1996), 48–55. e.g. RF, 1, 1 January 1925: ‘Die Brüder Barmat verhaftet’. DTztg, 2, 2 January 1925: ‘Riesenausdehnung des Barmat-Skandals’. V , 4, 3 January 1925: ‘Der Staatsbank-Skandal (Die Verantwortung der StaatsbankLeitung)’. VZ, 3, 2 January 1925: ‘Die Untersuchung in der Barmat-Affäre’; and VZ, 5, 3 January 1925: ‘Weitere Haftentlassungen in der Barmat-Affäre’; BT, 5, 3 January 1925: ‘Die Affäre Barmat-Kutisker’. VZ, 6, 4 January 1925: ‘Wie heißt der Fall?’ DTztg, 6, 5 January 1925: ‘Der Typ Barmat’. For a reaction on this article, see V , 8, 6 January 1925: ‘Staatsbankskandal und Stinnes-Skandal: Deutschnationale Legendenbildung’. BM, 313, 31 December 1924: ‘Korruption! Wie es früher war—Die Monarchie vertuschte, die Republik räumt auf.’ DAZ, 4, 3 January 1925: ‘Der ‘‘Staat im Staate’’. Der politische Barmat’. V , 6, 4 January 1925: ‘Monarchische und republikanische Seehandlung’. NP, 5, 7. January 1925: ‘Barmat als Schirmherr deutscher Deserteure (Fettwaren und Sozialismus engros)’. V , 11, 7 January 1925: ‘Der Skandal der ‘‘Nationalpost’’ ’. See letter to Landgericht I, 24 January 1925, GStAPK, Re84a–15855, 218f. Letter Henry Barmat to Ministry of Justice, 25 November 1925: GStAPK, Re84a–15858, 123. Letter Generalstaatsanwalt beim Kammergericht to Prussian minister of justice, 22 December 1925, GStAPK, Re84a–15858, 142–4. Quoted in DZ, 77b, 30 March 1928: ‘Die Amtshandlungen Höfles’.

Notes to pages 93–96 149. 150. 151. 152.

153. 154. 155. 156.

157. 158. 159.

160. 161. 162.

163.

164. 165. 166. 167. 168. 169. 170. 171. 172.

173. 174.

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See V , 6, 4 January 1925: ‘Die Kredite der Reichspost’. NA, 6, 8 January 1925: ‘Der Postminister im Barmat-Skandal’. NA, 7, 9 January 1925: ‘Neue Millionen-Kredite des Postministers’. BLA, 15, 9 January 1925: ‘Zum Barmat-Skandal’. The Vorwärts immediately pointed out that this information again must have been leaked by the state prosection office: Cf. V , 16, 10 January 1925: ‘Methoden der Verleumdung’. KrZ, 8, 10 January 1925: ‘Folgen der Barmat-Affäre’. NA, 8, 10 January 1925: ‘Die Sozialdemokratie im Barmat-Sumpf’. See V , 72, 12 February 1925: ‘Der Mann und die Partei’. V , 24, 15 January 1925: ‘Regierung Luther/Schiele/Stresemann’; and V , 20, 13 January 1925: ‘Luthers verschämter Bürgerblock’. Cf. Winkler, Schein der Normalität, 228. See Schulze, Braun, 466–74. For an open admission of right-wing expectations regarding the consequences of the Barmat scandal, see DZ, 78, 16 February 1925: ‘Um die deutsche Seele’. This label was first used by Nazis in the first debate in the Reichstag on the Barmat affair on 9 January, and repeated by the Communists, GStAPK, Re84a–15855, 120f., then taken up by Hugenberg’s Tag. Cf. Tag, 12, 14 January 1925: ‘Die Sozialdemokratie im Barmatsumpf’. Steffani, Untersuchungsausschüsse, 183. See Sammlung der Drucksachen, Nr. 21, Nr. 79J, Nr. 83, Nr. 84a, Nr. 90a. Cf. Steffani, Untersuchungsausschüsse, 173. See session 26 on 7 May 1925, when parliamentarians conceded that they had as yet hardly anything to report on the matter of the Staatsbank to the Landtag: Sammlung der Drucksachen, Nr. 580, 1534. The committee did not question Julius Barmat until 17 April 1925. e.g. Sammlung der Drucksachen, Nr. 298 (session 3, 28 January 1925), 346, 360; Nr. 318 (session 5, 30 January 1925), 418–19; Nr. 339 (session 7, 4 February 1925), 459 ff., 465, 470, 472, 487; Nr. 426 (session 11, 12 February 1925), 719. Ibid., Nr. 395 (session 10, 11 February 1925), 629–30. Ibid., 629. Ibid. e.g. Sammlung der Drucksachen, Nr. 347, 517; Nr. 360, 558; Nr. 395, 626. Ibid., Nr. 360 (session 9, 9 February 1925), 559. See minutes of Reichstag session on 9 January 1925, GStAPK, Re84a–15855, 120f. They called on Otto Wels to settle the dispute, apparently successfully: Rintelen, Bauer, 237. V , 65, 7 February 1925: ‘Zum Fall Bauer’. V , 6, 4 January 1925. In fact, as minister he had become member of the board of directors of a state-run firm, which in early 1924 was taken over by the Barmats. See BArchL, N2359 Bauer, Nr. 6. Tag, 23, 29 January 1925: ‘Bauers Rolle im Barmat-Skandal’. Dr Deerberg (DNVP): Ich will nur die nackte, reine Frage beantwortet haben, ob Sie jemals von der Firma Barmat irgendwelche Vorteile pekuniärer Art erhalten haben. Bauer: Nein! —This exchange was reprinted in BLA, 61, 5 February 1925: ‘Ein

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175.

176.

177. 178.

179. 180. 181. 182. 183. 184.

185.

186.

187.

188. 189. 190. 191. 192. 193. 194.

Notes to pages 96–99 Barmat-Brief an Bauer’, which revealed that Bauer had in fact received money from Barmat. Letter of 27 September 1923; in BLA, 61, 5 February 1925: ‘Ein Barmat-Brief an Bauer’. Over the next months, Bauer struggled to repair the damage. He made Barmat admit that the letter had not been written by himself, and that quite probably a number of the ‘facts’ that Barmat’s AMEXIMA had put down in the letter were not exactly true. See BArchL, N2359 Bauer, Nr. 6. In fact, he did not resign, but agreed, ‘sein Mandat zeitweise nicht auszuüben’: a distinction that was not made by many papers. Cf. BZaM, 36, 6 February 1925: ‘Die endlose Kette der Skandal-Affären’. BVZ, 22, 14 January 1925: ‘Beim Lumpenhändler—Die reaktionären ‘‘Enthüllungen’’ zum Barmat-Skandal’. Quoted in Steffani, Untersuchungsausschüsse, 190. Cf. Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, 49, 29 January 1925: ‘Satzungswidrige Kredite bei der Landespfandbrief-Anstalt. (Keine Gefährdung der Liquidität)’. BZaM, 28, 29 January 1925: ‘Der neue Skandal beim Landespfandbriefamt’. V , 49, 29 January 1925: ‘Der Finanzskandal des Rechtsblocks’. BM, 26, 30 January 1925: ‘Dreiviertel Milliarde für die Ruhrindustrie’. Tag, 26, 30 January 1925: ‘Wie die Linke ‘‘Skandal’’ macht’. DTbl, 26, 31 January 1925: ‘Die Sozialdemokratie am Pranger’. BBZ, 59, 5 February 1925: ‘Was uns ein Eingeweihter u¨ ber den Korruptionsapparat der Barmats berichtet’; BBZ, 61, 6 February 1925: ‘Unser Gewährsmann berichtet weiter u¨ ber die Barmatkorruption’; BBZ, 63, 7 February 1925: ‘Abermals unser Gewährsmann zum Barmatskandal’. In October 1923 Höfle had tried to convince the trade ministry to grant Barmat’s ‘Depositen- und Handelsbank AG’ access to the stock exchange. Senior officials at the ministry, who considered the bank ‘eine notorische Schieberbank’, refused: VZ, 63, 6 February 1925: ‘Die Welle der ‘‘Enthüllungen’’ ’. ‘Einstweiligen Ruhestand’. Cf. V , 80, 17 February 1925: ‘Richter in Ruhestand’; RF, 40, 17 February 1925: ‘Polizeipräsident Richter in den einstweiligen Ruhestand versetzt’. In his memoirs, Severing criticized Richter for his friendship with Barmat: Carl Severing, Mein Lebensweg (Cologne, 1950), ii. 50–1. Indicative of the qualitative difference in the coverage of the committee sessions: DAZ, 59, 4 February 1925: ‘Heilmann im Kreuzverhör’ and VZ, 59, 4 February 1925: ‘Fragen an Heilmann’. Cf. RF, 31, 6 February 1925: ‘Sie amnestieren sich!’ Magdeburger Zeitung, 60, 3 February 1925: ‘Unverfrorenheit’. Final meeting of Prussian Untersuchungsausschuß, 12 October 1925. See Sammlung der Drucksachen, Nr. 1480, 2954. Germania, quoted in V , 93, 24 February 1925: ‘Der Spuk der Skandale’. Gustav Noske, ‘Letzte Tage’, in Friedrich Ebert, Kämpfe und Ziele (Dresden, 1.J.), 376. Ibid. As important was the pending appeal to the Magdeburg judgement, see Mühlhausen, Ebert, 971–2. KöZ, 182, 10 March 1925: ‘Untersuchungsausschüsse’. Cf. WaA, 48, 26 February 1925: ‘Wo sind Heilmann’s Bankkonten?’ It was part of the Welt am Abend ’s attempt at toppling Heilmann. Cf. WaA, 47, 25 February


195. 196.

197. 198. 199. 200.

201. 202. 203. 204. 205. 206.

207.

208. 209. 210. 211. 212.

213. 214. 215. 216. 217. 218. 219.

257

1925: ‘Wo bleibt die Verhaftung Heilmann’s?’; WaA, 49, 27 February 1925: ‘Abg. Heilmann noch immer nicht verhaftet!’ MM, 11, 16 March 1925: ‘Das Absterben des ‘‘Barmat-Skandals’’ ’. Cf. KöZ, 182, 10 March 1925: ‘Untersuchungsausschüsse’; MM, 11, 16 March 1925: ‘Das Absterben des ‘‘Barmat-Skandals’’ ’; V , 139, 23 March 1925: ‘Verleumder in Verlegenheit’. DNVP leaflet, 4 March 1925: ‘Wie kam die Familie Barmat nach Deutschland?’, BArchL, R8034II–4920, f. 111. Quoted in Winkler, Schein der Normalität, 231, fn. 101. Vereinigung Internationaler Verlagsanstalten GmbH, Barmat und seine Partei (Berlin, 1925). Kurt Haagen, Der Kutisker-Barmat Skandal (Berlin, 1925). In the collection of newspaper clipping of the ‘Reichslandbund’, it is found for or around 4 March 1925: BArchL, R8034II–4920, 112a. Winkler, Schein der Normalität, 235–6. Tag, 58, 8 March 1925: ‘Sozialistische Wahlkampflügen’. Montag Morgen, 23 March 1925, in Boldt, Ossietzky, iii. 56. Schulze, Braun, 473–4. Quoted in Winkler, Schein der Normalität, 239. e.g. leaflet ‘Landbund Provinz Sachsen’, 15, 11 April 1925: ‘Der Barmatsumpf ’, BArchL, R8034II–4920, 168. See BArchL, R8034II, files 4919–21 ‘SPD und Finanzen’ for anti-SPD newspaper-clippings collection; files 9155–7 for organization of election campaign and propaganda material March-April 1925. A [pseudonym for Adolf Stein], Barmat und seine Freunde (Berlin, 1925); Otto Armin, Von Rathenau zu Barmat (Berlin, 1925); Dr Kaufhold, Der Barmatsumpf (Berlin, 1925). Their publication date can be derived from their appearance in chronological order of the Landbund files. See Sammlung der Drucksachen, Nr. 540, 1430. e.g. DZ, 160, 4 April 1925: ‘Aus dem Barmatsumpf ’. Cf. BLA, 181, 17 April 1925: ‘Der Wohltäter’; BBC, 178, 17 April 1925: ‘Barmats erste Vernehmung’. Germania, 183, 21 April 1925: ‘Anton Höfle †—In den Tod gehetzt’. Even two years later, this still caused a violent clash between Erich Kuttner (SPD) and the author of the article, Kenkel (DNVP), in the Prussian Landtag: see parliamentary minutes of 18 May 1927, GStAPK, Re84a, Nr. 55274, ff. 24–5. V , 187, 21 April 1925: ‘Hoefles Ende. Auf kaltem Wege ermordet’. Cf. DZ, 203, 2 May 1925: ‘Der ‘‘Vorwärts’’ als Quelle der Volksvergiftung!’ NP, 93, 22 April 1925: ‘Die ‘‘Totgehetzten’’ ’. VZ, 188, 22 April 1925: ‘Kein Selbstmord Dr. Höfles (Das Ergebnis der Obduktion)’. See Steffani, Untersuchungsausschüsse, 186–9. Quoted in Steffani, Untersuchungsausschüsse, 188. 20 October 1925, Abg. Riedel (DDP), quoted in Steffani, Untersuchungsausschüsse, 189. For an excellent analysis of the election result, see Winkler, Schein der Normalität, 240–5.

258


220. e.g. V , 354, 29 July 1925: ‘Sauberkeit der Justiz! (Die Koalition der Staatsanwälte mit den Deutschnationalen)’; BVZ, 364, 29 July 1925: ‘Der Beginn der Entlarvung’; Germania, 349, 29 July 1925: ‘Der Skandal’; Kölnische Zeitung, 560, 31 July 1925: ‘Der neue Skandal’. 221. DZ, 349, 29 July 1925: ‘Politische Haussuchungen—Neue Verdunkelungsversuche der Barmatfreunde’; KrZ, 350, 29 July 1925: ‘Die ‘‘Vorwärts’’–Hetze gegen die Staatsanwälte’; DTbl, 175, 29 July 1925: ‘Die gehetzten Barmatgegner’. 222. RF, 172, 30 July 1925: ‘Barmat-Sumpf und Justizkorruption’, RF, 173, 31 July 1925: ‘Die Barmat-Entlastungsoffensive’. 223. RF, 171, 29 July 1925: ‘Gestohlen—aber echt’. 224. e.g. NbKbl, 176, 30 July 1925: ‘Haussuchung bei den Staatsanwälten’; NbKbl, 177, 31 July 1925: ‘Dr Kussmann berichtigt’. 225. P, 175, 29 July 1925: ‘Nachklänge zum Barmat-Skandal’. 226. Henry Barmat to the Prussian minister of justice, 25 November 1925: GStAPK, Re84a–15857, 127. 227. V , 485, 14 October 1925: ‘Das Ende des Skandals’. 228. V , 594, 17 December 1924: ‘Syrig, Koch & Co.’ 229. Cf. Gotthard Jasper, Der Schutz der Republik. Studien zur Staatlichen Sicherung der Demokratie in der Weimarer Republik 1922–1930 ( Tübingen, 1963), 200–10. 230. Andrei S. Markovits and Mark Silverstein (eds.), The Politics of Scandal: Power and Process in Liberal Democracies (New York, 1988), 2, 9. 231. DTbl, 27, 1 February 1925: ‘Die Politik der Woche’. 232. Neue Freie Presse, 217, 14 March 1925: ‘Die Skandalaffären in Deutschland’. 233. BArchL, N2359 Bauer, Nr. 1, ff. 51–4. 234. ‘A’ [pseudonym for ‘Rumpelstilzchen’ alias Adolf Stein], Eberts Prozess. Von einem, der dabei war (Berlin, [1925]). Cf. Mühlhausen, Ebert, 953. 235. ‘A’, Barmat und seine Freunde (Berlin, 1925); Otto Armin, Von Rathenau zu Barmat (Berlin, 1925); Dr Kaufhold, Der Barmatsumpf (Berlin, 1925). Their publication date can be derived from their appearance in chronological order of the Landbund files. 236. Rudolf Pörtner, Alltag in der Weimarer Republik. Erinnerungen an eine unruhige Zeit (Dusseldorf, 1990), 509, 527. 237. See minutes of session six, 3 February 1925, Sammlung der Drucksachen, Nr. 319, 447. 238. MM, 11, 16 March 1925: ‘Das Absterben des ‘‘Barmat-Skandals’’ ’. 239. KöZ, 182, 10 March 1925: ‘Untersuchungsausschüsse’. 240. Steffani, Untersuchungsausschüsse, 208, 356–7. 241. DZ, 533, 26 November 1924: ‘Kutisker’s Inflationsgewinne’. 242. Tag, 292, 5 December 1924: ‘Schützt die Republik!’ 243. Tag, 88, 28 February 1925: ‘Demokratie und Korruption’. Cf. DTztg, 81, 18 February 1925: ‘Die soziologische Bedeutung der Barmat-Affäre’; Montag, 1, 5 January 1925: ‘Nasen zu!’; Montag, 2, 12 January 1925: ‘Schwanenwerder’. 244. KrZ, 53, 1 February 1925: ‘Geschäft und Politik’. 245. e.g. DZ, 20, 13 January 1925: ‘Die politische Bedeutung der Barmat-Affäre’. See Kurt Heinig, Die Finanzskandale des Kaiserreiches (Berlin, 1925), from which


259

the Vorwärts printed excerpts, explicitly to counter the scandal-mongering of the right-wing press: V , 98, 27 February 1925: ‘Der Bismarck-Skandal’. 246. DTbl, 25, 30 January 1925: ‘Der Sumpf um Barmat’. 247. Winkler, Schein der Normalität, 245. 248. Jasper, Schutz der Republik, 205. CHAPTER 4 1. Oranienburger General-Anzeiger (OGA), 98, 28 April 1925: ‘Im Zeichen des Stimmzettels’. 2. ‘Die tonangebende Zeitung im Kreise Niederbarnim’, in OGA and Niederbarnimer Kreisblatt (NKbl), 98, 28 April 1925. 3. Deutsches Institut für Zeitungskunde Berlin (ed.), Handbuch der deutschen Tagespresse (Berlin, 1932), 124, 135–6. 4. Otto Groth, Die Zeitung. Ein System der Zeitungskunde ( Journalistik) (Mannheim, 1928), i. 268. 5. Handbuch des o¨ffentlichen Lebens (Leipzig, 1928), 774. Cf. Groth, Zeitung, i. 257; for 1932 see Handbuch der deutschen Tagespresse, 25. 6. Letter Dammert to Hermann Dietrich, 21 August 1929, in Bundesarchiv Koblenz (BArchK), N1004 Hermann Dietrich, Nr. 283, f. 51, giving a decline in subscriptions in agricultural areas during summer of up to 40%. This figure is corroborated by an article in Zeitungs-Verlag, 7, 13 February 1937, 95–7, which gives the ratio of summer-cancellation of subscriptions during the Weimar period as nearly 50%. Cf. Alfred Schmidt, Publizistik im Dorf (Dresden, 1939), 79–82. 7. Heinrich Wuttke, Die deutschen Zeitschriften und die Entstehung der o¨ffentlichen Meinung (Leipzig, 1875), 88. Cf. Max Garr, Die wirtschaftlichen Grundlagen des modernen Zeitungswesens (Vicana, 1912), 71; Groth, Zeitung, i. 237; Hans Nestel, ‘Mehrköpfige und halbfertige Zeitungen in Deutschland’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis; University of Leipzig, 1921. 8. Calculated from data provided in Handbuch der deutschen Tagespresse, 26–7. 9. For these statistics, see Handbuch der deutschen Tagespresse, 24–6, for a list of the 256 papers, see 123–42. 10. For further information on these towns and the sample of local papers, see www.hist.cam.ac.uk/academic staff/further details/fulda-press-and-politics.html 11. For the urban audience, see Karl Christian Führer, ‘Auf dem Weg zur ‘‘Massenkultur’’? Kino und Rundfunk der Weimarer Republik’, Historische Zeitschrift, 262 (1996), 739–81, here 766. 12. e.g. NbKbl, 86, 12 April 1925: ‘Hindenburgs Osterbotschaft’; Uckermärkischer Kurier (UK ), 86, 12 April 1925: ‘Eine Osterbotschaft Hindenburgs’; Angermünder Zeitung (AZ ), 86, 14 April 1925: ‘Hindenburgs Osterbotschaft’. 13. e.g. Königswusterhausener Zeitung (KZ ), 85, 19 April 1925: ‘Reichsblock für Hindenburg’; UK, 88, 16 April 1925: ‘Auf des Messers Schneide’; Prenzlauer Zeitung (PZ ), 96, 25 April 1925: ‘Wählt Hindenburg!’; Prignitzer (P), 95, 24 April 1925: ‘Jarres spricht für Hindenburg’. 14. e.g. KZ, 93, 22 April 1925: ‘Sozialer Fortschritt u. Frieden: Hindenburg!’; KZ, 94, 23 April 1925: ‘Christentum u. Deutschtum: Hindenburg!’; KZ, 96, 25 April 1925: ‘Das Vaterland u¨ ber der Partei: Hindenburg!’

260 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27.

28.

29. 30. 31.

32.

33. 34. 35.

Notes to pages 110–113 KZ, 97, 26 April 1925, front page. Sperling 1926, 383. KZ, 98, 28 April 1925: ‘Ergebnis in Königs Wusterhausen’. See editions of UK, 85–93, 17–22 April 1925. See editions of UK 94–7, 23–6 April 1925. PZ, 95–7, 24–6 April 1925. UK, 94, 23 April 1925. Particularly striking was the contrast created on the front page of UK, 96, 25 April 1925: while the box at the top of the page proclaimed ‘Wählt Hindenburg!’, the advertisement at the bottom ran: ‘ ‘‘Die paar Jahre, die ich nach dem Kriege noch zu leben habe, will ich in Ruhe verbringen!’’—sagte Hindenburg. Erfüllt seinen Wunsch—wählt Marx!’ PZ, 91, 19 April 1925: ‘Hindenburg’. e.g. P, 91, 20 April 1925: ‘Das Programm Hindenburgs’; 94, 23 April 1925: ‘Wie Hindenburg im Rundfunk sprechen wird’; 95, 24 April 1925: ‘Jarres spricht für Hindenburg’. e.g. P, 92, 21 April 1925: ‘Sozialdemokratie, Zenturm und Christentum’. P, 95, 24 April 1925: ‘Der Retter’; 96, 25 April 1925: ‘Wer sein Vaterland lieb hat, wählt unseren Hindenburg!’ See particularly Der neue Reichspräsident, 4, 18 April 1925: ‘Hindenburg soll unser Führer sein!’ and 5, 23 April 1925: ‘Parole: Hindenburg, der Mann der Pflicht!’ Cf. Brandenburger Anzeiger (BA), 90, 18 April 1925: ‘Zwei grosse HindenburgKundgebungen’; BA, 94, 23 April 1925: ‘Einig für Hindenburg’; BA, 95, 24 April 1925: ‘Im Zeichen Hindenburgs’. AZ, 91, 20 April 1925: ‘Ein Aufruf der rheinisch-westfälischen Arbeitervereine für Hindenburg’; ‘Der Sparerbund für Hindenburg’; 92, 21 April 1925: ‘Das deutsche Offizierskorps an Hindenburg’, 94, 23 April: ‘Katholiken und Reichspräsidentenwahl’; 95, 24 April 1925: ‘Der Reichslandarbeiterbund für Hindenburg’; ‘Der Königin-Luise-Bund Hannover für Hindenburg’; ‘Die Turnerschaften und die Reichspräsidentenwahl’; BA, 87, 15 April 1925: ‘Ostpreussen für Hindenburg’; 93, 22 April 1925: ‘Die Wirtschaft wählt Hindenburg’. See Volks-Zeitung (VolksZ ), 92, 21 April 1925: ‘Ein Herd der Korruption’. Brandenburger Zeitung (BZ ), 88, 16 April 1925: ‘Immer wieder die Ritterlichkeit’. Henry A. Turner Jun., Stresemann—Republikaner aus Vernunft (Berlin, 1968), 189–93. Cf. Heinrich August Winkler, Der Schein der Normalität. Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik 1924 bis 1930 (Berlin, 1988), 237. e.g. BT, 169, 9 April 1925: ‘Was man im Auslande sagt’; VZ, 86, 10 April 1925: ‘Warnende Stimmen aus der ganzen Welt’; BT, 170, 10 April 1925: ‘Pariser Echo’; ‘Italienische Stimmen’; ‘Amerikanische Warnungen’; BT, 171, 11 April 1925: ‘Ausland und Rechtsblockkandidat’; VZ, 89, 14 April 1925: ‘Wie das Ausland urteilt’ Cf. Winkler, Schein der Normalität, 237. Andreas Dorpalen, Hindenburg in der Geschichte der Weimarer Republik (Berlin, 1966), 81. Cf. Turner, Stresemann, 192. Diary entry of 16 and 20 April 1925, quoted in Dorpalen, Hindenburg, 82. Cf. Harry Graf Kessler, Tagebücher 1918–1937 (Frankfurt am Main, 1961), 439. See excerpts given in VolksZ, 93, 22 April 1925: ‘Die deutschnationalen Wahlmacher’.


261

36. BT, 186, 21 April 1925: ‘Geheimsitzung der deutschnationalen Wahlmacher’. 37. e.g. BA, 93, 22 April 1925: ‘Der Schwindel des Berliner Tageblattes’, with explicit reference to the Brandenburger Zeitung. 38. e.g. BA, 87, 15 April 1925: ‘Unerhörte Hindenburg-Hetze’. 39. e.g. BA, 93, 22 April 1925: ‘Hindenburgs Wahl unter europäischer Sicht’. 40. BA, 89, 17 April 1925: ‘Wer ruiniert Deutschlands Ansehen im Auslande?’; Cf. BA, 93, 22 April 1925: ‘Die Kandidatur Hindenburg und das Ausland’. 41. PZ, 90, 18 April 1925: ‘Weshalb Hindenburg?’ Cf. the Brandenburger Anzeiger’s attack on ‘die Herren in der Jerusalemer Strasse [Mosse] und Lindenstrasse [Vorwärts]’ in BA, 94, 23 April 1925: ‘Auslandsurteile u¨ ber Marx’. 42. BA, 88, 16 April 1925: ‘Hindenburg und das Ausland’; PZ, 95, 24 April 1925: ‘Lumpen, Knochen und Altpapier’; Cf. AZ, 94, 23 April 1925: ‘Offener Brief an die ‘‘B.Z. am Mittag’’ ’. 43. BA, 95, 24 April 1925: ‘Volksvergiftung 1914–18’. 44. See the remark about Vorwärts and its ‘provincial Nachbeter’, in AZ, 94, 23 April 1925: ‘Der Volksverächter und Soldatenschinder’. 45. See AZ, 94, 23 April 1925: ‘Offener Brief an die ‘‘B.Z. am Mittag’’ ’. 46. The term ‘Volksblock’ itself was allegedly a creation of the Vossische Zeitung. See BA, 87, 15 April 1925: ‘Eine Programmrede Dr. Marx’. 47. KZ, 98, 28 April 1925: ‘Ergebnis in Königs Wusterhausen’. 48. For the absence of local DDP or Centre party organizations, see KZ, 95, 24 April 1925: ‘Republikanische Kundgebung!’ 49. Cf. Winkler, Schein der Normalität, 244. 50. See result no. 22 in table ‘Ergebnis der Reichspräsidentenwahl im Kreise Angermünde am 27 April 1925’, in AZ, 97, 27 April 1925. 51. An extensive report of the meeting was given by his paper, BA, 95, 24 April 1925: ‘Im Zeichen Hindenburgs’. 52. BA, 86, 14 April 1925: ‘Wochenschau’; 89, 17 April 1925: ‘Die Parole Hindenburg’. 53. See the polemic about the Parteikuhhandel —‘Preussen für die Roten, das Reich für die Schwarzen’, in BA, 88, 16 April 1925: ‘Hindenburg und das Ausland’. Also BA, 87, 15 April 1925: ‘Die geteilte Stimmung der Demokraten’. 54. See BA, 84, 9 April 1925: ‘Hindenburg!’; 91, 20 April 1925: ‘Deutsche Volkspartei und Reichspräsidentenwahl’; 92, 21 April 1925: ‘Friede in Ehren!’ and ‘Ministerpräsident Braun u¨ ber die Präsidentenwahl’. 55. e.g. UK, 89, 17 April 1925: ‘Wie die heutigen Gegner früher u¨ ber Hindenburg urteilten’; BA, 88, 16 April 1925: ‘ ‘‘Ich gehe zum Hindenburg!’ ’’ 56. e.g. AZ special edition: Der neue Reichspräsident, 4, 18 April 1925: ‘Hindenburg soll unser Führer sein’; AZ, 92, 21 April 1925: ‘Das deutsche Offizierskorps an Hindenburg.’ and ‘Der Reichsblock in Königsberg’; Reichsblock appeal on front page of BA, 84, 9 April 1925: ‘Hindenburg!’ 57. NbKbl, 97, 26 April 1925: ‘Reichsblockkundgebung’; AZ, 95, 24 April 1925: ‘Für Hindenburg’; AZ, 90, 18 April 1925: ‘Nachrichten aus Stadt und Land—Gramzow. Reichsblock-Versammlung’; AZ, 91, 20 April 1925: ‘Nachrichten aus Stadt und Land-Neu Galow’; P, 95, 24 April 1925: ‘Wahlversammlung des Reichsblocks’. 58. VZ, 114, 18 May 1925: ‘Unter 3168 Tageszeitungen nur 150 sozialdemokratische’.

262


59. See Handbuch des o¨ffentlichen Lebens (Leipzig, 1928), 774; Institut für Zeitungswissenschaft Berlin, Handbuch der deutschen Tagespresse (Berlin, 1932), 27. 60. Carl von Ossietzky, ‘51 Prozent’, in Das Tage-Buch, 4 July 1925; repr. in Werner Boldt (ed.), Carl von Ossietzky: Sämtliche Schriften (Hamburg, 1994), iii. 101. 61. Richard Lewinsohn (Morus), Das Geld in der Politik (Berlin, 1930), 160. 62. e.g. AZ, 94, 23 April 1925: ‘Greifswald’; BA, 94, 23 April 1925: ‘Einig für Hindenburg’. See Peter Fritzsche, ‘Presidential Victory and Popular Festivity in Weimar Germany: Hindenburg’s 1925 Election’, Central European History, 23 (1990), 205–24. 63. See VolksZ, 114, 18 May 1925: ‘Unter 3168 Tageszeitungen nur 150 sozialdemokratische’. 64. BArchK, N1231 Hugenberg, 39, f. 2 Hugenberg’s more openly party-political Wipro which provided local papers with ready-made typesets serviced many less than the 300 papers which Holzbach, ‘System Hugenberg’, 278, suggests. For local papers’ reluctance to take up the Wipro service, see Rohr to Hugenberg, 4 July 1930, in BArchK, N1231 Hugenberg, Nr. 190, ff. 130–3. 65. Jürgen Falter, ‘The Two Hindenburg Elections of 1925 and 1932: A Total Reversal of Voter Coalitions’, Central European History, 23 (1990), 225–41; Jürgen Falter and Dirk Hänisch, ‘Die Anfälligkeit von Arbeitern gegenüber der NSDAP bei den Reichstagswahlen 1928–1933’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, 26 (1986), 179–216. 66. Fritzsche, ‘Presidential Victory’, 208–9. 67. Lewinsohn (Morus), Geld, 160. 68. e.g. VolksZ, 90, 18 April 1925: ‘Leser!’ 69. Koszyk, Zwischen Kaiserreich und Diktatur, 177, and Georgii, ‘Statistik’, 20, give the contemporary estimates of 25 million. For my own calculation, see www.hist.cam.ac.uk/academic staff/further details/fulda-press-and-politics.html 70. Kurt Tucholsky, ‘Berlin and the Provinces’, in Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg (eds.), The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1994), 418–20, here 419. The original article was published under the name Ignaz Wrobel in Die Weltbühne, 24, 13 March 1928, 405–8. 71. For an overview of that antagonism, see the sources given in the chapter ‘Berlin and the Countryside’, in Kaes et al., Sourcebook, 412–28. 72. VolksZ, 99, 29 April 1925: ‘Hindenburgs Sieg und seine Folgen’. 73. e.g. Walter H. Kaufmann, Monarchism in the Weimar Republic (New York, 1953), 149–50; Eschenburg quoted in Helmut Heiber, Die Republik von Weimar (Munich, 1966), 171; Hagen Schulze, Weimar: Deutschland 1917–1933 (Berlin, 1982), 297. 74. Ulrich Schüren, Der Volksentscheid zur Fürstenenteignung 1926 (Dusseldorf, 1978), 21–6. 75. Ibid., 65; RF, 280, 4 December 1925: ‘Keinen Pfenning den Fürsten!’ 76. Winkler, Schein der Normalität, 417–27; Schüren, Volksentscheid, 63–4. 77. Winkler, Schein der Normalität, 271. 78. Ibid., 259–62. 79. e.g. RF, 296, 23 December 1925: ‘Gegen die Fürsten.’; RF, 297, 24 December 1925: ‘SPD.—Organisationen für entschädigungslose Fürsten-Enteignung’; RF, 2, 3 January 1926: ‘Hamburger SPD.—Funktionäre für den Volksentscheid’; RF,


80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90.

91. 92. 93.

94. 95.

96. 97.

263

4, 6 January 1926: ‘Gewerkschaftsbeschlüsse für Fürstenenteignung’; RF, 5, 7 January 1926: ‘Die Bewegung für den Volksentscheid wächst!’; RF, 6, 8 January 1926: ‘Die schärfsten Worte gegen den SPD.—Vorstand’; RF, 7, 9 January 1926: ‘Beschlüsse gegen die Fürstenabfindung’; RF, 7, 9 January 1926: ‘Massenzustimmung zum Volksentscheid’; ‘Das Breslauer Reichsbanner für Volksentscheid’; RF, 8, 10 January 1926: ‘Auch in Stuttgart Niederlage des SPD.—Parteivorstandes’; ‘Gemeinsame Demonstrationen für den Volksentscheid’; RF, 10, 13 January 1926: ‘Massenversammlungen für den Volksentscheid’; RF, 12, 15 January 1926: ‘Die Arbeiterschaft marschiert nach links’, RF, 14, 17 January 1926: ‘Einheitsfront für den Volksentscheid!’ See the polemic on the silence kept by Vorwärts, in RF, 14, 17 January 1926: ‘Wie der ‘‘Vorwärts’’ für den Volksentscheid agitiert hat’. Vorwärts, 31, 20 January 1926: ‘Die Sozialdemokratie für Volksentscheid!’ Cf. Schüren, Volksentscheid, 81–3. Directive quoted in V , 56, 3 February 1926: ‘Kommunistische Dolchstosstaktik’. Winkler, Schein der Normalität, 275. Schüren, Volksentscheid, 97–102. Ibid., 122. e.g. BA, 99, 29 April 1926: ‘Die Krise in der Fürstenfrage’; AZ, 118, 22 May 1926: ‘Gegen Raub und Bolschewismus’. e.g. AZ, 113, 17 May 1926: ‘Der Putsch von links’; BA, 135, 12 June 1926: ‘Was ist das eigentliche Ziel des Volkentscheides?’ AZ, 117, 21 May 1926: ‘Das friedlose Deutschland’. See VolksZ, 140, 19 June 1926: ‘Bürgerschreck’. e.g. BA, 118, 22 May 1926: ‘Zum Volksentscheid. Die Parole der Deutschen Volkspartei’; AZ, 118, 22 May 1926: ‘Gegen Raub und Bolschewismus. Eine Rede des Grafen Westarp’; ‘Der Diebstahl am Fürstenvermögen. Ein Aufruf der Deutschen Volkspartei’; BA, 119, 25 May 1926: ‘Deutschnationale Parole beim Volksentscheid’; AZ, 135, 12 June 1926: ‘Gegen den Volksentscheid’; AZ, 137, 15 June 1926: ‘Wider den Volksentscheid’; AZ, 140, 18 June 1926: ‘Vergesst nicht Gottes Gebote!’ KZ, 100, 30 April 1926: ‘Das Volksbegehren im Reichstag’. AZ, 100, 30 April 1926: ‘Für Wahrheit und Recht’. e.g. VolksZ, 99, 29 April 1926: ‘Das Volksbegehren vor dem Reichstag’; BA, 99, 29 April 1926: ‘Die Krise in der Fürstenfrage’; NbKbl, 100, 30 April 1926: ‘Unsere Innenpolitik auf dem toten Punkt’. NbKbl, 143, 22 June 1926: ‘Das Volk gegen die Enteignung der Fürsten’; NbKbl, 142, 20 June 1926. e.g. NbKbl, 134, 11 June 1926: ‘Die Reichsregierung lehnt die entschädigungslose Enteignung ab’; BA, 132, 9 June 1926: ‘Reichsregierung und Volksentscheid’; AZ, 141, 19 June 1926: ‘Die Regierung gegen den Volksentscheid’. For the whole episode, see Schüren, Volksentscheid, 171–7. KZ, 132, 9 June 1926: ‘Zur Fürstenenteignung’; NbKbl, 132, 9 June 1926: ‘Hindenburg wendet sich gegen den Volksentscheid’; AZ, 131, 8 June 1926: Hindenburg und die Fürstenenteignung’; BA, 131, 8 June 1926: ‘Hindenburg u¨ ber den Volksentscheid’.

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98. e.g. VolksZ, 130, 8 June 1926: ‘Hindenburgs Brief zum Volksentscheid’; VolksZ, 131, 9 June 1926: ‘Der Hindenburgbrief vor dem Reichstag’; VolksZ, 132, 10 June 1926: ‘Löbell lügt!’ 99. e.g. BA, 134, 11 June 1926: ‘Die Berliner Presse zur Kanzlererklärung zum Hindenburg-Brief ’; NbKbl, 134, 11 June 1926: ‘Parlamentarischer Kampf um den Hindenburgbrief ’. 100. AZ, 136, 14 June 1926: ‘Du sollst nicht stehlen!’; AZ, 138, 16 June 1926: ‘Was erhält, was verdirbt ein Volk?’; AZ, 140, 18 June 1926: ‘Recht oder Raub?’ 101. e.g. BA, 131, 8 June 1926: ‘Haben die Hohenzollern u¨ berhaupt Privatvermögen?’; BA, 132, 9 June 1926: ‘Verschleuderte Milliarden!’; BA, 134, 11 June 1926: ‘An das deutsche Volk!’; BA, 135, 12 June 1926: ‘Was ist das eigentliche Ziel des Volkentscheides?’; BA, 139, 17 June 1926: ‘Tatsachen zum Volksentscheid’; BA, 141, 19 June 1926: ‘Gedenket, dass Ihr Deutsche seid!’ 102. Schüren, Volksentscheid, 228–9. 103. e.g. AZ, 106, 7 May 1925: ‘Zur Aufwertung’; AZ, 109, 11 May 1925: ‘Nachtrag zur Aufwertung betreffend die ungerechte Vermögenskonfiskation der Hypothekengläubiger’ Cf. Schüren, Volksentscheid, 189–97. 104. e.g. VolksZ, 135, 14 June 1926: ‘Hindenburg, Sparer und Fürsten’; also the front-page advertisement highlighting the ‘victims of inflation’ as beneficiaries of the expropriation of the princes: VolksZ, 136, 15 June 1926: ‘Wie soll das Fürsteneigentum verwendet werden?’ 105. Schüren, Volksentscheid, 234. 106. BA, 142, 21 June 1926:‘Wochenschau’; AZ, 142, 21 June 1926: ‘Der Volksentscheid gescheitert!’ 107. BA, 142, 21 June 1926:‘Wochenschau’. 108. AZ, 142, 21 June 1926: ‘Volksentscheidung!’ 109. Ibid. 110. See KZ, 143, 22 June 1926: ‘Der Verlauf des Abstimmungstages’. 111. e.g. UK, 108, 10 May 1927: ‘Stahlhelmtag in Berlin’; NbKbl, 108, 10 May 1927: ‘Ruhiger Verlauf der Stahlhelm-Kundgebung’; KZ, 109, 11 May 1927: ‘Vom Berliner Stahlhelmtag’; AZ, 107, 8 May 1927: ‘Auftakt zum Stahlhelmtag’; AZ, 109, 11 May 1927: ‘Der Abschluss des Stahlhelmtags’; BA, 107, 9 May 1927: ‘Ruhiger Verlauf des Stahlhelmtages’. 112. e.g. BA, 189, 15 August 1927: ‘Reichsbannerfeier in Leipzig’ KZ, 190, 16 August 1927: ‘Die Verfassungs-Feier des Reichsbanners’; NbKbl, 190, 16 August 1927: ‘Reichsbannertagung in Leipzig’. The Angermünder Zeitung ignored the event completely, in contrast to BZ, 189, 15 August 1927: ‘Der Reichsbannertag in Leipzig’. 113. BA, 186, 11 August 1927: ‘Verfassungstag’. 114. See Fritzsche, ‘Presidential Victory’, 217–19. 115. KZ, 232, 4 October 1927: ‘Hindenburgs achtzigster Geburtstag’. 116. See VolksZ, 232, 4 October 1927: ‘Hindenburgs Geburtstagsfeier’; VolksZ, 231, 3 October 1927: ‘Eine Pleite’. 117. See Ala, 1928, 33. 118. For a typical impression of the run-up, see KZ, 116, 17 May 1928: ‘Wahlversammlungen in Königswusterhausen’; and AZ, 118, 20 May 1928: ‘Angermünde und sein Kreis im Wahlkampf’.


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119. e.g. BA, 98, 26 April 1928: ‘Schlechte Zeiten’, BA, 116, 18 May 1928: ‘ ‘‘Frauen’’ und ‘‘Frauen’’ ’. and ‘Wie sie hetzen’, VolksZ, 81, 4 April 1928: ‘Die Wahrheit marschiert’, VolksZ, 114, 16 May 1928: ‘Lügen haben kurze Beine’, VolksZ, 115, 18 May 1928: ‘Das Ende einer Wahllüge’. 120. e.g. AZ, 106, 5 May 1928: ‘Angermünde im Wahlkampf ’; AZ, 107, 6 May 1928: ‘Aus den Parteien’; AZ, 109, 9 May 1928. ‘Aus der Heimat’; AZ, 115, 16 May 1928: ‘Aus den Parteien’; and AZ, 113–18, 13–20 May 1928. 121. e.g. AZ, 118, 20 May 1928: ‘Wahlrecht ist Wahlpflicht!’; BA, 117, 19 May 1928: ‘Der morgige Wahlsonntag’; P, 117, 19 May 1928: ‘Politische Wochenschau’. 122. See Winkler, Schein der Normalität, 521. Cf. P, 118, 21 May 1928: ‘Splitterwahlen—rote Wahlen’. 123. This turned out to be the one issue that all DNVP campaign speakers were struggling to justify to their audiences, see e.g. AZ, 118, 20 May 1928: ‘Deutschnationale Partei’ in the section ‘Aus den Parteien’; or VolksZ, 115, 18 May 1928: ‘Perleberg’ in the section ‘Wittenberge und Umgegend’. 124. For the effect of the rain, see AZ, 119, 22 May 1928: ‘Kreis und Stadt Angermünde am Wahltage’; KZ, 119, 22 May 1928: ‘Aus Königswusterhausen und der Mark. Am Wahlsonntag’; BA, 118, 21 May 1928: ‘Der Wahlsonntag in Brandenburg’. For the greater mobilization of the SPD, see Winkler, Schein der Normalität, 522, 527. 125. Jürgen Falter, Thomas Lindenberger, and Siegfried Schumann (eds.), Wahlen und Abstimmungen in der Weimarer Republik. Materialien zum Wahlverhalten 1919–1933 (Munich, 1986), 41, 44. 126. Winkler, Schein der Normalität, 521. 127. For the ‘unpolitical German’, see Fritz Stern, ‘The Political Consequences of the Unpolitical German’, in Fritz Stern, The Failure of Illiberalism (London, 1972), 3–25. 128. BA, 186, 11 August 1927: ‘Verfassungstag’.

CHAPTER 5 1. See the summary in Richard Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (London, 2003), 208–11, 261. 2. Jürgen Falter, Hitlers Wähler (Munich, 1991), 365–6; Thomas Childers, The Nazi Voters: The Social Foundations of Fascism in Germany 1919–1933 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1981), 178, 264–5; Evans, Coming of the Third Reich, 264. 3. Jürgen Falter and Michael Kater, ‘Wähler und Mitglieder der NSDAP. Neue Forschungsergebnisse zur Soziographie des Nationalsozialismus 1925 bis 1933’, GG, 19 (1993), 155–77; Falter, Hitlers Wähler, 327–39, 374. 4. Evans, Coming of the Third Reich, 212. Cf. Erich Eyck, Geschichte der Weimarer Republik (Zurich, 1962), i., 279, 350; Dietrich Orlow, The History of the Nazi Party I: 1919–1933 (Newton Abbot, 1971 [1969]), 173–5; Anthony Nicholls, Weimar and the Rise of Hitler (London, 1991 [1968]), 114; Ian Kershaw, Hitler. 1889–1936: Hubris (London, 1998), 350. For an early revisionist take on this argument, see Otmar Jung, ‘Plebiszitärer Durchbruch 1929? Zur Bedeutung von Volksbegehren und Volksentscheid gegen den Youngplan für die NSDA’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 15 (1989), 489–510.

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5. Speech Dovifat, at 8th Meeting of the Deutscher Richterag, 14 September 1929, in Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz Berlin-Dahlem (GStA), I. HA, Rep. 92, Nachlass Dovifat, no. 2176, unpaginated. 6. Otto Büsch and Wofgang Haus (eds.), Berlin als Hauptstadt der Weimarer Republik 1919–1933 (Berlin, 1987), 323. 7. Russell Lemmons, Goebbels and Der Angriff (Lexington, 1994), 22. 8. Quoted in Otto Friedrich, Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s (London, 1974), 190. 9. Helmut Heiber, Joseph Goebbels (Munich, 1965), 37–8. 10. The German term is ‘gedruckter Käse’: Joseph Goebbels, Kampf um Berlin. Der Anfang (Munich, 9th edn. 1936 [1932]), 203. 11. Heidrun Holzbach, Das ‘‘System Hugenberg’’. Die Organisation bürgerlicher Sammlungspolitik vor dem Aufstieg der NSDAP (Stuttgart, 1981), 192–253; Rolf Surmann, Die Münzenberg-Legende. Zur Publizistik der revolutionären deutschen Arbeiterbewegung 1921–1933 (Cologne, 1982), 9–17. 12. e.g. NA, 264, 9 November 1928: ‘Zehn Jahre Volk in Not’; WaA, 264, 9 November 1928: ‘Der Anfang’. 13. Heinrich August Winkler, Der Schein der Normalität. Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik 1924 bis 1930 (Berlin, 1988), 540. 14. Winkler, Schein der Normalität, 533–4, 541–51. 15. e.g. NA, 268, 14 November 1928: ‘Panzerkreuzerschwindel enthüllt’; NA, 269, 15 November 1928: ‘Rote Niederlage’; WaA, 270, 16 November 1928: ‘Letzer Akt der Panzerkreuzerkomödie’. 16. Quoted in Winkler, Schein der Normalität, 550. 17. Ibid., 573–83. 18. Ibid., 577. 19. BVZ, 58, 3 February 1929: ‘Der falsche Weg’. 20. BVZ, 92, 23 February 1929: ‘Stresemanns Koalitionsbemühungen’. 21. BVZ, 102, 1 March 1929: ‘Einer, der genug hat’. 22. BVZ, 79, 15 February 1929: ‘Joseph Wirths Verzweifelung’. 23. BVZ, 104, 2 March 1929: ‘Selbsterkenntnis oder nur schöne Worte?’ 24. Carl Severing, Mein Lebensweg (Cologne, 1950), ii. 141. 25. Goebbels’s diary entry of 17 November 1928, in Ralf Georg Reuth (ed.), Joseph Goebbels Tagebücher (Munich, 1992), i. 334. 26. Welt am Abend, 271, 17 November 1928: ‘Hitler-Premiere im Sportpalast: Deutschland ist vernegert’. 27. Goebbels’s diary entry of 17 November 1928, in Reuth, Goebbels Tagebücher, i. 335. Cf. Heiber, Goebbels, 74–5; Léon Schirmann, Blutmai Berlin 1929: Dichtungen und Wahrheit (Berlin, 1991), 53. 28. Nachtausgabe, 271, 17 November 1928: ‘Selbstmord oder Verbrechen?’ 29. Angriff, 48, 26 November 1928: ‘Kütemeyer’ and ‘Mord am PG. Kütemeyer’. Cf. Kessemeier, Leitartikler Goebbels, 82. 30. Welt am Abend, 272, 19 November 1928: ‘Der Tod des Nationalsozialisten. Nicht ermordet, sondern in den Kanal gefallen’. 31. e.g. G, 280, 19 June 1929: ‘Der Tod des Nationalsozialisten Kütemeyer’. 32. WaA, 274, 22 November 1928: ‘Hitlerleute schießen Arbeiter nieder’.


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33. Winkler, Schein der Normalität, 671–2. 34. e.g. WaA, 293, 14 December 1928: ‘Zörgiebel verbietet’; RF, 294, 14 December 1928: ‘Unbefristeter Raub der Versammlungsfreiheit’. 35. Schirmann, Blutmai, 60–1. 36. RF, 86, 13 April 1929: ‘Heraus zur Maidemonstration!’ 37. RF, 98, 27 April 1929: ‘Das Maikomitee warnt Zörgiebel’; RF, 99, 28 April 1929: ‘Der Henker des 1. Mai’. 38. V, 194, 26 April 1929: ‘ ‘‘Ein Verbrechen an der Arbeiterschaft!’’ ’ 39. Schirmann, Blutmai, 68, fn. 137. 40. e.g. RF, 98, 27 April 1929: ‘Das Maikomitee warnt Zörgiebel’. 41. WaA, 99, 29 April 1929: ‘Ich warne!’ 42. V, 199, 29 April 1929: ‘200 Tote am 1. Mai? Verbrecherische Pläne der Kommunisten’. 43. RF, 100, 30 April 1929: ‘Rote Fahnen heraus!’; WaA, 100, 30 April 1929: ‘Letzte Rüstungen’; RF, 100, 30 April 1929: ‘Berliner Arbeiterjugend demonstriert’. 44. For a discussion of Künstler’s article, see Schirmann, Blutmai, 69, fn. 138. 45. BM, 103, 30 April 1929: ‘Kommunistische Mai-Hoffnungen’; T , 99, 29 April 1929: ‘Der 1. Mai-Kampfplan und die Polizei-Abwehr’. 46. NA, 100, 30 April 1929: ‘15 000 Schupobeamte sind morgen mobil’. 47. BM, 104, 1 May 1929: ‘Ruhe bewahren!’ 48. BVZ, 202, 30 April 1929: ‘Generalprobe zum Mai-Krawall?’; BM, 104, 1 May 1929: ‘Zusammenstöße in Neukölln’. 49. Schirmann, Blutmai, 13. 50. e.g. V , 199, 29 April 1929: ‘200 Tote am 1. Mai?’ 51. Schirmann, Blutmai, 108–9. 52. Caption in photo-series ‘Blutiger 1. Mai’ in 8UA, 101, 2 May 1929. 53. Eve Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists? The German Communists and Political Violence 1929–1933 (Cambridge, 1983), 14. 54. Schirmann, Blutmai, 111, 199–200. 55. Ibid., 116–17. 56. Ibid., 119–25, 128–33. 57. Ibid., 83. 58. 8UA, 101, 2 May 1929: ‘Ihr Blut komme u¨ ber Moskau . . . !’ 59. 8UA, 101, 2 May 1929: ‘Straßenschlacht in Neukölln und am Wedding’. 60. T , 101, 2 May 1929: ‘Vor neuen Unruhen’. 61. T , 101, 2 May 1929: ‘Nachtgefecht am Wedding . . . ’. 62. NA, 101, 2 May 1929: ‘Schupo stürmt Barrikaden’. 63. Quoted in Schirmann, Blutmai, 91–3. Cf. 185–7. 64. NA, 101, 2 May 1929: ‘Die Folgen des blutigen 1. Mai’. 65. BVZ, 205, 2 May 1929; 8UA, 101, 2 May 1929; BZaM, 118, 2 May 1929. 66. NA, 101, 2 May 1929. 67. Schirmann, Blutmai, 142–50. 68. e.g. 8UA, 102, 3 May 1929, BM, 106, 4 May 1929, T , 102, 3 May 1929. 69. e.g. 8UA, 102, 3 May 1929: ‘Ausnahmezustand u¨ ber Neukölln und Wedding!’

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70. e.g. BM, 106, 4 May 1929: ‘Bilder aus den Unruhe-Gebieten’; T , 102, 3 May 1029: ‘Schupo-Posten’; 8UA, 102, 3 May 1929: ‘Wie es an der Hauptkampfstätte am Wedding aussieht’. 71. Schirmann, Blutmai, 156–61. 72. 8UA, 103, 4 May 1929. Schupo was the popular short form for Schutzpolizei. 73. VZ, 108, 7 May 1929: ‘Belagerungszustand aufgehoben’; 8UA, 104, 6 May 1929: ‘Jetzt wird Polizeipräsident Zörgiebel seine Schupo-Offiziere mustern müssen’; VZ, 107, 5 May 1929: ‘Die Absperrung des Neuköllner Tumult-Gebietes’; BZaM, 120, 4 May 1929: ‘Zwei Journalisten von Kugeln getroffen, einer tot’. Cf. Schirmann, Blutmai, 211–15. 74. T , 103, 4 May 1929: ‘Schupo nervös und u¨ bermüdet’. 75. BVZ, 208, 4 May 1929: ‘Unschuldige als Opfer der Strassenkämpfe’ and ‘Schluss mit dem Blutvergiessen!’ 76. 8UA, 105, 7 May 1929: ‘Sensationelles Ergebnis der Leichenuntersuchung der Mai-Opfer!’ 77. T , 104, 6 May 1929: ‘Rotfronts Ende!’; NA, 104, 6 May 1929: ‘Durchsuchung der Rotfront-Häuser’. Cf. Schirmann, Blutmai, 137, 279–89. 78. Cf. T , 105, 7 May 1929: ‘Reichsgelder für Fälscher und Putschisten!’ 79. NA, 105, 7 May 1929: ‘Straßenräuber vom Tiergarten auf der Flucht verunglückt’. 80. BaM, 42, 5 May 1929: ‘Wir klagen an!’ 81. Schirmann, Blutmai, 293–4. 82. BArchL, RY1 KPD, I/3/1–2, Nr. 26, f. 338. Cf. V , 210, 7 May 1929: ‘Anklage gegen die KPD’. 83. T , 105, 7 May 1929: ‘Krach unter den Kommunisten’. 84. e.g. V , 222, 15 May 1929: ‘Thälmann muß sich verantworten . . . ’. 85. Cf. Schirmann, Blutmai, 264–73. 86. 8-Uhr-Abendblatt, Tempo, Berliner Morgenpost, Vossische Zeitung ignored the first mass meeting completely, only the Berliner Tageblatt printed a sceptical account in a small article. See BT, 264, 7 June 1929: ‘Die Maivorgänge’. 87. Schirmann, Blutmai, 273. 88. e.g. 8UA, 104, 6 May 1929: ‘Neue große Kommunisten-Aktion in Berlin geplant!’ 89. e.g. BLA, 357, 31 July 1929: ‘Berlins Sicherung gegen den ‘‘Roten Tag’’ ’. 90. e.g. Montag, 50, 30 December 1929: ‘Wollen die Kommunisten putschen?’ 91. e.g. 8UA, 27, 1 February 1930: ‘Kommunisten-Aufruhrplan vereitelt!’; T , 27, 1 February 1930: ‘Zur Abwehr bereit!’; NA, 27, 1 February 1930: ‘Berliner Polizei Herr der Lage’. 92. e.g. BLA, 107, 4 March 1930: ‘Neue kommunistische Marschbefehle’; T , 53, 4 March 1930: ‘6. März: ‘‘Kampftag’’—und Krawall-Tag?’; BZaM, 63, 5 March 1930: ‘Berliner Polizei auf höchster Alarmstufe’. 93. Winkler, Schein der Normalität, 587–9. 94. Jung, ‘Plebiszitärer Durchbruch 1929?’, 492–3. 95. NA, 158, 10 July 1929: ‘Abwehrfront gegen Young-Plan’. 96. V , 446, 23 September 1929: ‘Hitler und die ‘‘Knirpse’’ ’. 97. BLA, 320, 10 July 1929: ‘Nationale Einheitsfront für das Volksbegehren’. 98. See BLA, 487, 15 October 1929: ‘Volksbegehren und Deutschnationale’.


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99. BLA, 362, 3 August 1929: ‘Ein Manifest Hitlers’; BLA, 363, 3 August 1929: ‘Die Hitlertagung in Nürnberg.’; BLA, 364, 4 August 1929: ‘Hitler-Ansprache an die Studenten’. 100. e.g. Montag, 29, 5 August 1929: ‘Zeppelin gelandet’. 101. e.g. BLA, 364, 4 August 1929: ‘Hitler-Ansprache an die Studenten’; Montag, 29, 5 August 1929: ‘Das Treffen der Nationalsozialisten’. For a typical provincial article based on a TU report, see AZ, 182, 6 August 1929: ‘Nationalsozialistische Tagung’. Cf. Rainer Hambrecht, Der Aufstieg der NSDAP in Mittel- und Oberfranken 1925–1933 (Nuremberg, 1967), 171–5. 102. Goebbels’s diary entry of 1 October 1928, in Reuth, Goebbels Tagebücher, i. 322. 103. For a typical expression of this argument, see Nicholls, Weimar and the Rise of Hitler, 114. 104. Büsch, Berlin als Hauptstadt, 342. 105. Ibid., 340. 106. Jung, ‘Plebiszitärer Durchbruch 1929?’, 500–2, 508. 107. For an exhaustive account of the Sklarek scandal, see Cordula Ludwig, Korruption und Nationalsozialismus in Berlin 1924–1934 (Frankfurt am Main, 1998), 133–81. Cf. Stephan Malinowski, ‘Politische Skandale als Zerrspiegel der Demokratie. Die Fälle Barmat und Sklarek im Kalkül der Weimarer Rechten’, in Wolfgang Benz (ed.), Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung, 5 (Frankfurt am Main, 1996), 46–65; and Dagmar Reese, ‘Skandal und Ressentiment: Das Beispiel des Berliner SklarekSkandals von 1929’, in Rolf Ebbighausen and Sighard Neckel (eds.), Anatomie des politischen Skandals (Frankfurt am Main, 1989), 374–95. 108. Ludwig, Korruption, 134. 109. BLA, 456, 27 September 1929: ‘Vier Jahre Kreditbetrug der Brüder Sklarek’. Cf. NA, 226, 27 September 1929: ‘Geständnis der drei Sklareks’. 110. WaA, 226, 27 September 1929: ‘Der Zehn-Millionen-Betrug’. 111. Reese, ‘Skandal’, 385. 112. Reese, ‘Skandal’, 383–4; Donna Harsch, ‘Der Sklarek-Skandal und die sozialdemokratische Reaktion’, in Ludger Heid and Arnold Paucker (eds.), Juden und deutsche Arbeiterbewegung bis 1933 ( Tubingen, 1992), 195–7. 113. e.g. NA, 227, 28 September 1929: ‘Wo bleibt die Aufklärung?’; WaA, 227, 28 September 1929: ‘Die Schuldigen im Sklarekskandal’; RF, 191, 28 September 1929: ‘Justiz deckt Sklareks Magistratsfreunde’, attacking Vossische Zeitung and Tempo coverage of the affair. 114. The series started with RF, 197, 5 October 1929: ‘Sklarek-Magistrat vertuscht Sklarek-Skandal’. 115. Christian Engeli, Gustav Böss. Oberbürgermeister von Berlin (Stuttgart, 1971), 245–6. 116. T , 233, 5 October 1929: ‘Sklarek-Hintermänner’. 117. e.g. T , 233, 5 October 1929: ‘Heraus mit den Namen der ‘‘Anzug-Liste’’!’; BLA, 473, 7 Ocotber 1929: ‘Stimmen diese Namen?’; WaA, 235, 8 October 1929: ‘Her mit der Liste!’; V , 473, 9 October 1929: ‘Die Kundenliste’. Cf. Erich Flatau, Zum ‘‘Sklarek-Skandal’’ (Berlin, 1929), 6–7. 118. RF, 199, 8 October 1929: ‘An der Spitze der Korruptions-Kleiderliste steht Oberbürgermeister Böss’; T , 235, 8 October 1929: ‘Böss-Krise!’; BZaM, 276,

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119. 120.

121. 122. 123. 124.

125.

126. 127.

128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135.

136. 137.

138. 139. 140.

Notes to pages 148–151 9 October 1929: ‘Ein 4000 M-Pelz für 400 M’; NA, 236, 9 October 1929: ‘Die Beschuldigungen gegen Oberbürgermeister Böss’. Scholtz to Böss, 17 October 1929, quoted in Ludwig, Korruption, 173. For the concept of Teilöffentlichkeit, see Detlef Lehnert and Klaus Megerle (eds.), Politische Teilkulturen zwischen Integration und Polarisierung: Zur politischen Kultur in der Weimarer Republik (Opladen, 1990). Carl Ladendorff (WP), on 17 October 1929, in Sitzungsberichte des Preussischen Landtags III. Wahlperiode, 8558–61. e.g. V , 473, 9 October 1929: ‘Presseskandal in Berlin’. e.g. V , 477, 11 October 1929: ‘Der Kern des Skandals’. See the speech of Erich Flatau, SPD, in the city council on 10 October 1929, printed as a brochure: Erich Flatau, Zum ‘‘Sklarek-Skandal’’ (Berlin, 1929). Cf. Harsch, ‘Sklarek-Skandal 1929’, 204–10. Berliner Tageblatt, 518, 2 November 1929: ‘Böss informiert sich’. Cf. Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, 516, 1 November 1929: ‘Die Ankunft des Oberbürgermeisters’; Welt am Abend, 256, 1 November 1929: ‘Böß unter Polizeischutz.’; Engeli, Gustav Böß, 243. Published in 1931: Gabriele Tergit, Käsebier erobert den Kurfürstendamm (Berlin, 1992 edn.), 8. See RF, 203, 12 October 1929: ‘5000 neue Leser der Roten Fahne’; for Tempo, see data for third and fourth quarter 1929 in Ullstein Berichte. Street-sale income of BLA and NA reached nearly 270,000 RM in October 1929: a record only beaten by the results in October 1930 and March 1933; see ‘Strassenhandelseinnahmen 1927–1937’, in BArchK, N1231, Nr. 201, ff. 37–8. A, 42, 10 October 1929: ‘Geheimtresor in Sklareks Villa’; A, 44, 17 October 1929: ‘Fasanen, Sekt, Kaviar, Hummer!’ BLA, 544, 17 November 1929: ‘Es geht um das Schicksal Berlins. Berlin gegen Sklarek-Stadt!’ NA, 270, 18 November 1929: ‘Das amtliche Gesamtergebnis von Groß-Berlin’. NA, 269, 16 November 1929: ‘Zwei Wahlaufrufe: Für ein sauberes Berlin!’ Falter, Wahlen und Abstimmungen, 41, 102–4. Eyck, Weimarer Republik, ii. 281. Erasmus Jonas, Die Volkskonservativen 1928–1933 (Dusseldorf, 1965), 45–6. Eyck, Weimarer Republik, ii. 282. Cf. V , 446, 23 September 1929: ‘Hitler und die ‘‘Knirpse’’ ’; V , 454, 27 September 1929: ‘Verwässerter Zuchthausparagraph’. Cf. Goebbels’s diary entry of 22 September 1929, in Reuth, Goebbels Tagebücher, i. 409. Goebbels’s diary entry of 22 September 1929, in Reuth, Goebbels Tagebücher, i. 409. Cf. A, 39, 30 September 1929: ‘Rund um die Rotationsmaschine’. Jonas, Volkskonservativen, 45. Cf. Goebbels’s diary entry of 19 October 1929, in Reuth, Goebbels Tagebücher, i. 416; BLA, 494, 19 October 1929: ‘Der Kampf um §4’; BLA, 496, 20 October 1929: ‘Die Irreführung Hindenburgs’. Jonas, Volkskonservativen, 47–54. Ibid., 54–7. Cf. Winkler, Schein der Normalität, 737. e.g. 8UA, 280, 30 November 1929: ‘Schwere Niederlage Hugenbergs!’


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141. e.g. BVZ, 567, 1 December 1929: ‘Deutschnationale Krise ausgebrochen’; BVZ, 570, 3 December 1929: ‘Deutschnationale Auseinandersetzung’. 142. e.g. 8UA, 282, 3 December 1929: ‘Hugenbergs Verzweiflungskampf um Parteidiktatur’; T , 282, 3 December 1929: ‘Hugenbergs Parteigericht’. 143. e.g. BVZ, 571, 4 December 1929: ‘Sechs Mann marschieren ab’; BVZ, 572, 4 December 1929: ‘Wieder drei!’; T , 283, 4 December 1929: ‘Und noch sechs’; BVZ, 581, 10 December 1929: ‘Die Austrittslawine wächst weiter’. 144. e.g. BVZ, 573, 5 December 1929: ‘Der deutschnationale Zerfall’; 8UA, 284, 5 December 1929: ‘Die Spaltung der Deutschnationalen’; T , 284, 5 December 1929: ‘Die Hugenberg-Krisis geht weiter’. 145. e.g. BVZ, 575, 6 December 1929: ‘Hugenberg, geh du voran!’ Cf. NA, 283, 4 December 1929: ‘Vorläufige Klärung bei den Deutschnationalen’. For the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, see BVZ, 572, 4 December 1929: ‘Der Parteifeldwebel’. 146. 8UA, 286, 7 December 1929: ‘Nach der Spaltung’. 147. Goebbels’s diary entry of 7 December 1929, in Reuth, Goebbels Tagebücher, i. 431. 148. Donald R. Tracey, ‘Aufstieg der NSDAP bis 1930’, in Detlev Heiden and Gunther Mai (eds.), Nationalsozialismus in Thüringen (Weimar, 1995), 49–72, here 70. Cf. Kershaw, Hitler, 319. 149. Cf. Falter, Wahlen und Abstimmungen, 71, 111. 150. BLA, 580, 9 December 1929: ‘Marxistisch-demokratische Niederlage in Thüringen’. Cf. Falter, Wahlen und Abstimmungen, 111. 151. NA, 287, 9 December 1929: ‘Rechtsregierung in Thüringen?’ 152. BVZ, 580, 9 December 1929: ‘Hitlers Sieg u¨ ber Hugenberg’; 8UA, 287, 9 December 1929: ‘Hitler frißt Hugenberg’. Cf. BVZ, 580, 9 December 1929: ‘Wieder Hugenberg-Hasen in der Nazi-Küche’; BM, 294, 10 December 1929: ‘Hitler-Siege. Auf Kosten der Deutschnationalen’. 153. Cf. Falter, Hitlers Wähler, 104–5, 110–11. 154. Cf. Fritz Dickmann, ‘Die Regierungsbildung in Thüringen als Modell der Machtergreifung. Ein Brief Hitlers aus dem Jahre 1930’, in Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 14 (1966), 454–64. 155. See Günter Neliba, ‘Wilhelm Frick und Thüringen als Experimentierfeld für die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung’, in Heiden and Mai (eds.), Nationalsozialismus in Thüringen, 75–94. 156. 8UA, 66, 19 March 1930: ‘Reichsregierung geht gegen Hakenkreuz-Minister Frick endlich vor’. 157. BZaM, 77, 19 March 1930: ‘Minister Frick will die Thüringer Polizei nationalsozialistisch machen’. 158. e.g. BZaM, 78, 20 March 1930: ‘Die Reichsregierung will Fricks Rücktritt’; NA, 67, 20 March 1930: ‘Thüringer Kabinett einig gegen Severing’; NA, 68, 21 March 1930: ‘Kontrolleur Severings für Thüringen’; BLA, 137, 21 March 1930: ‘Ist Severing im Recht?’; 8UA, 68, 21 March 1930: ‘Severing fordert Untersuchung in Thüringen’; 8UA, 73, 27 March 1930: ‘Thüringen lehnt Reichskontrolle ab. Grobe Antwort an Severing’. 159. Neliba, ‘Frick und Thüringen’, 81–2. 160. NA, 79, 3 April 1930: ‘Der thüringische Minister Frick sprach im Sportpalast’; WaA, 79, 3 April 1930: ‘Frick im Sportpalast’; T , 79, 3 April 1930: ‘Tag der Demonstrationen’.

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161. Goebbels’s diary entry of 4 April 1930, in Reuth, Goebbels Tagebücher, ii. 475; probably referring to BLA, 158, 3 April 1930: ‘Staatsminister Frick u¨ ber den ‘‘Krieg’’ mit Thüringen’. 162. Goebbels’s diary entry of 18 June 1930, in Reuth, Goebbels Tagebücher, ii. 489. 163. RF, 164, 28 August 1929: ‘Brecht den faschistischen Terror’. Cf. Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists?, 63–5. 164. e.g. BLA, 613, 30 December 1929: ‘Wieder schwere kommunistische Ausschreitungen. Die Folgen der systematischen Hetze’; BLA, 405, 28 August 1929: ¨ ‘Kommunistische Uberf¨ alle auf Nationalsozialisten’. 165. Thomas Oertel, Horst Wessel. Untersuchung einer Legende (Cologne, 1988), 1, 83–7. 166. Ibid., 60–78, 87–98. 167. BLA, 24, 15 January 1930: ‘Kommunistischer Mordanschlag’; WaA, 12, 15 January 1930: ‘Eine Lüge zusammengebrochen: Die Erschiessung des Nationalsozialisten. Opfer eines häuslichen Streits’. 168. Oertel, Wessel, 83–7. 169. BM, 14, 16 January 1930: ‘Revolver-Anschlag auf einen Nationalsozialisten’. 170. T , 14, 17 January 1930: ‘Roter Sturmführer—Zuhälter und Zuchthäusler’; NA, 14, 17 January 1930: ‘Wieder eine kommunistische Mordtat. Auch der Anschlag auf Student Wessel Kommunisten-Verbrechen’; BLA, 29, 17 January 1930: ‘Die Ermittlungen in Sachen Wessel’. 171. WaA, 15, 18 January 1930: ‘Das Revolverattentat auf den Studenten Wessel’. Cf. the caricature about ‘Rotmord’ in NA, 15, 18 January 1930: ‘Wochenschau’. 172. WaA, 17, 21 January 1930: ‘Polizei und Presse’. 173. 8UA, 29, 4 February 1930: ‘Ali legt ein Geständnis ab’; NA, 29, 4 February 1930: ‘Politischer Racheakt’. 174. T , 30, 5 February 1930: ‘ ‘‘Ali’’ Höhler und die Kommunisten’; NA, 30, 5 February 1930: ‘Die Polizei enthüllt: Festgelage in der Kommunisten-Villa bei Berlin’; 61, 5 February 1930: ‘Kommunistische Helfer des Mordgesellen Ali verhaftet’. For the impact, see Goebbels’s diary entry of 6 February 1930, in Reuth, Goebbels Tagebücher, ii. 456. 175. e.g. NA, 31, 6 February 1930: ‘Verhaftung einer kommunistischen Geheim-Agentin in Berlin’; 8UA, 33, 8 February 1930: ‘Mordaffäre Wessel zieht weitere Kreise!’; NA, 33, 8 February 1930: ‘Kommunistischer Bezirksverordneter verhaftet’. 176. See the caricature in WaA, 35, 11 February 1930. 177. BLA, 66, 8 February 1930: ‘General Litzmann u¨ ber einst und jetzt’; BLA, 67, ¨ 8 February 1930: ‘Neue rohe Uberf¨ alle’. 178. BLA, 206, 3 May 1930: ‘Hitler im Sportpalast’; NA, 102, 3 May 1930: ‘Hitler sprach gestern im Sportpalast’; WaA, 102, 3 May 1930: ‘Hitler-Parade’; 12UB, 103, 3 May 1930: ‘Hitler im Sportpalast’. ¨ 179. e.g. WaA, 55, 6 March 1930: ‘Blutiger Uberfall der Nationalsozialisten’; 8UA, 56, 7 March 1930: ‘Von Nazis ermordet!’; BVZ, 327, 14 July 1930: ‘Die Röntgentaler Schiesshelden’; BM, 167, 15 July 1930: ‘Der Feuer-Ueberfall auf das ReichsbannerLokal’; WaA, 163, 16 July 1930: ‘Der Röntgentaler Prozess’; BVZ, 338, 20 July 1930: ‘Nazi-Terror gegen Belastungszeugen’; BVZ, 341, 22 July 1930: ‘Die Röntgental-Nazis bleiben in Haft’; BVZ, 346, 25 July 1930: ‘Nazis wollten Rache nehmen!’; BVZ, 348, 26 July 1930: ‘Vergeblicher Appell’.


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180. e.g. NA, 55, 6 March 1930: ‘Blutiger Zusammenstoß in Röntgenthal’; BLA, 111, 6 March 1930: ‘Letzte Nachrichten’. 181. e.g. 12UB, 113, 17 May 1930: ‘Eine Nacht der Schießereien’; BLA, 230, 17 May 1930: ‘Wieder schwere kommunistische Ueberfälle’; BM, 118, 18 May 1930: ‘Drei Todesopfer politischer Zusammenstöße’. 182. T , 120, 24 May 1930: ‘Der bestialische Mord an Heimbürger’. 183. e.g. WaA, 162, 15 July 1930: ‘Der Mord am Innsbrucker Platz’; BVZ, 331, 16 July 1930: ‘Die Freundin gesteht’; BM, 168, 16 July 1930: ‘Ueberfallen und zu Tode mißhandelt’; WaA, 163, 16 July 1930: ‘Geschlagen, getreten, erdolcht’; BVZ, 332, 17 July 1930: ‘Ist das Sühne für Nazi-Untat?’; WaA, 164, 17 July 1930: ‘Gefängnisstrafen für die Mörder des Händlers Heimbürger’. 184. T , 151, 2 July 1930: ‘Hakenkreuz-Unruhen brechen u¨ berall aus!’; BM, 157, 3 July 1930: ‘Wie lange noch?’; BVZ, 329, 15 July 1930: ‘Schüsse, Totschlag, Messerstecherei’; WaA, 161, 14 July 1930: ‘Die Woche der politischen Prozesse’; Montag, 27, 21 July 1930: ‘25 politische Ueberfälle in einer Woche’. 185. T , 166, 19 July 1930: ‘Blutiger Wahlkampf befürchtet’. Cf. BVZ, 338, 20 July 1930: ‘Wahlkampf ohne Schlagring’. 186. BVZ, 339, 21 July 1930: ‘Mit Schlächtermessern auf Werbetour’; T , 168, 22 July 1930: ‘Es fängt gut an: Politischer Mordanschlag von Kommunisten auf Nazi’; BVZ, 351, 28 July 1930: ‘Nazihorde dringt in Reichsbannerwohnungen’; WaA, ¨ 173, 28 July 1930: ‘Nationalsozialistische Uberf¨ alle.’; BVZ, 354, 30 July 1930: ‘Keine Wirkung des Waffenverbots?’ 187. See Falter, Wahlen und Abstimmungen, 108; and Claus-Christian W. Szejnmann, Nazism in Central Germany: The Brownshirts in ‘Red’ Saxony (Oxford, 1999), 52–3, 177. 188. BLA, 290, 22 June 1930: ‘Der Führer’. 189. BLA, 290, 22 June 1930: ‘Heute Entscheidungsschlacht in Sachsen’. 190. Szejnmann, Nazism, 224. Information given for Reichstag election in September 1930, but assumed true also for the state election less than three months earlier. 191. WaA, 143, 23 June 1930: ‘Sachsenwahlen ein Signal der faschistischen Gefahr. Erfolge der Kommunisten—Der Durchbruch der Nazis’. 192. e.g. 8UA, 143, 23 June 1930: ‘Der Hakenkreuzsieg in Sachsen’; Montag, 23, 23 June 1930: ‘Gesamtergebnis in Sachsen’; BZaM, 168, 23 June 1930: ‘Das Sturm-Signal aus Sachsen’; 12UB, 144, 23 June 1930: ‘Nationalsozialisten, die Sieger der sächsischen Wahlen’. 193. e.g. BLA, 291, 23 June 1930: ‘Keine Regierungsmöglichkeit in Sachsen’; NA, 143, 23 June 1930: ‘Alle Parteiführer haben Sorgen’. 194. e.g. BM, 149, 24 June 1930: ‘Die Lehre der Sachsen-Wahl’. 195. Markus Müller, Die Christlich-Nationale Bauern- und Landvolkpartei 1928–1933 (Dusseldorf, 2001), 144–5. Cf. Jonas, Volkskonservativen, 65–6. 196. BZaM, 86, 28 March 1930: ‘Der neue Kanzler will Schiele ins Kabinett nehmen. Der linke Flügel der Hugenberg-Partei soll herangezogen werden’. 197. WaA, 78, 2 April 1930: ‘Regierung rechnet mit Mehrheit. Der Streit im deutschnationalen Lager’; BZaM, 91, 2 April 1930: ‘Brünings Chance: Der Landbund’. 198. Jonas, Volkskonservativen, 66–7; Müller, Bauern- und Landvolkpartei, 149–50.

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199. e.g. 8UA, 79, 3 April 1930: ‘Sieg der Regierung Brüning! Völliger Umfall der Deutschnationalen’; BZaM, 92, 3 April 1930: ‘Kabinett Brüning gerettet. Hugenberg zum Nachgeben gezwungen’. 200. e.g. 8UA, 80, 4 April 1930: ‘Am Galgen vorbei’. 201. Jonas, Volkskonservativen, 67–73. 202. T , 99, 29 April 1930: ‘Der Bruch der Hugenberg-Front’; T , 101, 2 May 1930: ‘Westarp kündigt Hugenberg den Gehorsam’. 203. Goebbels’s diary entry of 13 April 1930, in Reuth, Goebbels Tagebücher, ii. 477. 204. Jonas, Volkskonservativen, 74–80. 205. e.g. T , 165, 18 July 1930: ‘Neue Partei’; 8UA, 166, 19 July 1930: ‘Gründung der Westarp-Partei!’ BM, 174, 23 July 1930: ‘Klare Fronten!’; BVZ, 344, 24 July 1930: ‘Hugenbergs Konkurrenz ist da’; 8UA, 170, 24 July 1930: ‘Die Konservative Volkspartei ist geboren!’; BM, 175, 24 July 1930: ‘Partei Westarp’. 206. e.g. T , 166, 19 July 1930: ‘ ‘‘Los von Hugenberg’’ ’; T , 168, 22 July 1930: ‘Täglich ein Adieu an Hugenberg’; BVZ, 352, 29 July 1930: ‘Die Massenflucht vor Hugenberg’; T , 174, 29 July 1930: ‘Die Flucht von rechts’; T , 175, 30 July 1930: ‘Ein Nasenstüber für Hugenberg’. 207. e.g. 8UA, 171, 25 July 1930: ‘Saisonverkäufe haben begonnen’; Ulk, 31, 1930: ‘Führer Hugenberg’, caricature in BVZ, 358, 1 August 1930. 208. 8UA, 170, 24 July 1930: ‘Palastrevolution’. 209. e.g. NA, 183, 8 August 1930: ‘Für den Parteiführer Hugenberg’. Cf. NA, 175, 30 July 1930: ‘Kundgebungen für Hugenberg’; NA, 176, 31 July 1930: ‘Geschlossen für Hugenberg!’; NA, 177, 1 August 1930: ‘Neue Kundgebungen für Hugenberg’; NA, 179, 4 August 1930: ‘Die bayrischen Nationalliberalen für Hugenberg’; NA, 181, 6 August 1930: ‘Hugenbergfront in Schlesien’; NA, 182, 7 August 1930: ‘Die deutschnationalen Beamten für Hugenberg’; NA, 187, 13 August 1930: ‘Pommerns Landwirtschaft für Hugenberg’. 210. WaA, 167, 21 July 1930: ‘Wahlbündnis zwischen Hitler und Hugenberg’. 211. T , 167, 21 July 1930: ‘Das Abkommen Hugenberg–Hitler’; BVZ, 341, 22 July 1930: ‘Falsche Parole’. 212. NA, 167, 21 July 1930: ‘Eine Falschmeldung’. 213. See the caricature ‘Die Lügenkröte in Aktion’, in A, 59, 24 July 1930. 214. e.g. WaA, 25, 30 January 1930: ‘Nationalsozialismus und Pornographie’; WaA, 31, 6 February 1930: ‘Hitler verkauft seine Volksgenossen’; WaA, 46, 24 February 1930: ‘Provokationsplan für den 6. März’. 215. BVZ, 338, 20 July 1930: ‘Gebrochene Front’. Cf. the Ulk caricature ‘Hitler und Hugenberg im Wahlboxring’, in BVZ, 370, 8 August 1930. 216. e.g. BVZ, 326, 13 July 1930: ‘Weder national, noch sozialistisch . . . Die Wahrheit u¨ ber die Nazis—Ein Sündenregister’; BVZ, 329, 15 July 1930: ‘Schüsse, Totschlag, Messerstecherei’; BVZ, 414, 3 September 1930: ‘Hitlers ‘‘drittes Reich’’: Die Futterkrippe’; BVZ, 422, 7 September 1930: ‘Das nennt sich ‘‘Arbeiter’’-Partei!’ 217. BT, 338, 20 July 1930: ‘Am Kreuzweg’. 218. 12UB, 187, 12 August 1930: ‘Nationalsozialistische Provokationstrupps terrorisieren Berlin’. WaA, 188, 14 August 1930: ‘Blutige Wahlschlacht’; 12UB, 193, 19 August 1930: ‘Nazis rüsten zum Wahlkampf!’


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219. e.g. WaA, 168, 22 July 1930: ‘Industriegelder für den Wahlkampf ’; WaA, 171, 25 July 1930: ‘Der Faschismus’; WaA, 185, 11 August 1930: ‘Hitlers RassenSozialismus’. 220. WaA, 185, 11 August 1930: ‘Goebbels Rieseneinkünfte’; WaA, 189, 15 August 1930: ‘Goebbels Rieseneinkünfte. Goebbels berichtigt—wir berichtigen Dr. Goebbels’; WaA, 193, 20 August 1930: ‘Goebbels Rieseneinkünfte’. 221. Kershaw, Hitler, 346–7. Cf. Goebbels’s diary entries of 17 and 24 August 1930, in Reuth, Goebbels Tagebücher, ii. 509–10. 222. See Goebbels’s diary entries of 30 August and 1 September 1930, in Reuth, Goebbels Tagebücher, vol. ii 510–13. 223. 8UA, 201, 29 August 1930: ‘Aufruhr im Hitler-Lager!’; WaA, 202, 30 August 1930: ‘Der Aufstand gegen Goebbels’; T , 203, 1 September 1930: ‘Offener Krieg der SA-Nazis gegen Goebbels’; BVZ, 411, 1 September 1930: ‘Offener KRIEG bei den NAZIS’. 224. WaA, 152, 3 July 1930: ‘Sultan Dr. Goebbels’; WaA, 153, 4 July 1930: ‘Der Hakenkreuzkrieg’; WaA, 156, 8 July 1930: ‘Krise um Hitler’; 12UB, 166, 18 July 1930: ‘Strasser organisiert Saalschutz gegen Goebbels’. 225. Goebbels’s diary entry of 1 September 1930, in Reuth, Goebbels Tagebücher, ii. 513. 226. A, 71, 4 September 1930: ‘Ekelhafte Wahlhetze’ and ‘Vergebens!’ Cf. BM, 210, 3 September 1930: ‘Die Lohnbewegung bei Hitler’; BVZ, 422, 7 September 1930: ‘Aufmarsch’. 227. NA, 201, 29 August 1930: ‘Gerüchte u¨ ber die Nationalsozialisten’; NA, 202, 30 August 1930: ‘Die Nationalsozialisten im Sportpalast’; Montag, 33, 1 September 1930: ‘Ueberfall auf die Hauptgeschäftsstelle der NSDA’; NA, 203, 1 September 1930: ‘Der Zwischenfall bei den Nationalsozialisten’; BLA, 413, 2 September 1930: ‘Einigkeit in der N.S.D.A.’. 228. See the diary entry of the political editor of Mosse’s Berliner Tageblatt, Feder, for 6 September 1930, in Feder, Heute sprach ich mit, 266. 229. T , 206, 4 September 1930: ‘Minister Frick—falscher Doktor?’; BVZ, 419, 5 September 1930: ‘Wo hat Frick seinen ‘‘Dr.’’ gebaut?’; BLA, 419, 5 September 1930: ‘Sie kämpfen mit allen Mitteln’. 230. 8UA, 207, 5 September 1930: ‘Nazis planen Republik-Sturz!’; T , 207, 5 September 1930: ‘Der Umsturz-Plan der Nazis’. 231. BVZ, 416, 4 September 1930: ‘Mit Hämmern und Messern’; 8UA, 206, 4 September 1930: ‘Kölns Nazi-Führer mordet!’; BVZ, 423, 8 September 1930: ‘Nationalsozialistische Mordtat’. 232. 8UA, 207, 5 September 1930: ‘Die Einnahmen der Nazi-Führer’; 8UA, 208, 6 September 1930: ‘Enthüllungen u¨ ber Hitlers Geldgeber’; 8UA, 210, 9 September 1930: ‘Großer Nazi-Korruptionsfall aufgedeckt!’; BVZ, 426, 10 September 1930: ‘Nationaler Verrat der Nazis!’; BVZ, 428, 11 September 1930: ‘Die HakenkreuzKorruption in Gotha’; BVZ, 432, 13 September 1930: ‘Die Nazis von Moskau bezahlt?’ 233. 8UA, 212, 11 September 1930: ‘Charlottenburg Hauptquartier der Nazi-Lehrer!’; BVZ, 430, 12 September 1930: ‘Nazi-Sittlichkeits-Skandal’ and ‘Was ein Nazilehrer wissen will’.

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234. Goebbels’s diary entries of 11 and 12 September 1930, in Reuth, Goebbels Tagebücher, ii. 515–16. 235. A, 73, 11 September 1930: ‘Journaille macht Wahlkampf ’; A, 73, 11 September 1930: ‘Wie die Judenpresse lügt’. 236. e.g. BLA, 432, 13 September 1930: ‘Mit Hugenberg deutschnational!’; BLA, 433, 13 September 1930: ‘Morgen für Liste 2’; BLA, 434, 14 September 1930: ‘Auf zur Wahl! Der einzige Weg. Nur die Deutschnationalen’. 237. NA, 211, 10 September 1930: ‘Wendung nach rechts!’; NA, 213, 12 September 1930: ‘Parole: Rechtswendung!’ 238. NA, 212, 11 September 1930: ‘Die große entschiedene Rechte marschiert. Hitler sprach im Sportpalast’. Cf. NA, 214, 13 September 1930: ‘Der Tag der Abrechnung ist da: Wählt entschieden rechts!’ 239. BM, 217, 11 September 1930: ‘Hütet euch vor falschen Propheten!’ 240. Eksteins, Limits of Reason, 202–3. 241. 8UA, 214, 13 September 1930: ‘Diesmal’; BZaM, 247, 10 September 1930. 242. e.g. BVZ, 434, 14 September 1930: ‘Wählt! Für Frieden und Republik! Gegen Diktatur und Hetzer! Schafft arbeitsfähigen Reichstag!’ Cf. Eksteins, Limits of Reason, 198. 243. For a discussion of circulation figures and election results, see Ch. 1. Election figures calculated from Büsch, Berlin als Hauptstadt, 323. 244. Büsch, Berlin als Hauptstadt, 323; Falter, Wahlen, 44. 245. e.g. 12UB, 216, 15 September 1930: ‘Weit u¨ ber 100 Nationalsozialisten gewählt: die zweitstärkste Partei!’ 246. NA, 217, 17 September 1930: ‘Rede in München’. 247. Detlef Lehnert, Die ‘‘Erfolgsspirale’’ der Ungleichzeitigkeit: Bewertungsmuster der NSDAP–Wahlergebnisse in der Berliner und Wiener Tagespresse (Opladen, 1998), 77–91. 248. e.g. 8UA, 215, 15 September 1930: ‘Nun erst recht!’; 12UB, 216, 15 September 1930: ‘Siegestaumel im Sportpalast’; 8UA, 216, 16 September 1930: ‘Im Engpaß’; NA, 217, 17 September 1930: ‘Das Volk will klare Entscheidung!’; 8UA, 219, 19 September 1930: ‘Tagebuch’. 249. e.g. 8UA, 215, 15 September 1930: ‘Was wird geschehen?’; Montag, 35, 15 September 1930: ‘Hilflose Minderheit des Kabinetts Brüning’; T , 215, 15 September 1930: ‘Wahlschock der Börse.’; BVZ, 438, 17 September 1930: ‘Das Ausland wundert sich’. Cf. Eyck, Weimarer Republik, ii. 354–5. 250. 8UA, 217, 17 September 1930: ‘Reichskanzler sagt: Nicht mit den Nazis!’; NA, 217, 17 September 1930: ‘Hitler u¨ ber seine nächsten Ziele’; T , 217, 17 September 1930: ‘Erklärung Hitlers. ‘‘Nur legal’’ ’; BVZ, 438, 17 September 1930: ‘Hitler wird bürgerlich’. 251. 8UA, 218, 18 September 1930: ‘Ein Geheimbefehl Hitlers!’ and ‘Zunächst Maulwurfsarbeit!’; T , 218, 18 September 1930: ‘Die Nazi-Gerüchte’. 252. BaM, 218, 18 September 1930: ‘Der Schlachtplan Hitlers’. 253. T , 218, 18 September 1930: ‘Die Ausbildung für Straßenkampf ’. 254. NA, 218, 18 September 1930: ‘Phantasien u¨ ber Hitler’; NA, 219, 19 September 1930: ‘Erdichtete Kombinationen der Linkspresse’. 255. See NA, 220, 20 September 1930: ‘Wer trägt die Schuld?’


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256. 8UA, 219, 19 September 1930: ‘Tagebuch’. 257. NA, 220, 20 September 1930: ‘Lügen ausländischer Korrespondenten’. 258. 8UA, 220, 20 September 1930: ‘Regierung erklärt: Keine Putschgefahr!’; NA, 220, 20 September 1930: ‘Preußen und Reichsregierung erklären: Kein Putsch der Nationalsozialisten! Die Panik-Hetze der Linken zusammengebrochen’ and ‘Die Kursstürze in New York’. 259. NA, 220, 20 September 1930: ‘ ‘‘Unverantwortliches Tun’’ ’. Cf. V , 441, 20 September 1930: ‘Weltalarm um Deutschland. Die Wirkung der Putschgerüchte. Sturz der Young-Anleihe’. 260. Quoted in Kershaw, Hitler, 334. 261. Feder’s diary entry of 20 September 1930, in Feder, Heute sprach ich mit, 268. 262. 8UA, 220, 20 September 1930: ‘Trotz des Wahlerfolges der Nazis: Nur keine Nervosität!’ 263. Feder’s diary entry of 24 September 1930, in Feder, Heute sprach ich mit, 268 264. e.g. 8UA, 221, 22 September 1930: ‘Das Ende des Nazi-Studenten’; NA, 222, 23 September 1930: ‘Wessels Mörder schildert die Tat’; 8UA, 223, 24 September 1930: ‘Wessels Braut schildert Alis Mordtat’; NA, 225, 26 September 1930: ‘Das Urteil im Wessel-Prozeß’. 265. See Peter Bucher, Der Reichswehrprozeß. Der Hochverrat der Ulmer Reichswehroffiziere 1929/30 (Boppard, 1967), 15–37. 266. T , 62, 14 March 1930: ‘Verhaftungen in der Reichswehr!’; 8UA, 62, 14 March 1930: ‘Verhaftung von Reichswehr-Offizieren!’; NA, 62, 14 March 1930: ‘Falsche Gerüchte u¨ ber Rechtsputsch-Pläne’. 267. e.g. 8UA, 220, 20 September 1930: ‘Preußenregierung und Reichsregierung’. 268. 8UA, 222, 23 September 1930: ‘Der Hochverrat der Ulmer Offiziere’. Cf. NA, 222, 23 September 1930: ‘Prozeß gegen die nationalsozialistischen Offiziere’. 269. In fact, the reconstruction of the proceedings in Bucher, Reichswehrprozeß, 152–486 is entirely based on press publications. 270. See Wintzer’s complaint about the BZ am Mittag and the 8-Uhr-Abendblatt, on 27 September 1930, in Bucher, Reichswehrprozeß, 352. 271. Bucher, Reichswehrprozeß, 82–3, 192–5. 272. BVZ, 329, 15 July 1930: ‘Sachverständige Hitler-Frick?’ 273. Bucher, Reichswehrprozeß, 83–8, 237–80. 274. See Bucher, Reichswehrprozeß, 255–6, 260–3. 275. See NA, 224, 25 September 1918: ‘Bestrafung der November–Verbrecher’. 276. Bucher, Reichswehrprozeß, 296–8. 277. e.g. 8UA, 224, 25 September 1930: ‘ ‘‘Alles auf legalem Wege!’’ ’; NA, 224, 25 September 1918: ‘Hitler: Nur legale Ziele’. 278. 8UA, 225, 26 September 1918: ‘Nach der großen Theater-Vorstellung: Die Reichswehr und die Nazis’. 279. Goebbels’s diary entry of 26 September 1930, in Reuth, Goebbels Tagebücher, ii. 522. Cf. A, 79, 2 October 1930: ‘Rund um die Rotationsmaschine’. 280. NA, 217, 17 September 1930: ‘Hitler u¨ ber seine nächsten Ziele’. Cf. Kershaw, Hitler, 338. 281. Goebbels’s diary entry of 27 September 1930, in Reuth, Goebbels Tagebücher, ii. 523.

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282. Feder’s diary entry of 6 October 1930, in Feder, Heute sprach ich mit, 272. 283. Feder’s diary entry of 14 October 1930, in Feder, Heute sprach ich mit, 274. 284. e.g. 8UA, 226, 27 September 1930: ‘Streikplan der Kommunisten und Nazis’ and ‘Lasset Herrn Hitler nur so weiter reden—’; 8UA, 227, 29 September 1930: ‘Goebbels wird zwangsweise in Moabit vorgeführt’; 8UA, 228, 30 September 1930: ‘Tragödie eines Verführten: Selbstmord eines Hakenkreuzlers’; 8UA, 233, 6 October 1930: ‘Ausländer macht deutsche Innenpolitik: Hitler hatte nichts bei Brüning zu suchen!’ 285. ‘Rund um die Rotationsmaschine’, for example in A, 81, 9 October 1930; 83, 16 October 1930; 85, 23 October 1930; 87, 30 October 1930. 286. A, 124, 20 December 1930: ‘Maßlos verlogene Pressehetze. Journaille im Großkampf ’. 287. Feder’s diary entry of 13 December 1930, in Feder, Heute sprach ich mit, 278. Cf. Eksteins, Limits of Reason, 225–9. 288. John A. Leopold, Alfred Hugenberg. The Radical Nationalist Campaign against the Weimar Republic (New Haven, 1970), 60. 289. While drawing on Lehnert’s concept of a ‘spiral of success’ (Lehnert, ‘‘Erfolgsspirale’’, 13–18), I argue that he underestimates the importance of the DNVP as a crucial factor in the public perception of the Nazis. 290. Cf. Hermann Balle, ‘Die propagandistische Auseinandersetzung des Nationalsozialismus mit der Weimarer Republik und ihre Bedeutung für den Aufstieg des Nationalsozialismus’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Erlangen, 1963, 199–201; Gerhard Paul, Aufstand der Bilder. Die NS Propaganda vor 1933 (Bonn, 1990), 223. 291. 12UB, 213, 11 September 1930: ‘Hitlerversammlung trotz Alkoholverbots’. 292. Ibid. 293. For the timing of the growth of party membership, see Kershaw, Hitler, 355; for that of the SA, see Richard Bessel, Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism: The Storm Troopers in Eastern Germany, 1925–1934 (New Haven, 1984), 30.

CHAPTER 6 1. Thomas Mergel, Parlamentarische Kultur in der Weimarer Republik: Politische ¨ Kommunikation, symbolische Politik und Offentlichkeit im Reichstag (Düsseldorf, 2002), 179–81; Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (London, 2003), 275–6. 2. There is a massive historiography on Brüning’s deflationary politics. For the debate between Carl-Ludwig Holtfrerich and Knut Borchardt about Brüning’s ‘room for manœuvre’, see Jürgen von Kruedener (ed.), Economic Crisis and Political Collapse: The Weimar Republic 1924–1933 (New York, 1990). For signs of a spontaneous recovery in 1932, see Harold James, The German Slump: Politics and Economics, 1924–1936 (Oxford, 1986), 343–419; for Germany’s balance of payments constraints, see Albrecht Ritschl, Deutschlands Krise und Konjunktur 1924–1934. Binnenkonjunktur, Auslandsverschuldung und Reparationsproblem zwischen Dawes-Plan und Transfersperre (Berlin, 2002). On the strategic significance of the large amount of dollar-denominated commercial debt, see Adam Tooze, Wages


3.

4.

5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18.

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of Destruction. The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (London, 2006), 27–8. This counterfactual argument has elicited some controversy in the past. For a sceptical assessment of Brüning’s longer term plans and a ‘conservative alternative’, see the discussion in Heinrich August Winkler, Der Weg in die Katastrophe. Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republic 1930 bis 1933 (Bonn, 1990), 580–1. Dirk Blasius, Weimars Ende. Bürgerkrieg und Politik 1930–1933 (Göttingen, 2005), emphasizes the importance of ‘civil war’ as the main paradigm of German domestic politics at this time, but his focus is on the Papen and Schleicher governments. Eve Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists? The German Communists and Political Violence 1929–1933 (Cambridge, 1983), 6. For description of political violence as ‘ubiquitous’, see Richard Bessel, Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism: The Storm Troopers in Eastern Germany 1925–1934 (Yale, 1984), 76; Dirk Schumann, Politische Gewalt in der Weimarer Republik 1918–1933. Kampf um die Straße und Furcht vor dem Bürgerkrieg (Essen, 2001), 359. Pamela E. Swett, Neighbors and Enemies. The Culture of Radicalism in Berlin, 1929–1933 (Cambridge, 2004). See the opening remarks of Brüning at Ministerbesprechung of 29 September 1930, in Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde (BArchL), R43 I, 2479, ff. 250–1. Brüning at cabinet meeting of 23 September 1930, in Die Kabinette Brüning I u. II, 434–5. Brüning at cabinet meeting of 9 March 1931, in Die Kabinette Brüning I u. II, 932. Luther at cabinet meeting of 25 September 1930, in Die Kabinette Brüning I u. II, 448. Letter Luther to Brüning, 9 October 1930, in BArchL, R43 I, 2479, ff. 253–4. Curtius at cabinet meeting of 9 December 1930, in Die Kabinette Brüning I u. II, 692. For similar tensions in the sphere of economic policy-making, and the publicity generated by the German Institute for Business Cycle Research, see Adam Tooze, Statistics and the German State, 1900–1945: The Making of Modern Economic Knowledge (New York, 2001), 149–76. See Verhandlungen des Reichstags. IV. Wahlperiode 1928, cccc–xxvii. 4415. Letter Severing to Prussian prime minister Braun, 18 December 1930, and draft of emergency decree, repr. in Gerhard Schulz, Ilse Maurer, and Udo Wengst ¨ Brüning (Düsseldorf, 1977), (eds.), Staat und NSDAP 1930–1932. Quellen zur Ara 175–178; letter state secretary in Reich chancellory Pünder to Reich interior minister Wirth, 27 January 1931, in BArchL, R43 I, 2480, f. 5. See also Die Kabinette Brüning I u. II, i. 842, fn. 1. See the extensive press clipping collection on political violence for January 1931 in the files of the Reich interior ministry, in BArchL, R1501, 20364, ff.5–170. For previous encounters, see Swett, Neighbors and Enemies, 245–6. A, 18, 22 January 1931: ‘Abrechnung mit den Marxisten!’ Cf. Russell Lemmons, Goebbels and Der Angriff (Lexington, 1994), 70. Police report of 24 January 1931 on Friedrichshain Saalschlacht, in BArchL, R1501, 20364, f. 159.

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19. BLA, 39, 23 January 1931: ‘Die Schlägerei am Friedrichshain’; VZ, 38, 23 January 1931: ‘Schwere Krawalle am Friedrichshain’; V , 38, 23 January 1931: ‘Die Saalschlacht am Friedrichshain’. Cf. Goebbels’s diary entries of 24 and 25 January 1931, in Ralf Georg Reuth (ed.), Joseph Goebbels Tagebücher (Munich, 1992), ii. 555. 20. Angriff, 30, 3 February 1931: ‘Volkszorn u¨ ber den Roten’. For Ulbricht’s comment, see Reichstag session of 5 February, in Verhandlungen des Reichstags. V. Wahlperiode 1930, ccccxliv. 444, 684, and Goebbels’s reply, ibid., 690. 21. See minutes of meeting of 4 February 1931, in Die Kabinette Brüning I u. II, i. 842–6. 22. Otto Braun, Von Weimar zu Hitler (Zurich, 1940), 323. For the KPD, see VZ, 411, 11 September 1921: ‘Abgeordnete als ‘‘verantwortliche’’ Redakteure’; KrZ, 458, 30 September 1921: ‘Der Mißbrauch der Immunität’. 23. See Verhandlungen des Reichstags. V. Wahlperiode 1930, ccccxliv. 832, 847. Cf. Braun, Weimar zu Hitler, 324. 24. See minutes of the Reichstag session on 9–10 February 1931, in Verhandlungen des Reichstags. V. Wahlperiode 1930, ccccxliv. 779–855. Cf. Winkler, Weg in die Katastrophe, 288. 25. Reichsgesetzblatt 1931, I, 79–81. For the prior consultations, see Die Kabinette Brüning I u. II, ii. 932–4. 26. VZ, 76, 29 March 1931: ‘Für inneren Frieden’ (postal edition). 27. V , 149, 29 March 1931: ‘Die Notverordnung’. 28. e.g. V , 1, 1 January 1931: ‘Hitlers Bürgerkriegsarmee’. 29. V , 10, 7 January 1931: ‘Der Blutweg ins dritte Reich’. 30. DZ, 12b, 15 January 1931: ‘Kopfpreise auf Faschistenführer! Rote Hetze und ihre Folgen’. 31. e.g. A, 18, 22 January 1931: ‘Hetze zum Bürgerkrieg’; A, 22, 27 January 1931: ‘Blutige Schlacht bei Hamburg. Auftakt zum Bürgerkrieg’. 32. Police report on Nazi rallz in Lübeck, 13 February 1931, in BArchL, R1501, 125791, ff. 293–6. 33. V , 71, 12 February 1931: ‘Der Auszug der Kinder Israel’. 34. ‘Nationalsozialisten!’, in VB, 41, 18 February 1931. 35. V , 149, 29 March 1931: ‘Die Notverordnung’. The same point was made by the liberal VZ, 261, 5 June 1931: ‘Opfer der Mordseuche’. 36. For details on the Stennes crisis, see Peter Longerich, Die braunen Bataillone. Geschichte der SA (Munich, 1989), 109–11. For press coverage, see the newspaper clippings in BArchL, R1501, 125791, ff. 405–13, 476–83. 37. For state authorities’ awareness of a ‘major stirring-up campaign’ planned by the Communits, see letter Haentzschel (Reich interior ministry) to Nachrichtenstellen of the German states, 23 April 1931, in BArchL, R1501, 20648, ff. 252–62. 38. A copy of a circular by the KPD’s central committee with instructions regarding the Stahlhelm rally in Breslau is included in the report of the Berlin political police IA, of 7 August 1931, copy in BArchL, R1501, 20639, ff. 303–7. 39. NA, 125, 2 June 1931: ‘Die kommunistische Mordseuche’. 40. e.g. RF, 115, 3 June 1931: ‘Erwerbslosensturm gegen Notverordnung’; RF, 116, 4 June 1931: ‘Hungersturm auf drei Lebensmittelgeschäfte’; WaA, 127, 4 June


41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

50. 51.

52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

58.

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1931: ‘Hungerschreie in Berlin und im Reich’; RF, 120, 9 June 1931: ‘Ueberall Hungerrevolten’. e.g. DAZ, 248, 4 June 1931: ‘Die planvolle kommunistische Tumult- und Mordpropaganda’; V , 264, 9 June 1931: ‘Kommunistisches Revolutionsspiel’; BBZ, 264, 10 June 1931: ‘Sowjet-Deutschland. Kommunistische Aufwiegeleien in Westdeutschland’; DZ, 135b, 12 June 1931: ‘Tag fuer Tag: Todesopfer der roten Hetze. Die Flamme des Bürgerkriegs’. Memorandum of 11 June 1931, copy in BArchL, RM1501, 20368, f. 89. Letter Severing to district presidents, 17 June 1931, copy in BArchL, R43 I, 251, f. 138. Minutes of meetings of Brüning with leaders of Reichstag parties, 15 June 1931, in Die Kabinette Brüning I u. II, ii. 1207. Barry Eichengreen, Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919–1939 (New York, 1992), 270–3. Cf. Isabel Schnabel, ‘The German Twin Crisis of 1931’, Journal of Economic History, 64 (2004), 822–71. Note the little coverage of political violence in The Times compared to its coverage of the Austrian crisis and Brüning’s reparation initiative. Otto Meynen and Franz Reuter, Die deutsche Zeitung. Wesen und Wertung (Munich, 1928), 125–6. Otto Groth, Die Zeitung. Ein System der Zeitungskunde (Journalistik) (Mannheim, 1928), i. 752. Alfred Schmidt, Publizistik im Dorf (Dresden, 1939), 65–6. For the same view, in anecdotal form, by the Head of the Press Office of the Reich government, see Walter Zechlin, Pressechef bei Ebert und Hindenburg und Kopf. Erlebnisse eines Pressechefs und Diplomaten (Hanover, 1956), 14–15. Meynen, Reuter, Zeitung, 151. e.g. NA, 154, 6 July 1931: ‘Neue Schutzmaßnahmen der Reichsbank’; WaA, 155, 7 July 1931: ‘2 Milliarden Devisenverluste der Reichsbank’; NA, 155, 7 July 1931: ‘3–4 Milliarden Mark wurden Deutschland abgezapft’; WaA, 156, 8 July 1931: ‘Letzte Rettungsversuche vor der Katastrophe’; BM, 163, 10 July 1931: ‘Eine Milliarde für Deutschland’. e.g. BM, 161, 8 July 1931: ‘Zusammenbruch der ‘‘Nordwolle’’ in Bremen: Waghalsige Spekulationen!’; BZaM, 159, 11 July 1931: ‘Der Lahusen-Skandal’. BZaM, 160, 13 July 1931: ‘Reichsgarantie für die Danatbank’; NA, 160, 13 July 1931: ‘Die Folgen der Zahlungseinstellung bei der Danatbank’; WaA, 160, 13 July 1931: ‘Der Zusammenbruch der Danatbank’. AZ, 161, 13 July 1931: ‘Deutschland vor dem Ruin’. BM, 166, 14 July 1931: ‘Krise des Vertrauens, nicht der Währung!’ BM, 166, 14 July 1931: ‘Kritische Tage für Deutschland’. e.g. WaA, 161, 14 July 1931: ‘Alle Banken und Sparkassen für 2 Tage geschlossen’; NA, 163, 16 July 1931: ‘ Das Berliner Postscheckamt wird belagert’, ‘Riesenandrang bei Eröffnung der Berliner Sparkasse’; WaA, 163, 16 July 1931: ‘Massen vor Sparkassen und Banken’;. AZ, 164, 17 July 1931: ‘Der neue Spareransturm auf die wiedereröffnete Sparkasse’. Adolf Stein published his weekly columns in a book every year—his column of 16 July 1931 appeared in Rumpelstilzchen [pseud. for Adolf Stein], Das sowieso (Berlin, 1931), 354.

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59. For Brüning’s criticism of the BZaM, see minutes of cabinet meeting of 17 July 1931, in Die Kabinette Brüning I u. II, ii. 1375. Cf. NA, 159, 11 July 1931: ‘ ‘‘Phantastische und irreführende Zahlen’’ ’. 60. Reichsgesetzblatt 1931, I, 371. 61. BM, 170, 18 July 1931: ‘Die Notverordnung gegen die Presse’. 62. Letter of 18 July 1931, in BArchL, R43 I, 2701a, f. 112. 63. G, 328, 18 July 1931: ‘Neue Notverordnung: Gegen die Ausschreitungen in der Presse’. 64. WaA, 165, 18 July 1931: ‘Es gibt keine Pressefreiheit mehr’. 65. WaA, 165, 18 July 1931: ‘Der Wortlaut’. 66. BT, 335, 18 July 1931: ‘Das Ende der Pressefreiheit’. 67. Wirth’s statements were recorded at length in the diaries of the Mosse editor Ernst Feder, entry for 20 July 1931. Repr. in Ernst Feder, Heute sprach ich mit . . . Tagebücher eines Berliner Publizisten 1926–1932 (Stuttgart, 1971), 300–1. 68. Ibid. 69. MM, 28, 13 July 1931: ‘November 18–August 23–Juli 1931’. 70. Circular of ZK-Org. Department of 13 March 1931, quoted in Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Kommunisten in der Weimarer Republik: Sozialgeschichte einer revolutionären Bewegung (Darmstadt, 1996), 215. 71. See V , 436, 17 September 1931: ‘Kramladen der KPD’. Cf. Arbeiterpolitik, 293, 17 December 1931: ‘Münzenberg-Blätter sind keine kommunistische Zeitungen’. 72. WaA, 156, 8 July 1931: ‘Eine unbestrittene Tatsache und ihre Folgen’; WaA, 164, 17 July 1931: ‘Die Verbotswelle’. 73. WaA, 166, 20 July 1931: ‘Zeitungsverbote vom Wochenende. Noch mit der alten Notverordnung’. 74. WaA, 162, 15 July 1931: ‘Marksturz im Ausland’. 75. WaA, 164, 17 July 1931: ‘Hausse in Lebensmitteln’. 76. Cf. Volker R. Berghahn, Der Stahlhelm. Bund der Frontsoldaten 1918–1935 (Düsseldorf, 1966), 165–80; Winkler, Weg in die Katastrophe, 304–5, 385–9. 77. Both in Oldenburg in May 1931 and in Hamburg in September 1931 the NSDAP increased its share of votes further by over one-third compared to its performance in September 1930: see Jürgen Falter, Thomas Lindenberger, and Siegfried Schumann, Wahlen und Abstimmungen in der Weimarer Republik. Materialien zum Wahlverhalten 1919–1933 (Munich, 1986), 72, 94, 100. 78. Wirsching gives the figure 12,000 for November 1930, in Andreas Wirsching, Vom Weltkrieg zum Buergerkrieg? Politischer Extremismus in Deutschland und Frankreich 1918–1933/39. Berlin und Paris im Vergleich (Munich, 1999), 448–9; in June 1931, according to Goebbels, the membership was a bit over 20,000, see diary entry of 16 June 1931, in Reuth, Tagebücher, vol.II, 601. The SA had 88,000 members in January and 260,000 in December 1931, according to Longerich, Die braunen Bataillone, 111. 79. RF, 146, 23 July 1931: ‘Heraus zum Volksentscheid!’ 80. NA, 183, 8 August 1931: ‘Wieviel Stimmen sind zum Erfolg notwendig?’ 81. Tag, 181, 30 July 1931: ‘Hugenbergs Aufruf zum Volksentscheid’; V , 370, 10 August 1931: ‘Das ist jetzt anders!’


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82. e.g. WaA, 181, 6 August 1931: ‘Die rote Massenbewegung für den 9. August. Großbetriebe für Volksentscheid’; WaA, 183, 8 August 1931: ‘Alles für den Roten Volksentscheid!’ 83. NA, 181, 6 August 1931: ‘Weshalb muß der Preußische Landtag durch Annahme des zum Volksentscheid gestellten Gesetzes am 9. August aufgelöst werden?’ 84. A, 155, 8 August 1931: ‘Hau zu!’ 85. BM, 184, 4 August 1931: ‘Geht nicht hin!’, BM, 185, 5 August 1931: ‘Worum es geht! Nicht stimmen am 9. August!—Laßt die Extremen unter sich’; BM, 189, 9 August 1931: ‘Am Scheideweg. Zerstörung oder Aufbau?’ 86. Winkler, Weg in die Katastrophe, 389. 87. For the activities of Hans Goslar, see Matthias Lau, Pressepolitik als Chance. ¨ Staatliche Offentlichkeitsarbeit in den Ländern der Weimarer Republik (Stuttgart, 2003), particularly 312–15. 88. BM, 187, 7 August 1931: ‘Kundgebung der Preußischen Staatsregierung.’ 89. e.g. BA, 183, 7 August 1931: ‘Nun erst recht an die Wahlurne!’; P, 183, 7 August 191: ‘Geht hin zum Volksentscheid und stimmt mit Ja!’; NA, 182, 7 August 1931: ‘Hindenburgs scharfes Urteil gegen die Preußische Regierung’; WaA, 183, 8 July 1931: ‘Preußenregierung und Faschisten’. 90. Diary entry of 7 August 1931, in Feder, Heute sprach ich mit . . ., 302. 91. See www.gonschior.de/weimar/Preussen/Volksentscheide.html last accessed 15 January 2007. The secondary literature often gives 37,1%, but this was only the preliminary result as announced in most of the daily press on 10 August. 92. BM, 190, 11 August 1931: ‘Der abgeschlagene Ansturm’; BZaM, 184, 10 August 1931: ‘Nein!’; ‘Frankreich atmet auf ’. 93. Against all contemporary evidence, Bracher speaks of a ‘psychological victory’ for those supporting the referendum, Karl Dietrich Bracher, Die Auflösung der Weimarer Republik. Eine Studie zum Problem des Machtverfalls in der Demokratie (Villingen, 1971 edn. [1955] ), 342. 94. See Falter et al., Wahlen und Abstimmungen, 38. 95. In Berlin, less than two-thirds of those voting for one of the supporting parties in September 1930 backed the referendum, see V , 370, 10 August 1931: ‘Berliner Ergebnis’. The Sportpalast in Berlin saw two mass rallies, one by the NSDAP, one by the KPD on subsequent days: WaA, 182, 7 August 1931: ‘Die Massenkundgebung im Sportpalast’; NA, 183, 8 August 1931: ‘Massen-Kundgebung für ein neues Preußen’. Cf. WaA, 183, 8 August 1931: ‘Im Zeichen des Roten Volksentscheids’; WaA, 184, 10 August 1931: ‘Der Rote Volksentscheid in Berlin’. 96. V , 370, 10 August 1931: ‘Das Blutbad am Bülowplatz’; NA, 184, 10 August 1931: ‘Die Kämpfe am Bülowplatz’. 97. The background to the murder was never fully established. My account here follows the balanced presentation in Winkler, Weg in die Katastrophe, 391–2, though I emphasize more strongly the media background of those involved. In October 1993, Erich Mielke, former head of the Stasi in the GDR, was sentenced for the murder of the two police officers. Cf. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 27 October 1993: ‘Mielke wegen Mordes zu sechs Jahren Freiheitsstrafe verurteilt’. 98. For an overview of such attacks, see the list of 23 instances for the period 1 January–15 May 1931, contained in the report of the Berlin police president of 11 June 1931, copy in BArchL, R1501, 20368, ff. 99–101.

284


99. NA, 184, 10 August 1931: ‘Der Meuchelmord an den Schupooffizieren war vorbereitet’. 100. BM, 190, 11 August 1931: ‘Zwei Polizei-Offiziere erschossen’. 101. BM, 196, 18 August 1931: ‘Die Beisetzung der erschossenen Schupo-Offiziere’. 102. Magdeburgische Zeitung, 436, 12 August 1931, quoted in Dirk Schumann, Politische Gewalt in der Weimarer Republik. Kampf um die Straße und Furcht vor dem Bürgerkrieg (Essen, 2001), 336, 340. 103. See minutes of cabinet meeting of 10 August 1931, in Die Kabinette Brüning I u. II, ii. 1549. For the following, see also Winkler, Weg in dieKatastrophe, 392–5. 104. Letter Groener to Wirth, 14 August 1931, in BArchL, R43 I, 2675, f. 146; rep. in Die Kabinette Brüning I u. II, ii. 1562–3. For the memorandum by the Nachrichtensammelstelle of 22 July 1931, see copy in BArchL, R43 I, 2675, ff. 45–140. 105. The survey covered the period April–June 1931 and was circulated in a letter of 29 August 1931, repr. in Die Kabinette Brüning I u. II, ii. 1624–36. 106. For an overview of press coverage in the period August to November 1931, esp. through Berlin papers, see the material collected in BArchL, R1501, 20369, and 20370. 107. See Swett, Neighbors and Enemies, esp. ch. 5; and Schumann, Politische Gewalt. An exception to this was the organized campaign against SA taverns in Berlin in 1931, see Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists, ch. 5. 108. e.g. NA, 195, 22 August 1931: ‘Waffenrazzia bei Kommunisten’; NA, 236, 9 October 1931: ‘Kommunisten-Anschlag auf Dr. Brachts Villa’; T , 262, 9 November 1931: ‘K.D.-Wühlarbeit in der Reichswehr’. 109. Cf. NA, 249, 24 October 1931: ‘Polizei besetzt abermals das Berliner LiebknechtHaus—Grund: Sprengstoff ’. 110. Circular of the KPD’s central committee, 12 September 1931, repr. in Hermann Weber (ed.), Die Generallinie. Rundschreiben des Zentralkomitees der KPD an die Bezirke 1929–1933 (Düsseldorf, 1981), 388–9. 111. WaA, 188, 14 August 1931: ‘Die Provokateurszentrale in der Hedemannstraße’; WaA, 189, 15 August 1931: ‘Geheim-Konferenz der Provokateur-Zentrale. Wie Goebbels Ullstein mit ‘‘Schupomördern’’ versorgt’. 112. WaA, 261, 7 November 1931: ‘SA.-Terror und Abwehrfront’; WaA, 265, 12 November 1931: ‘Nazi-Terror u¨ ber Oranienburg’. 113. See the KPD circular of 12 September 1931, in Weber (ed.), Generallinie, 389. 114. For the significance of biassed media coverage as background for this resolution, see WaA, 266, 13 November 1931: ‘Erklärung der Kommunistischen Partei gegen Einzelterror und Bluttaten’. For calls of a ban of the KPD, see WaA, 263, 10 November 1931: ‘Die Ablenkungs-Offensive. Ueble Hetzereien der bürgerlichen Presse’. Cf. Winkler, Weg in die Katastrophe, 442–5; Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists, 77–9. 115. WaA, 267, 14 November 1931: ‘Vor Groeners Minister-Konferenz. Verbotshetze gegen die KPD’. 116. Der Stahlhelm, 42, 18 October 1931; quoted in Bracher, Auflösung, 365. 117. V , 478, 12 October 1931: ‘Es geht ums Ganze!’ See also Winkler, Weg in die Katastrophe, 432–4.


285

118. WaM, 41, 12 October 1931: ‘Fieberkurven der Politik’. 119. The article can be found in the files of the Prussian interior ministry, see GStA, I. HA, Re77, tit. 4043, 120, f. 301. For Severing’s reception of regular reports on political violence, see Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists, 6–7. 120. V , 486, 16 October 1931: ‘Schutz gegen den Bürgerkrieg! Severing spricht im Landtag u¨ ber die Pläne der Bürgerkriegsparteien’. 121. V , 492, 20 October 1931: ‘Bürgerkrieg in Braunschweig’. See also Winkler, Weg in die Katastrophe, 441–2. 122. V , 491, 20 October 1931: ‘Die Nazi-Unruhen in Braunschweig’. 123. A, 187, 21 October 1931: ‘104 000 in Braunschweig’. For the use of the concept ‘self-defence’ by both KPD and NSDAP, see Wirsching, Vom Weltkrieg zum Bürgerkrieg, 575–6. 124. Tag, 251, 20 October 1931: ‘Der SA.-Aufmarsch in Braunschweig’; NA, 248, 23 October 1931: ‘Verbot aller Aufmärsche?’ 125. e.g. BA, 246, 20 October 1931: ‘Was die Linke meldet . . . beruhte auf freier Erfindung’; BA, 247, 21 October 1931: ‘Die Vorgänge in Braunschweig. Der Garnisonälteste berichtet’; P, 245, 19 October 1931: ‘SA.-Tagung in Braunschweig’; P, 247, 21 October 1931: ‘Die Wahrheit u¨ ber Braunschweig’. 126. See the advertisements for SPD rallies in V , 513, 1 November 1931, and V , 515, 3 November 1931. 127. A, 202, 7 November 1931: ‘Es fielen für Deutschland die Berliner Nationalsozialisten’; WaA, 262, 9 November 1931: ‘Es fielen für den Sozialismus’. 128. V , 528, 10 November 1931: ‘Die Blutsaat geht auf ’; A, 204, 10 November 1931: ‘Zwei Nationalsozialisten von Reichsbanner-Mördern gemeuchelt. Zerfetzt, zerstochen und zertrampelt—Der ‘‘Vorwärts’’ darf weiter hetzen’. 129. V , 533, 13 November 1931: ‘Der Krieg auf den Straßen’. 130. Hindenburg declared that he had ‘followed with great regret [news of] murderous deeds and attacks which happened recently’ and that he had instructed Groener to ‘devote particular attention to the fight against such incidents’. This statement received triumphant acclaim in the Nazi press, see WaA, 267, 14 November 1931: ‘Vor Groeners Minister-Konferenz’. 131. Letter Hitler to Groener, 14 November 1931, reprinted in Schulz et al. (eds.), Staat und NSDAP, 213–15, here 215. 132. V , 491, 20 October 1931: ‘Groener u¨ ber seine Aufgabe. Erklärung gegen den politischen Straßenterror.’ See also VZ, 472, 20 October 1931, article reprinted in Herbert Michaelis and Ernst Schraepler (eds.), Ursachen und Folgen. Vom deutschen Zusammenbruch 1918 und 1945 bis zur staatlichen Neuordnung Deutschlands in der Gegenwart, Vol.8, Die Weimarer Republik. Das Ende des parlamentarischen Systems. Brüning—Papen—Schleicher 1930–1933 (Berlin, 1963), 317–19. 133. e.g. T , 267, 14 November 1931: ‘Gegen Raub und Strassen-Terror’; BZaM, 267, 14 November 1931: ‘Ministerrat gegen Terror’; 8UA, 267, 14 November 1931: ‘Kommunisten-Partei wird nicht verboten’. 134. V , 540, 17 November 1931: ‘Ehrenliste der Unschuldslämmer. Material für die Ministerkonferenz’. 135. Groener’s opening speech at the meeting of interior ministers in the Reich interior ministry, 17 November 1931, repr. in Schulz et al. (eds.), Staat und NSDAP, 216–19, here 218.

286


136. See notes on meeting of interior ministers of 17 November 1931, repr. in Schulz et al. (eds.), Staat und NSDAP, 223–4. 137. Ibid., 226. 138. e.g. T , 269, 17 November 1931: ‘Groeners Kampf gegen die Mordseuche’; NA, 269, 17 November 1931: ‘Groener fordert Polizeimassnahmen gegen die Mord- und Terrorhetze’ and ‘SPD. will Brüning unter Druck setzen’; V , 541, 18 November 1931: ‘Gegen Terror und Mordhetze’. 139. e.g. T , 269, 17 November 1931: ‘K.D.-Propaganda und Reichswehr. HitlerMaterial als Beratungsstoff ’; NA, 269, 17 November 1931: ‘Die Polizei-Minister beraten. Untersuchung der Denkschriften, die Hitler dem Innenminister u¨ berreicht hat’. 140. V , 545, 20 November 1931: ‘Die Totenliste’. See also Johannes Hürter, Wilhelm Groener. Reichswehrminister am Ende der Weimarer Republik (1928–1932) (Munich, 1993), 316–17. 141. Heinrich Brüning, Memoiren 1918–1934 (Stuttgart, 1970), 460–1; Hürter, Groener, 279, 311, 316; Winkler, Weg in die Katastrohpe, 449–51. 142. Bracher, Auflösung, 381–2; Winkler, Weg in die Katastrophe, 448. 143. WaA, 276, 26 November 1931: ‘Todesstrafe! Todesstrafe! Todesstrafe! Das Reich des Blutgerichts’; T , 276, 26 November 1931: ‘Hessens Naziführer wollten putschen. Eine Blut-Diktatur sollte errichtet werden’; 8UA, 276, 26 November 1931: ‘Nazi-Hochverrat erwiesen’. 144. e.g. NA, 276, 26 November 1931: ‘Die Wahrheit u¨ ber das hessische ‘‘Dokument’’ der Nationalsozialisten’. 145. Brüning, Memoiren, 463–5; Winkler, Weg in die Katastrophe, 448–51. 146. The Times, 5 December 1931, 10: ‘Herr Hitler’s Policy. ‘‘Threshold of Power’’ ’. 147. T , 284, 5 December 1931: ‘Hitler-Interview zwingt Regierung’; BZaM, 284, 5 December 1931: ‘Hitler drängt sich in die Außenpolitik. ‘‘An der Schwelle der Macht’’ ’; 8UA, 284, 5 December 1931: ‘-die Regierung aber schweigt!’ 148. Winkler, Weg in die Katastrophe, 453–4. 149. T , 290, 12 December 1931: ‘Hitlers gescheiterte Amerika-Rede’; 8UA, 290, 12 December 1931: ‘Das Rundfunk-Verbot für Hitler’. Cf. Brüning, Memoiren, 468; Winkler, Weg in die Katastrophe, 477–8. 150. Brüning in cabinet meeting of 4 November 1931, in Die Kabinette Brüning I u. II, Vol. 3, 1903–1904. Cf. cabinet meetings of 5 and 16 November 1931, and 3 December 1931, in Die Kabinette Brüning I u. II, Vol. 3, 1917, 1969, 2043. 151. See letter to Brüning, 12 November 1931, regarding ‘Käuferstreik durch falsche Pressemeldungen’, in BArchL, R43 I, 2480, ff. 95–7. For a discussion of this complaint in the inofficial daily press conference in Berlin on 16 November 1931, see BArchL, R43 I, 2480, ff. 101–2. ¨ 152. ‘Brüning in der Dunkelkammer—Die Angst vor der Offentlichkeit’, in Demokratischer Zeitungsdienst, quoted in Der Deutsche, 270, 22 November 1931: ‘Zu diskret’. For a similar critique, see letter of the publisher of the Hannoverscher Kurier, Walther Jänecke, to Brüning’s secretary of state, Hermann Pünder, 11 November 1931, in BArchK, N1005 Pünder, 180, f. 94. 153. See letter Hans Schäffer to Brüning, 14 November 1931, repr. in Gerhard Schulz, Ilse Maurer, and Udo Wengst (eds.), Politik und Wirtschaft in der Krise 1930–1932.


154. 155. 156. 157. 158. 159. 160. 161. 162.

163. 164. 165. 166. 167. 168. 169.

170. 171. 172. 173.

174.

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¨ Brüning (Düsseldorf, 1980), ii. 1097–8. Cf. Eksteins, Limits of Quellen zur Ara Reason, 234. Letter of the head of the Reich press office, Walter Zechlin, to Schäffer, 17 November, in BArchK, N1005 Pünder, 180, ff. 101–2. Eksteins, Limits of Reason, 147–53, 180–93, 232–3. See the first two pages of 8UA, 284, 5 December 1931. Circular of 8 December 1931, signed by Dr Wolf, Ullstein Zeitungen-Zentralbüro, copy in BArchL, N2193 Carl Misch, 13, ff. 70–1. Elke Suhr, Carl von Ossietzky. Eine Biographie (Cologne, 1988), 162–8. See also 8UA, 273, 23 November 1931: ‘Empörendes Urteil im Weltbühne-Prozess’; WaA, 274, 24 November 1931: ‘Der Fall Ossietzky. Geheimnisse’. See VB, 177, 27/28 July 1930: ‘Finanz-Bolschewisten’; Eksteins, Limits of Reason, 235–7. BZaM, 283, 4 December 1931: ‘Hitlers braune legale Armee’; BZaM, 284, 5 December 1931: ‘Hitler drängt sich in die Außenpolitik’. Ullstein circular to all leading editors and managing directors, 12 December 1931, copy in in BArchL, N2193 Carl Misch, 13, ff. 106–7. BZaM, 291, 14 December 1931: ‘Hitler organisiert ein Fliegerkorps’; T , 291, 14 December 1931: ‘Wozu braucht Hitler Flugzeuge? Seine Organisation der S.A.-Flieger’. Cf. NA, 291, 14 December 1931: ‘Hitler hat keine Flugzeuge bestellt’. Letter Groener of 16 December 1931, in BArchL, R43 I, 2701a, f. 306. WaA, 293, 16 December 1931: ‘Krach bei den Ullstein’. Die Weltbühne, 28, 5 January 1932, 3–5, quoted in Eksteins, Limits of Reason, 237. Letter Fritz Stein to Brüning, 19 December 1931, in BArchL, R43 I, 2480, f. 106, quoted in Eksteins, Limits of Reason, 236. Ullstein circular of 18 December 1931, copy in BArchL, N2193, 13, ff. 74–5. Ibid., f. 75. Ibid., f. 74. This passage referred to the case of the ‘postman murderer’ Ernst Reins, which was widely covered in the Berlin tabloid press in mid-December 1931. See T , 290, 12 December 1931: ‘Todes-Strafe gegen Reins beantragt’; WaA, 291, 14 December 1931: ‘Das Todesurteil’. Ekstein, Limits of Reason, 223. Winkler, Weg in die Katastrophe, 485–7; Hürter, Groener, 318–19, 326–7; minutes of conference in Prussian ministry of the interior, 27 February 1932, reprinted in Schulz et al. (eds.), Staat und NSDAP, 282–7, here 283. Harwood L. Childs, ‘Foreign Governments and Politics: The German Presidental Election of 1932’, The American Political Science Review, 26 (1932), 486. e.g. DZ, 28a, 3 February 1932: ‘ ‘‘Ullstein will Hindenburg’’ ’; DZ, 36a, 12 February 1932: ‘Niemals für den Kandidaten der Linken’; DZ, 38b, 15 February 1932: ‘Kandidat des Weimarer Systems’; A, 35, 16 February 1932: ‘Der Kandidat der Sozialdemokratie’. Hindenburg’s declaration of 15 February 1932, repr. in Die Kabinette Brüning I u. II, iii. 2295. See also his letter to Oldenburg-Januschau, 17 February 1932, in which he explicitly mentions attacks on him in the nationalist press, reprinted in Vogelsang, Reichswehr, 442.

288


175. Letter of state secretary, Franz Kempner, to Hindenburg’s state secretary, Otto Meissner, 16 February 1932, repr. in Die Kabinette Brüning I u. II, iii. 2309, fn. 2. See also Sahm’s refusal to continue serving as chairman after Hindenburg’s acceptance because he was unwilling to act as ‘the spearhead of a Mosse-Ullstein front’, excerpt of memoirs, entry for 13 February 1932, repr. in Vogelsang, Reichswehr, 436, 438. 176. Goebbels’s speech in Reichstag session of 23 February 1932, in Verhandlungen des Reichstags, ccccvi. 2250–1. 177. Winkler, Weg in die Katastrophe, 488. For the press controversy about whether or not Goebbels had intended to insult Hindenburg, see NA, 46, 24 February 1932: ‘Zwei Erklärungen Groeners’. Cf. Goebbels’s declaration in the subsequent Reichstag session on 25 February 1932, in Verhandlungen des Reichstags, ccccvi. 2346–7. 178. Letter Hindenburg to Friedrich von Berg, 25 February 1932, reprinted in Michaelis and Schraepler (eds.), Ursachen und Folgen, 401–5, here 403. Cf. Bracher, Auflösung, 399–403. 179. Winkler, Weg in die Katastrophe, 516–17. 180. See the guidelines on ‘Election propaganda’ from mid-February 1932, repr. in Die Kabinette Brüning I u. II, iii. 2310. 181. Goebbels diary entry for 5 April 1932, in Reuth, Tagebücher, ii. 640. Cf. Gerhard Paul, ‘Krieg der Symbole. Formen und Inhalte des symbolpublizistischen Bürgerkrieges 1932’, in Diethart Kerbs and Henrick Stahr (eds.), Berlin 1932. Das letzte Jahr der Weimarer Republik (Berlin, 1992), 27. 182. See photo 00060013 in the Ullstein photo archive, online at www.ullsteinbild.de last accessed 12 December 2006. The slogan also accompanied a poster showing Hindenburg behind two shaking hands, reproduced in Paul, ‘Krieg der Symbole’, 32. 183. For demonstrators carrying placards calling to ‘Terminate sedition!’, see Paul, ‘Krieg der Symbole’, 28. 184. For a photo of a advertisement pillar sporting the ‘Volksverhetzung’ poster, see Paul, ‘Krieg der Symbole’, 32. The ‘Selbstzerfleischung’ poster is in the poster collection of the German Historical Museum, Berlin, P 63/219, online at www.dhm.de/lemo/html/weimar/verfassung/praesiwahl32/index.html last accessed 12 December 2006. 185. Goebbels in Reichstag session of 23 February 1932, in Verhandlungen des Reichstags, ccccvi. 2246–9. 186. Letter Otto Braun to Brüning, 4 March 1932, reprinted in Schulz et al. (eds.), Staat und NSDAP, 287–8. 187. Thilo Vogelsang, Reichswehr, Staat und NSDA Beiträge zur deutschen Geschichte 1930–1932 (Stuttgart, 1962), 162–4; and Winkler, Weg in die Katastrophe, 522–4. Letter Groener to Severing, 8 March 1932, repr. in Schulz et al. (eds.), Staat und NSDAP, 299, esp. fn. 6. 188. Letter Held to Brüning, 15 March 1932, repr. in Die Kabinette Brüning I u. II, iii. 2368. 189. WaA, 80, 6 April 1932: ‘Die SA. rüstet weiter’; V , 160, 6 April 1932: ‘Dokumente des Hochverrats’; BT, 162, 6 April 1932: ‘Zum Bürgerkrieg gerüstet’. For Groener’s position on the SA, and the Länder pressure for a ban, see Vogelsang, Reichswehr, 163–8; Hürter, Groener, 332–40; Winkler, Weg in die Katastrophe, 523–4.


289

190. Letter Groener to Brüning, 10 April 1932, repr. in Die Kabinette Brüning I u. II, iii 2426. See also the memorandum by Brüning’s secretary of state, Pünder, on a call received by General Schleicher on 8 April 1932, quoted in Vogelsang, Reichswehr, 169. 191. Repr. in Michaelis and Schraepler (eds.), Ursachen und Folgen, 458–9. 192. NA, 83, 9 April 1932: ‘Sieht der Feldmarschall auch diese Bilder?’ and ‘Die letzten Stunden’. 193. Quoted in Zechlin, Pressechef, 119. Electoral studies have shown this to be an adequate summary of Hindenburg’s electoral support, see Jürgen Falter, ‘The Two Hindenburg Elections of 1925 and 1932: A Total Reversal of Voter Coalitions’, Central European History, 23 (1990), 225–41. 194. NA, 84, 11 April 1932: ‘Kundgebung Hindenburgs’. 195. According to memorandum by Groener, 12 April 1932, in Vogelsang, Reichswehr, 453. 196. On his meeting with Hilferding, see Brüning, Memoiren, 544. 197. Official justification of SA ban on 13 April 1932, repr. in Michaelis and Schraepler (eds.), Ursachen und Folgen, 459. For the difficulty of convincing Hindenburg, see Brüning, Memoiren, 541–4; and Hindenburg’s characterization in Theodor Eschenburg, ‘Die Rolle der Persönlichkeit in der Krise der Weimarer Republik’, in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 9 (1961), 3–7, 18–20. 198. DZ, 87a, 14 April 1932: ‘Der letzte Schlag des Systems’. 199. BBZ, 173, 14 April 1932: ‘Reichsaktion gegen die Nationalsozialisten’. 200. WaA, 84, 11 April 1932: ‘Kommt SA.- und Reichsbanner-Verbot?’; WaA, 85, 12 April 1932: ‘Um eine Hitler-Koalition’. 201. NA, 86, 13 April 1932: ‘Die Regierung sei in letzter Minute eindringlich gewarnt! Auffassung der Reichsregierung keineswegs einheitlich’. 202. e.g. DAZ, 173, 14 April 1932: ‘Der Staat steht links’; NA, 87, 14 April 1932: ‘Natürlich Jubel bei der Linken!’ 203. BBZ, 175, 15 April 1932: ‘Die sozialdemokratische Privatarmee’ and ‘Der Skandal von Langewiesen’; Tag, 91, 15 April 1932: ‘Reichsbanner—Hilfspolizei gegen SA’ and ‘Und die ‘‘Eiserne Front’’, Herr Reichspräsident?’; DZ, 88a, 15 April 1932: ‘Bewaffnetes Reichsbanner bei der Polizei-Aktion’; DZ, 23, 16 April 1932: ‘Die Privatarmee der SPD’; KrZtg, 104, 15 April 1932: ‘Der neue Schlag’; NA, 88, 15 April 1932: ‘So sieht die ‘‘legale’’ Linke aus’ and ‘Bürgermeister von Langewiesen redet sich heraus’. See also the newspaper clipping collection in the Reichswehr ministry files, in BArchL, R1501, 126032. 204. See Groener’s report on the events which led to his resignation, repr. in Vogelsang, Reichswehr, document 22, 454–5. According to Brüning, allegations were leaked by Reichswehr circles to newspapers to produce articles which could then be presented to Hindenburg as ‘evidence’, see Brüning, Memoiren, 546–7. 205. For Hindenburg’s reliance on the Kreuz-Zeitung, see Stresemann’s experience, in Anthony Nicholls, Weimar and the Rise of Hitler (London, 1991 edn.), 101. For initiatives triggered by Kreuz-Zeitung articles, see letter Otto Meissner to Brüning, 10 March 1931, with the request to investigate a Kreuz-Zeitung report on the Deutsche Friedensgesellschaft, and reply of 19 April 1931, in BArchL, R43 I, 557, ff. 308–12.

290


206. Vogelsang, Reichswehr, 177, 454; Eschenburg, ‘Persönlichkeit’, 19. For press coverage of such right-wing protests with Hindenburg, see NA, 87, 14 April 1932: ‘Protest bei Hindenburg’. In his memoirs, Brüning claimed that the material sent to Groener by Hindenburg consisted of various newspaper clippings from the right-wing Berliner Börsenzeitung and Deutsche Zeitung, see Brüning, Memoiren, 446. 207. See letter Otto Meissner to Brüning, 19 December 1930, and reply of 10 January 1931, in BArchL, R43 I, 2701, ff. 270–81; letter Reinhold Quaatz to Brüning of 29 October 1931, with a list of attacks on Stahlhelm members, and his subsequent complaint in a letter to Hindenburg, 27 November 1931, in BArchL, R43 I, 2701a, ff. 250–2, 290–1. 208. NA, 89, 16 April 1932: ‘Hindenburg fordert Untersuchung u¨ ber Auflösung des ‘‘Reichsbanners’’ ’. 209. See Karl Rohe, Das Reichsbanner Schwarz Rot Gold. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und Struktur der politischen Kampfverbände zur Zeit der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf, 1966), 422. Cf. letter Groener to former Crown Prince Wilhelm, 22 April 1932, repr. in Michaelis and Schraepler (eds.), Ursachen und Folgen, 463–4. For rightwing criticism, see NA, 89, 16 April 1932: ‘Proteste gegen die versuchte Tarnung des ‘‘Reichsbanners’’ ’. 210. See letter Hindenburg to Groener, 22 April 1932, and reply Groener to Hindenburg, 22 April 1932, repr. in Schulz et al. (eds), Politik und Wirtschaft in der Krise, 1402–3. See also Vogelsang, Reichswehr, 179. 211. See undated notes for Hindenburg on meeting with Groener on 26 April 1932, and the official communiqué of that same day, repr. in Schulz et al. (eds.), Politik und Wirtschaft in der Krise, 1413–14. 212. NA, 94, 22 April 1932: ‘ ‘‘Reichsbanner’’ siegt. Groener gibt nicht nach’. 213. See Groener speech in Reichstag, 10 May 1932, in Verhandlungen des Reichstags, ccccvi. 2548, 2546. 214. Ibid., 2548–50. 215. Brüning, Memoiren, 587. For positive press coverage of Groener’s speech, see BT, 221, 11 May 1932: ‘In den Fesseln der Demagogie’; VZ, 225, 11 May 1932: ‘Deutliche Sprache’. On the negative reception by some of those present, see the diary entries of Brüning’s state secretary, Pünder, of 10 and 11 May 1932, in Hermann Pünder, Politik in der Reichskanzlei. Aufzeichnungen aus den Jahren 1929–1932, ed. by Thilo Vogelsang (Stutgart, 1961), 120–1. 216. For reports on the generals’ complaints, see WaA, 111, 13 May 1932: ‘Generäle gegen Groener’. For Hindenburg’s reaction, see memorandum by the office of the Reich president on the development of the crisis and resignation of the Brüning government, 10 June 1932, reprinted in Vogelsang, Reichswehr, 462–3, and 190–1. Cf. Bracher, Auflösung, 435–7; Hürter, Groener, 348–50; Winkler, Weg in die Katastrophe, 562–5. 217. See his memoirs, in which he describes himself as ‘politically already finished’ in mid-May 1932, Brüning, Memoiren, 588. This view is shared by Winkler, Weg in die Katastrophe, 576.


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218. For Brüning’s complaints about the sensationalist coverage of the cabinet crisis, see Pünder’s memo for the press conference of 18 May 1932, repr. in Die Kabinette Brüning I u. II, iii. 2534–5. 219. BBZ, 245, 28 May 1932: ‘ ‘‘Vollendeter Bolschewismus’’ ’; Tag, 129, 29 May 1932: ‘Nationale Freiheit, Herr Reichspräsident’. For a discussion of agrarian lobbying at Neudeck, see Bracher, Auflösung, 449–55; and Winkler, Weg in die Katastrophe, 570–3. 220. See letter Hindenburg to Oldenburg-Januschau, 22 February 1932, repr. in Vogelsang, Reichswehr, 443–4. 221. See diary entry of 29 May 1932, repr. in Pünder, Politik, 128. 222. e.g. 8UA, 121, 26 May 1932: ‘Verschwörung gegen Brüning’; 122, 27 May 1932: ‘Hindenburg hält zu Brüning!’; 123, 28 May 1932: ‘Morgen Entscheidungstag’. 223. Nicholls, Weimar, 101. 224. e.g. P, 166, 18 July 1932: ‘Warum das Zaudern?’ 225. Letter Elisabeth Gebensleben-von Alten to Irmgard Brester-Gebensleben, Brunswick, 22 June 1932, in Hedda Kahlshoven (ed.), Ich denk so viel an Euch. Ein deutsch-holländischer Briefwechsel 1920–1949 (Munich, 1995), 145–6. 226. V , 322, 11 July 1932: ‘Bürgerkrieg in Permanenz’. 227. See Leon Schirmann, Altonaer Blutsonntag 17. Juli 1932: Dichtung und Wahrheit (Hamburg, 1994). 228. NA, 168, 20 July 1932: ‘Begründung der Verordnung’. For a summary and discussion of the so-called ‘Preußenschlag’ see Winkler, Weg in die Katastrophe, 646–80. 229. See Preußen contra Reich vor dem Staatsgerichtshof. Stenogrammbericht der Verhaldungen vor dem Staatsgerichtshof in Leipzig vom 10. bis 14. und vom 17. Oktober 1932, ed. Arnold Brecht (Berlin, 1933); and the analysis in Blasius, Weimars Ende, 108–22. 230. Albert Grzesinski, Im Kampf um die deutsche Republik. Erinnerungen eines Sozialdemokraten, ed. Eberhard Kolb (Munich, 2001), 282. 231. P, 169, 21 July 1932: ‘Historischer Tag! Endlich Schicksalswende in Preußen’. 232. Quoted in Blasius, Weimars Ende, 177. 233. See Marie Jahoda, Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Hans Zeisl, Die Arbeitslosen von Marienthal. Ein soziographischer Versuch u¨ ber die Auswirkungen langandauernder Arbeitslosigkeit (Leipzig, 1933). 234. Quoted in Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists, 151. See also Swett, Neighbors and Enemies, 255. 235. Longerich, Die braunen Bataillone, 111, 159. 236. V , 335, 21 July 1931: ‘Die Presse-Verordnung’. 237. Kurt Koszyk, Deutsche Presse 1914–1945. Geschichte der deutschen Presse Teil III (Berlin, 1972), 328. 238. Dorothy von Moltke, Ein Leben in Deutschland. Briefe aus Kreisau und Berlin 1907–1934 (Munich, 1999), 205. 239. Schumann, Politische Gewalt, 321, 328; Richard Bessel, ‘Politische Gewalt und die Krise der Weimarer Republik’, in Lutz Niethammer (ed.), Bürgerliche Gesellschaft in

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240. 241. 242. 243.

244. 245.

Notes to pages 201–205 Deutschland. Historische Einblicke, Fragen, Perspektiven (Frankfurt am Main, 1990), 389. For gang homicides in LA County, see the research by Alex Alonso, and statistical material posted at www.streetgangs.com last accessed 14 December 2006. Letter to Irmgard Brester-Gebensleben to Elisabeth Gebensleben-von Alten, Utrecht, 2 July 1932, in Kahlshoven (ed.), Briefwechsel, 146. Letter Gesamtverband Deutscher Metallgiessereien to Brüning, 12 June 1931, in BArchL, R43 I, 2701a, f. 89. Blasius, Weimars Ende, 12–13, 35. Letter Elisabeth Gebensleben-von Alten to Irmgard Brester-Gebensleben, Brunswick, 22 April 1932, in Kahlshoven (ed.), Briefwechsel, 143. According to Hugenberg’s Nachtausgabe, the Prussian election campaign was dominated by the conflict between Groener and Hindenburg over the adequate treatment of the republican Reichsbanner, see NA, 91, 19 April 1932: ‘Neue Lügen im Wahlkampf ’. DAZ, 523/524, 13 November 1931: ‘Unsere Meinung’. Winkler, Weg in die Katastrophe, 765–77. CHAPTER 7

1. Rudolf Kircher, Powers and Pillars (London, 1928), 295, quoted in Modris Eksteins, The Limits of Reason. The German Democratic Press and the Collapse of Weimar Democracy (Oxford, 1975), 71. 2. Ullstein Verlag, Der Verlag Ullstein zum Welt-Reklame-Kongress 1929, 58. 3. Alfred Schmidt, Publizistik im Dorf (Dresden, 1939), 92. 4. Bernhard Guttmann, ‘Die Presse im demokratischen Staate’, DP, 22–3 (1927), 263–4. 5. For this description of the purpose of the Hugenberg press empire, see the comment by the Hugenberg confidant Ludwig Bernhard, in idem., Der ‘Hugenberg-Konzern’. Psychologie und Technik einer Grossorganisation der Presse (Berlin, 1928), 109. 6. See Hildegard Kriegk, ‘Die politische Führung der Berliner Boulevardpresse’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Berlin, 1941, 19–20. 7. V , 335, 21 July 1931: ‘Die Presse-Verordnung’. 8. Letter Max Osborn to Carl Misch, 20 December 1928, BArchL, N2193 Misch, Nr. 13, f. 121. For Franz Ullstein, see Eksteins, Limits of Reason, 206. 9. Karl Bücher, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Zeitungskunde ( Tubingen, 1926), 53–4. 10. Some of them survived in BArch K, N1005 Pünder, Nr. 26 (1925), Nr. 27 (192), Nr. 28 (1927), Nr. 29 (1928), Nr. 30 (1929–30), Nr. 31 (1931–2). 11. Letter Pünder to Luther, 27 March 1925, BAK, N1005 Pünder, Nr. 26, ff. 23–4. 12. The same is true of today’s politicians: J. David Kennamer (ed.), Public Opinion, the Press, and Public Policy. An Introduction (Westpoint, Conn., 1992) 2, 105. 13. Goebbels’s diary entry for 2 November 1932, in Reuth, Goebbels Tagebücher, ii. 708. 14. Koszyk, Deutsche Presse 1914–1945, 278. 15. Newspaper clipping from V , 22 April 1926: ‘Otto Braun gegen die ‘‘Kreuzzeitung’’ ’, GStAPK, VI. Hauptabteilung, Nachlass Braun, E, Nr. 5, unpaginated. 16. Newspaper clippings make up a significant part of Otto Braun’s private papers. See GStAPK, NL Braun, A, Nr. 22 as well as parcels D1 to D5 and E. 17. Private papers of Wilhelm Marx, in Stadtarchiv Köln.


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18. See the collection of caricatures in BArch K, N1231 Hugenberg, Nr. 146; GStAPK, NL Braun, D4, Nr. 74. See also Goebbels’s diary entry of 22 September 1929, in Reuth, Goebbels Tagebücher, i. 409. 19. Valid for this period, although based on late twentieth-century politics: Hans Mathias Kepplinger, Die Demontage der Politik in der Informationsgesellschaft (Freiburg and Munich, 1998), 145–6. 20. Apart from the examples given in this book, see, e.g., many of the sources given in Karl Dietrich Bracher, Erich Matthias and Rudolf Morsey (eds.), Linksliberalismus in der Weimarer Republik. Quellen zur Geschichte des Parlamentarismus und der politischen Parteien (Düsseldorf, 1980). 21. See Kepplinger’s discussion of ‘reciprocal effects’, in Kepplinger, Demontage der Politik, 146–50. See also W. Phillips Davison, ‘The Third Person Effect in Communication’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 47 (1983), 1–15, and Hans-Bernd Brosius and Dirk Engel, ‘ ‘‘Die Medien beeinflussen vielleicht die anderen, aber mich doch nicht’’: Zu den Ursachen des Third-Person-Effekts’, Publizistik, 42 (1997), 325–45. 22. Kepplinger, Demontage der Politik, 151. 23. See also the discussion of the ‘uses and gratifications’ approach in media science, in Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, ‘Wirkung der Massenmedien auf die Meinungsbildung’, in Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, Winfried Schulze, and Jürgen Wilke (eds.), Das Fischer-Lexikon Publizistik Massenkommunikation (Frankfurt am Main, 2000 edn.), 534–8. 24. Kepplinger, Demontage der Politik, 151–2. 25. Rudolf Morsey (ed.), Josef Hofmann. Journalist in Republik, Diktatur und Besatzungszeit. Erinnerungen 1916–1947 (Mainz, 1977), 52. 26. Quoted in Kurt Koszyk, Zwischen Kaiserreich und Diktatur. Die sozialdemokratische Presse von 1914 bis 1933 (Heidelberg, 1958), 183. 27. Braun, Weimar zu Hitler, 297. 28. Leo Wegener, quoted in Dankwart Guratzsch, Macht durch Organisation. Die Grundlegung des Hugenbergschen Presseimperiums (Düsseldorf, 1974), 342. 29. See Paul Loebe, ‘Parlament und Presse’, DP, 20 (1925), 4; Josef Buchhorn, ‘Parlament und Presse’, DP, 21 (1926), 19; ‘Um die Parlamentsberichterstattung’, Zeitungs-Verlag, 17 (1927), 823–4. 30. The image used by Tucholsky does not translate very well: ‘Ich weiß sehr gut, daß im Reichstag Reden zum Fenster hinaus gehalten werden—aber das Fenster ist ja verschlossen!’, in Weltbühne, 49, 2 December 1930: ‘Der Reichstagsbericht’. 31. e.g. Bernhard L. Cohen, The Public’s Impact on Foreign Policy (Boston, 1973); Donna Leff, David L. Protess and Stephen C. Brooks, ‘Crusading Journalism: Changing Public Attitudes and Policy Making Agendas’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 50 (1986), 300–15; David Pritchard, and Dan Berkowitz, ‘The Limits of Agenda-Setting: The Press and Political Responses to Crime in the United States, 1950–1980’, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 5 (1993), 86–91. 32. R. Lotz, ‘Wie machen wir den Parlamentsbericht wieder populär?’, DP, 23 (1928), 281. 33. Michael Stürmer, ‘Parliamentary government in Weimar Germany, 1924–1928’, in Anthony J. Nicholls and Erich Matthias (eds.), German Democracy and the

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34.

35. 36. 37. 38.

39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44.

45.

46. 47. 48. 49.

Notes to pages 207–212 Triumph of Hitler: Essays in Recent German History (London, 1971), 59–77, here 62. e.g. Rudolf Pörtner (ed.), Alltag in der Weimarer Republik. Erinnerungen an eine unruhige Zeit (Düsseldorf, 1990); Rolf Italiaander (ed.), Wir erlebten das Ende der Weimarer Republik. Zeitgenossen berichten (Düsseldorf, 1982); Hedda Kalshoven (ed.), Ich denk so viel an Euch. Ein deutsch-holländischer Briefwechsel 1920–1949 (Munich, 1995). Paul Fechter, An der Wende der Zeit. Menschen und Begegnungen (Gütersloh, 1949), 53. Weltbühne, 8, 23 February 1926: ‘Der Fall Hugenberg’. Paul F. Lazarsfeld, and Elihu Katz, Personal Influence: The Part Played by the People in the Flow of Mass Communication (Glencoe, 1955), 32–3, 220–3. See Wolfram Pyta, Dorfgemeinschaft und Parteipolitik 1918–1933: Die Verschränkung von Milieu und Partei in den protestantischen Landgebieten Deutschlands in der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf, 1996), 453; Shelley Baranwoski, The Sanctity of Rural Life: Nobility, Protestantism, and Nazism in Weimar Prussia (New York, 1995), 4. See also William Sheridan Allen, The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town (New York, 1984 edn. [1965]), 33, 141; Falter, Hitlers Wähler, 326; and Ian Kershaw, Hitler. 1889–1936: Hubris (London, 1998), 321, 694, fn. 307. The combination of influence by local press and local Honoratioren is already emphasized in Rudolf Heberle, Landbevölkerung und Nationalsozialismus (Stuttgart, 1963). Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, The Spiral of Silence. Our Social Skin (Chicago, 1984), 5. Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, ‘The Theory of Public Opinion: The Concept of the Spiral of Silence’, in J. A. Anderson (ed.), Communication Yearbook, 14 (Newbury Park, 1991), 256–87, here 276. See J. Shamir and M. Shamir, The Anatomy of Public Opinion (Ann Arbor, 2000), 11. Paul Löbe, ‘Presse und Parlament. Berichterstattung und Kritik’, DP, 22–3 (1927), 241–2. Jeffrey Verhey, The Spirit of 1914. Militarism, Myth and Mobilization in Germany (Cambridge, 2000), 231–8. See Detlev Peukert, The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity (London, 1991), 242; Hermann Balle, ‘Die propagandistische Auseinandersetzung des Nationalsozialismus mit der Weimarer Republik und ihre Bedeutung für den Aufstieg des Nationalsozialismus’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Erlangen, 1963, 217–19; Kershaw, Hitler, 316, 331–2. Greg Philo, ‘Conclusions on Media Audiences and Message Reception’, in Greg Philo (ed.), Message Received: Glasgow Media Group Research, 1993–1998 (Harlow, 1999), 282–8, here 284. For a general analysis of this process, see Kepplinger, Demontage, 209–12. Arno Franke, ‘Die Presse als meinungsbildende Macht’, Zeitungs-Verlag, 11 (1927), 498. Kepplinger, Demontage, 219. Ferdinand Tönnies, Kritik der o¨ffentlichen Meinung (Berlin, 1922), 94.


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50. Ackermann, quoted in article about a debate on ‘Government and public opinion’ in the Berlin-based Klub der deutschen Presse: VZ, 555, 25 November 1931: ‘Treibt die Regierung Pressepolitik?’ 51. Weltbühne, 8, 23 February 1926: ‘Der Fall Hugenberg’. 52. Emil J. Gumbel, Zwei Jahre Mord (Berlin, 1921), from the 5th edn. under the title Vier Jahre Politischer Mord (Berlin, 1922). See also Winfried Steffani, Die Untersuchungsausschüsse des Preußischen Landtages zur Zeit der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf, 1960), 153–8. 53. Gottfried Zarnow, Gefesselte Justiz. Recht und Willkür im politischen Parteistaat (Munich, 1930). 54. Ludwig, Korruption, 58–63, particularly 60, fn. 77. 55. Ernst Feder, ‘Die Bedeutung der Presse für die Entwicklung des Rechtsgefühls’, DP 22–3 (1927), 304. 56. Henning Grunwald, Political Justice in the Weimar Republic: Party Lawyers, Political Trials and Judicial Culture (Münster, 2007). 57. Quoted in Balle, ‘Propagandistische Auseinandersetzung’, 188. 58. See Gottlieb Jasper, ‘Justiz und Politik in der Weimarer Republik’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 30 (1982), 167–205. 59. Cf. the discussion in Petersen, Zensur, 115–18. 60. Peukert, Weimar Republic, 224. 61. Winkler, Weg in die Katastrophe, 310–11. 62. NA, 187, 13 August 1931: ‘Planmäßige Vorbereitung zum Bürgerkrieg’. 63. See Eve Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists? The German Communists and Political Violence 1929–1933 (Cambridge, 1983), 10–15. 64. Winkler, Weg in die Katastrophe, 274–7. 65. Bernard V. Burke, Ambassador Frederick Sackett and the Collapse of the Weimar Republic, 1930–33. The United States and Hitler’s Rise to Power (Cambridge, 1994), 57. 66. e.g. 8UA, 27, 1 February 1930: ‘Kommunisten-Aufruhrplan vereitelt!’; T , 27, 1 February 1930: ‘Zur Abwehr bereit!’; NA, 27, 1 February 1930: ‘Berliner Polizei Herr der Lage’. 67. Kershaw, Hitler, 333. 68. Walther Jänecke, ‘Partei und Presse’, Zeitungs-Verlag, 24 (1927), 1298. 69. Der Deutsche, 172, 24 July 1932: ‘Im Kampf um die Wahrheit’. 70. Thiess, Freiheit bis Mitternacht, 520. 71. Letter to Irmgard Brester-Gebensleben, 18 October 1931, in Kalshoven (ed.), Briefwechsel, 125–6. 72. Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York, 1965 edn. [1922]). 73. Harms, Zeitung, 46. 74. 8UA, 282, 3 December 1931: ‘Phrasen, die töten’. 75. For the function of stereotyping, see Noelle-Neumann, Spiral of Silence, 151; for the role of the mass media, see Susanne von Bassewitz, Stereotypen und Massenmedien. Zum Deutschlandbild in französischen Tageszeitungen (Wiesbaden, 1990), 3; for the importance of labelling in mediated scandals, see Colin H. Good, Presse und soziale Wirklichkeit (Düsseldorf, 1985), 115.

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76. See also Ben Liebermann, ‘The Meanings and Function of Anti-System Ideology in the Weimar Republic’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 59 (1998), 355–75. 77. Kepplinger, Demontage der Politik, 219–20. 78. Diary entry of 6 January 1931, in Klemperer, Leben sammeln, nicht fragen wozu und warum, ii. 675. 79. See the report in Angermünder Zeitung, 120, 25 May 1925: ‘Der Reichskanzler u¨ ber Bedeutung und Aufgaben der deutschen Presse’. 80. Bernd Buchner, Um nationale und republikanische Identität. Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie und der Kampf um die politischen Symbole in der Weimarer Republik (Bonn, 2001), 109–14. 81. Tim Klein, ‘Grenzen der Zeitungpolemik’, DP, 20 (1925), 34. 82. Paul Löbe, ‘Presse und Parlament. Berichterstattung und Kritik’, DP, 22–3 (1927), 241–2. 83. Emil Dovifat, Der Amerikanische Journalismus (Berlin, 1927), 213. 84. Paul Harms, Die Zeitung von heute. Ihr Wesen und ihr Daseinszweck (Leipzig, 1927), 22. 85. Sammlung der Drucksachen des Preußischen Landtages II. Wahlperiode (1925–1928), Nr. 360, 559. 86. e.g. Otto Braun, ‘Staat und Presse’, DP, 20 (1925), 4–5. 87. The term used is ‘geformte Wahrheit’, in Harms, Zeitung, 32. 88. Gerhard Schultze-Pfaelzer, ‘Moderne propagandistische Politik’, DP, 22–3 (1927), 293. 89. KrZ, 603, 24 Dec 1924: ‘Wie sie schimpfen’. 90. For Tucholsky, see Michael Hepp, Kurt Tucholsky (Reinbek, Hamburg, 1998), 95, 114–16. For Höllering, see VB, 177, 27/28 July 1930: ‘Finanz-Bolschewisten’; for his dismissal see above, Ch. 6. For Heinz Pol, see Modris Eksteins, The Limits of Reason. The German Democratic Press and the Collapse of Weimar Democracy (Oxford, 1975), 234–5. For Ossietzky, see Kurt Koszyk, Deutsche Presse 1914–1945. Geschichte der deutschen Presse Teil III (Berlin, 1972), 286–8. For Caro, see V , 259, 6 June 1929: ‘Die KPD und die Welt am Abend ’, and Eksteins, Limits of Reason, 230, 287. Wronkow is quoted in Michael Groth, The Road to New York: The Emigration of Berlin Journalists, 1933–45 (Munich, 1984), 58. 91. See Klaus Wernecke and Peter Heller, Der vergessene Führer Alfred Hugenberg. Pressemacht und Nationalsozialismus (Hamburg, 1982), 97–101. For Adolf Stein, see letter Hugenberg to Stinnes, 16 February 1921, BArchK, N1231 Hugenberg, Nr. 27, ff. 419–20. 92. Carin Kessemeier, Der Leitartikler Goebbels in den NS-Organen ‘Der Angriff ’ und ‘Das Reich’ (Münster, 1967), 48. 93. Kurt Tucholsky, ‘Redakteure’, in Mary Gerold-Tucholsky and Fritz J. Raddatz (eds.), Kurt Tucholsky. Gesammelte Werke (Reinbeck, Hamburg, 1993 edn.), x. 84. 94. Quoted in Wernecke and Heller, Hugenberg, 101. 95. Letter Wolff to Reichsverband der Deutschen Presse, 12 May 1927, in BArch K, N1207 Wolff, Nr. 18, unpaginated. 96. Jürgen Wilke, Grundzüge der Medien- und Kommunikationsgeschichte. Von den Anfängen bis ins 20. Jahrhundert (Cologne, 2000), 328–33.


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97. For right-wing reactions to the radio campaign in 1929, see BLA, 490, 17 October 1929: ‘Der parteiische Rundfunk. Lügen und Bauernfang’; BLA, 493, 18 October 1929: ‘Der Terror von Amts wegen’; BLA, 505, 25 October 1929: ‘Aufbegehren gegen den Terror’. For Brüning, see Heinrich August Winkler, Der Weg in die Katastrophe. Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik 1930 bis 1933 (Berlin, 1990), 360; WaA, 180, 5 August 1931: ‘Was Brüning im Rundfunk sagte’; WaA, 287, 9 December 1931: ‘Brüning sprach im Rundfunk’. For Groener’s attempts to address the people directly, see Johannes Hürter, Wilhelm Groener. Reichswehrminister am Ende der Weimarer Republik (1928–1932) (Munich, 1993), 317–18. For Papen, see Winkler, Weg in die Katastrophe, 664, 734–5, 771. 98. For radio audiences, see Karl Christian Führer, Wirtschaftsgeschichte des Rundfunks in der Weimarer Republik (Potsdam, 1997), 95. For radio-set ownership, see Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham (eds.), Nazism 1919–1945. A Documentary Reader (Exeter, 1995 edn.), ii. 386; for reception, see Axel Schildt, ‘Das Jahrhundert ¨ der Massenmedien. Ansichten zu einer künftigen Geschichte der Offentlichkeit’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 27 (2001), 177–206, here 197. 99. Jungdo, 38, 14 February 1929, quoting an article of the Kölnische Zeitung. 100. e.g. Kurt Koszyk, Deutsche Presse im 19. Jahrhundert. Geschichte der deutschen Presse Teil II (Berlin, 1966); Klaus Petersen, Zensur in der Weimarer Republik (Stuttgart, 1995). 101. Gotthard Jasper, Der Schutz der Republik. Studien zur Staatlichen Sicherung der Demokratie in der Weimarer Republik 1922–1930 ( Tübingen, 1963), 34–40, 56–7. 102. See the list of press bans for 1927–1931 in GStAPK, I. HA, Re77, Tit. 4043 (Politische Polizei) 30, ff. 38–60; Otto Braun, Von Weimar zu Hitler (Zurich, 1940), 324; for Ebert’s libel suits, see Wolfgang Birkenfeld, ‘Der Rufmord am Reichspräsidenten. Zu Grenzformen des politischen Kampfes gegen die frühe Weimarer Republik 1919–1925’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, 5 (1965), 453, 471. For amnesties, see Jürgen Christoph, Politische Reichsamnestien 1918–1933 (Frankfurt am Main, 1988); for Goebbels, see Dietz Bering, Kampf um Namen. Bernhard Weiß gegen Joseph Goebbels (Stuttgart, 1991). 103. V , 127, 15 March 1928: ‘Gegen frondierende Kreisblätter.’; BT, no.139, 22 March 1928: ‘Die republikfeindlichen Kreisblätter.’ V , 201, 28 April 1928: ‘Gegen deutschnationale Kreisblätter’. 104. V , 436, 17 November 1929: ‘Schützer der Pressefreiheit’; BVZ, 439, 17 September 1929: ‘Kein Staatsgeld für Giftschlangen’. 105. Scherl Geschäftsbericht 1930, BArch K, NL 1231 Hugenberg, Nr. 273, f. 5. 106. The term used by Braun is ‘Lüge- und Schimpffreiheit’, see Braun, Weimar zu Hitler, 324. 107. BT, 321, 10 July 1931: ‘Zeitungsverbote’. 108. BT, 335, 18 July 1931: ‘Das Ende der Pressefreiheit’. 109. For Brüning’s reaction to the Prussian declaration, see Winkler, Weg in die Katastrophe, 385–9. For the emergency decree of 6 October 1931, see Koszyk, Deutsche Presse 1914–1945, 256, 341; for the Ossietzky trial, see Elke Suhr, Carl von Ossietzky. Eine Biographie (Cologne, 1988), 162–8, and Heinrich Hannover, Elisabeth Hannover-Drück, Politische Justiz: 1918–1933 (Bornheim-Merten, 1987

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110.

111. 112. 113. 114.

115.

116. 117.

118. 119. 120. 121. 122.

123.

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Index Abend, Der 35, 39 ADGB (General German Trade Union Congress) 120 advertisements 13, 14, 15, 16, 21–2, 32, 107, 108, 127, 220 Amann, Max 71 Angermünde, Prussia 109–17, 124, 128, 210 Angermünder Zeitung 112, 122, 124, 125–6, 127, 175, 210 Angriff, Der 20, 23, 24, 25, 35–7, 40, 41, 132, 133, 134, 145, 147, 149 anti-Nazi reporting, rebutting 161, 166 anti-Semitic caricatures 157, 160, 164 bans on 200 Brunswick violence 184 ‘civil war’ scare 194 clashes with Communists 153, 154 incitement to violence 171 ‘Jewish’ putsch scare 163, 164 Prussian referendum 179 Wessel murder 153, 154, 155 anti-republicanism 2, 36, 62, 75, 81, 100, 178, 183, 220 anti-Semitism 36, 61, 65, 76–7, 103, 113, 123, 132, 145, 157 anti-socialism 119, 126 Armin, Otto 100 armistice negotiations 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 63 Arnswalder Anzeiger 57 Bacmeister, Walter 78 Baden, Prinz Max von 45, 46 Barmat scandal (1925) 10, 11, 77–80, 89–106, 168, 223 Bauer, Gustav 49, 77, 89, 95, 96, 98, 103 Bergisch-Märkische Zeitung 78, 90 Berlin 6 Barmat scandal and election results 78–9 expropriation referendum 122 Hindenburg’s eightieth birthday celebrations 126–7 Hitler’s first public appearance in 74, 134 May Day (1929) 136–43, 214 munition workers’ strike 82, 83, 85–6 Nazi support 149, 178 police killings 180–1 political radicalism 162 press (1918–32) 13–44, 159, see also individual papers

Spartakus uprising (1919) 19, 47, 137 transport workers’ strike 202 Berlin am Morgen 141, 163 Berliner Börsen-Courier 24 Berliner Börsen-Zeitung 23, 24, 41, 90, 97, 195 Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung (magazine) 14, 81 Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger 5, 14, 15, 19, 24, 30, 31, 32, 56, 58 Barmat scandal 90, 91, 93, 96, 98 Communist uprising rumour 143 DNVP and 151, 161 Ebert trial 84 economic crisis 175 failed putsch 68 financial losses 220 Hitler coverage 64, 66, 68, 69 Italian Fascism 65 Prussian referendum 179 Reichsausschuss inaugural meeting 145 Saxony election campaign 156 Sklarek scandal 147, 149 Berliner Morgenpost 2, 14, 24, 26, 27, 28, 30, 41 Barmat scandal 92 economic crisis 175 Hitler coverage 64, 66 Hitler’s trial 68 political violence 136 Ruhr compensation 97 supplements 16 telling readers how to vote 161 Wessel murder 153, see also Ullstein Berliner Tageblatt 5, 14, 20, 24, 30, 49, 66, 68, 79, 87, 91, 113, 133, 159, 163, 166, 174, 176, 195, 218, 220 Berliner Volks-Zeitung 5, 19–20, 24, 61, 68, 96, 134, 138, 141, 151, 159, 221, see also Mosse Bernau, Prussia 109–17, 124, 128 Bernhard, Georg 5, 18, 19, 20, 92, 203 Bismarck, Otto von 58, 72 Blasius, Dirk 201 Bösch, Frank 8 Böss, Gustav 37, 148, 149 Brandenburg, Prussia 109–17, 122, 124, 128 Brandenburger Anzeiger 111, 112, 114, 116, 124, 130 Brandenburger Zeitung 112, 114 Braun, Otto 17, 94, 99, 100, 194, 204–5, 206, 220

318 Braunschweiger Landeszeitung 199, 214 Bruhn, Wilhelm 147 Brüning, Heinrich 158, 162, 169–72, 173, 174, 175, 183, 186–91, 197–8, 206, 215, 220 Brunswick, Nazi attacks in 184, 214 Bücher, Karl 204 BVP (Bavarian People’s Party) 112, 113 BZ am Mittag 16, 17, 18, 24, 32, 35, 37, 170–1 Barmat scandal 96 editorial change 188, 189–90 Hitler coverage 65 May Day demonstrations 138, 140 negative Hindenburg coverage 113, 114 news scoops 45, 163, see also Ullstein caricatures 36, 49, 53, 54, 59, 69 anti-Semitic 157, 160, 164 anti-Young Plan referendum 145 banned 221 Goebbels 150 life under Nazi dictatorship 186 May Day demonstrations 142 politicians interest in 205 Caro, Kurt 218 cartoons 12, 29, 34, 54, 154, 218 Catholic Centre Party 21, 47–8, 58, 60, 77, 93–4, 100, 101, 115, 133 coalition in Hess 187 electoral losses 130 pro-Marx 110, 116 Prussian referendum 179 Reichstag election results 128–9 censorship 62, 200, 220, 221 Christlich-Sozialer Volksdienst 30 circulation figures 13–14, 21–6, 30 Communist newspapers 33, 177 novel serialization and 29, 34 political papers 43 provincial newspapers 108, 109 Sklarek scandal 149 Social Democratic papers 28 SPD papers 119 tabloids 16, 17, 37, 38 city council elections 23, 40, 41 civil servants 80, 101, 191 coalitions 133, 144, 150–1, 187 Cologne 81 communication flows 7, 18, 21 Communist Party of Germany see KPD constitutional monarchy 45 corruption 51, 53, 56, 76, 104–5, 147, 168, 222, see also scandals Czernin, Count 51

Index Danat-Bank 175 Dawes Plan 112, 144 DAZ (Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung) 22, 23, 26, 30, 41, 43, 51, 60, 66, 174 DDP (German Democratic Party) 20, 23, 41, 95, 110, 115, 128–30, 134, 149 D’Ester, Karl 4 Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (German Workers Party) 63 Deutsche Handwerkerbund 112 Deutsche Tageblatt 30, 61, 67, 97 Deutsche Tageszeitung 30, 41, 48, 50, 53, 60, 61, 69, 78 Deutsche Zeitung 23, 24, 57, 61, 76–7, 83, 84, 86, 90, 99, 101, 195 district newspapers 14, 17 DNVP (German Nationalist People’s Party) 2, 4, 20, 23, 24, 25, 30, 32, 40, 41, 44, 48, 149 anti-Erzberger speeches 51, 55 anti-Young Plan referendum 150–2 ‘April crisis’ 157–9 Barmat scandal 94–5, 96, 99 Ebert 98, 99 expropriation issue 123 Hindenburg’s election campaign 113, 118 Reichstag election results 128–9, 146 voter disillusionment with 125, 127, 130 voter switch to NSDAP 151–2, 156, 167 Dovifat, Emil 4, 132 drawings 34 DVP (German People’s Party) 30, 94, 112, 113, 118, 128–9, 133 Ebert, Friedrich 45, 53, 57, 62, 75, 78, 89, 91, 223 Barmat 98 death 99 defamation trial 10, 11, 80–9, 103 libel suits filed by 219 economic crisis 169, 170–1, 174–8, 179–80, 200, 216 editors 5, 42, 206 criticism of Brüning 187–8 Ebert trial 86–7 gentlemen’s agreement on financial news 188 ‘mood of panic’ 163 Nazi elimination list 166 parliamentarians as 172 political cleavages 217–18 politicians and 19–20 provincial 122–3, 125, 126–7 regional 28 resignations 143

Index 8-Uhr-Abendblatt 17, 24, 32, 35, 37, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 151, 155, 159, 166, 186, 188 Eisner, Kurt 20 Eksteins, Modris 5, 6 electoral behaviour 2, 11, 19–20 Barmat scandal and 78–9 Erzberger campaign and 60 Hitler trial and 71 newspaper circulation and 21–6 press support and 38–42 elite press (Gesinnungspresse) 11, 15, 22, 23, 79–80, 84, see also Kreuz–Zeitung Erzberger, Matthias 10, 223 assassination attempt on 56–7 Centre Party support for 58–60 Hitler’s speeches against 64 libel trial 55–8, 63, 73 murder of 60–3 press campaign against 11, 37, 46–63 tax evasion allegation 57, 58 Falter, Jürgen 131 Feder, Ernst 88, 163, 166 ‘Festival of the Hundred Thousand’ 126 film 3 First World War (1914–18) 4, 13, 16–17, 18–19, 46, 50–1 Fischer, Ruth 121 Foch, Marshal 46 foreign news 112, 119 Frank, Hans 165 Frankfurter Zeitung 6, 14, 30, 48 Frick, Wilhelm 152, 213, 221 Fritzsche, Peter 6, 8, 9 Gansser, Dr Emil 81–2, 88 Gebensleben-von Alten, Elisabeth 199, 201, 214–15 Generalanzeiger (commercial newspapers) 13, 15, 28, 32 German Association for Sociology 3 German Press Association 216 German princes, expropriation of 120–6 German Revolution (1918–19) 19, 52, 120, 133 Germania 15, 21, 24, 30, 48 Barmat scandal 98, 102 Ebert trial 88 Höfle’s death 101 pro-Erzberger 58–60, 61 Gesinnungspresse 15, 22, 23, 79–80, 84 Goebbels, Joseph 20, 23, 35–7, 74, 132–3, 144, 146, 151, 168, 204, 218, 219 anti-Hindenberg speech 192, 193–4 on anti-Nazi reporting 161

319

caricature of 150 DNVP collapse 159 on first rally to receive ‘good press’ 152 Hitler’s Leipzig statement 165–6 ‘Jewish’ putsch scare 163 Kütemeyer’s death 134, 155 press censorship 221 SA mutiny 159, 160 Ulbricht debate 171 version on political violence 153 Göring, Hermann 174 Graefe, Count 52 Great Depression 2, 23, 131 Groener, Wilhelm 181, 185–6, 189, 190–1, 194, 196–7, 201 Grosz, George 204, 207, 208 Groth, Otto 4 Gumbel, Ernst 212 Haarmann, Fritz 81 Hahn, Victor 32 Hamburger Nachrichten 51, 57 headlines Barmat scandal 102 caricature 207, 208 Communist activities 183 DNVP crisis 158, 159 Ebert trial 83, 84, 86 economic crisis 175, 177 Hitler’s Leipzig statement 165 May Day demonstrations 138 political violence 156, 184 press freedom 176, see also newspapers Heilmann, Ernst 77, 80, 89, 98, 99 Helfferich, Karl 50–1, 52, 55–7, 61, 63, 73 Heller, Otto 33 Hilferding, Rudolf 20 Hindenburg, Paul von 10, 48, 55, 75, 102, 105, 106, 107, 183, 186 anti-Young Plan 150 Brüning dismissed by 169–70, 173, 198 eightieth birthday celebrations 126–7 expropriation issue 123–4 Groener, disenchantment with 196–7 NSDAP appointments 197–8 presidential election 100–17, 120, 122, 124–5 re-election campaign 191–4 right-wing press and 197–8 SA and SS, emergency decree banning 194, 195 SA delegation 185 Hirschfeld, Oltwig von 56, 57 Hitler, Adolf 2, 11, 12, 126, 222 anti-Erzberger speeches 63–4 anti-Young Plan coalition 144, 146

320

Index

Hitler, Adolf (cont.) Boxheim documents 187 ‘civil war’ threat 173 courtroom testimony 165–6, 171, 186 documentation sent to Groener 185, 186 failed putsch 67–8 first public appearance in Berlin 74, 134 Mein Kampf 70, 71, 74 on press influence 74 rise to prominence 65–71, 73–4 SA members and 159, 160, 163 Saxony election speeches 156 speeches 162, 168 trial and imprisonment 68–71, 73, see also NSDAP Höfle, Anton 93–4, 101, 103 Hohenzollern, house of 120 Höhler, Albrecht ‘Ali’ 153, 155 Höllering, Franz 35, 217 Hollweg, Bethmann 19 Hugenberg, Alfred 2, 4–5, 6–7, 12, 17, 23, 24, 25–6, 53, 89 Adolf Stein and 88 anti-socialist 34 anti-Young Plan coalition 144, 145, 150–1 Barmat scandal 78 DNVP and 40, 118, 133, 157–8 Hitler 131–2 newspapers income 31 pro-Hindenberg 191 Saxony campaign 156 tabloids 32, 40, see also Scherl Hussong, Friedrich 5, 47 IAH (Internationale Arbeiter Hilfe) 33 Jarres, Karl 87, 99, 100, 105, 110, 114 Jews 2, 132, see also anti–Semitism journalism/journalists 5 aggressive 20, 36–7, 88 emergency decrees against 221 Erzberger 52–3 Hitler coverage 69, 70 interaction with politicians 104 ‘mood of panic’ 163 police violence against 141 press decree 176 press manipulation 72–3 public opinion and 204 reading habits of 205 scandalmongering 149 stereotyping 215, see also polemics Jungdeutsche, Der 24 Kahr, Gustav von 67 Katz, Elihu 209–10

Kaufhold, Dr 100 Kershaw, Ian 214 Kessler, Harry Graf 49, 50 Kladderadatsch 53–5, 59 Klein, Fritz 22 Klemperer, Victor 57, 216 Knoll, Ernst 90 Koch, Pfarrer 84 Koestler, Arthur 18 Kölnische Volkszeitung 14 Königswusterhausen, Prussia 109–17, 124, 129 Königswusterhausener Zeitung 109, 110, 115, 123 Konzentration AG 29 Korrespondenzen 6 Koszyk, Kurt 4–5 KPD (Communist Party of Germany) 12, 24 Barmat scandal 78 bourgeois fear of 210–2 elections and press support 39 Erzberger murder, reaction to 62 expropriation issue 120–2 ‘fascist threat’ 67 May Day clashes 136–43, 167, 214 newspapers losing readers 177 political violence 135, 146, 153–5, 173–4, 180–1, 198–9, 201, 213–14, 223 presidential elections 115–16 Prussian local elections 149 Prussian referendum 178, 180 Reichstag election results 128–9 Rote Fahne readership 26–8, 33–4 Sklarek scandal 147–8 Spartakus uprising (1919) 19, 47 tabloids 33–4, 44 ‘United Front’ strategy 120–1 Kracauer, Siegfried 7 Kreuz-Zeitung (Neue Preussiche (Kreuz-)Zeitung) 11, 14, 18, 23, 24, 29, 50, 196 anti-Erzberger campaign 50–1, 52, 53, 56, 61 Ebert trial 84, 87 Hitler coverage 66, 70 Kussman (state prosecutor) 90, 102, 103 Kutisker, Iwan 76 Kuttner, Ernst 101, 102 Lachmann-Mosse, Georg 5, 32, 166 land reform 197 Landespfandbriefanstalt 96, 97 Lasswell, Harold D. 7 Lau, Matthias 5 Law for the Protection of the Republic (1922) 62–3

Index Lazarsfeld, Paul 200, 209–10 leaflets 7 legal system 212–13, 222 Lewinsohn, Richard 117, 118, 119 Liebknecht, Karl 47, 50 Lippert, Julius 218 Lippmann, Walter 215, 223 Lloyd George, David 64 Löbe, Paul 20, 62, 211, 216 Locarno Treaties 103, 121 Lossow, Otto von 67, 68 Ludendorff, Eric 68, 69, 70 Luther, Hans 94, 112, 121, 123, 125, 216 Luxemburg, Rosa 47 magazines 7, 14 Magdeburg trial 80–9, 104, 105 Magdeburger Volksstimme 84 Magdeburgische Zeitung 181 Marx, Wilhelm 99, 100, 102, 110, 114, 115, 116, 117, 123, 126, 205 Mein Kampf (Hitler) 70, 71, 74 Mielke, Erich 180 Mitteldeutsche Presse 81, 82 Moltke, Dorothy von 200 Montag Morgen (left-wing weekly) 176, 177 Mosse (publishing house) 2, 14, 19–20, 23, 24, 32, 41, 159, 161, 166, 188 Müller, Hermann 20, 133, 152, 158 Müller, Philipp 8 Münchner Post 64, 66 Münzenberg, Willi 17, 33, 39, 133 Mussolini, Benito 65, 66 Nachtausgabe, Die 17, 23, 24, 31, 32, 34, 36, 37, 40, 41, 133, 141, 149 anti-Young Plan coalition 144 Barmat scandal 92, 94 Brunswick violence 184 Communist violence 173, 181, 182, 213 DNVP split 151 Ebert defamation trial 82, 85 Hitler coverage 69, 161 Kütemeyer’s death 134 May Day demonstrations 136, 138 pro-Hindenberg rally photos 195 Prussian referendum 178 radical Right support 161 Reichsbanner, dissolution of 196, 197 Wessel murder 155 Napoleon, Emperor 9 National Assembly 47, 48, 49, 51, 52, 120 nationalism 15, 33, 118, 119 Nationalpost 30, 92 Neue Berliner Zeitung 17, 24

321

Neumann, Heinz 180 news agencies 16, 29, 90, 118, 146, 184 newspapers academic study of 4 agenda-setting 8, 62, 73 Americanization 35 anti-Erzberger 11, 37, 46–63, 72, 73 anti-Nazi 159–62 bans on 141, 180, 200, 220, 221 Barmat scandal 77–80 ‘civil war’ scares 172, 185, 194, 199, 201 coverage 26–9 economic crisis 174–7 Erzberger-Helfferich trial reports 55–60 extra editions 15–17 finances 29–32 Hitler coverage 63–71 Italian Fascist uprising coverage 65 Magdeburg trial 80–9 May Day demonstrations, coverage of 136–43 Nazi coverage following breakthrough 162–8 parliamentary behaviour and 206–7 partisanship 14–15, 21–5, 35, 216–18, 222–3, 224 post-war redefinition 19 proprietors 4–5, 188 Prussian referendum 179 putsch scares 163–5 rapid growth in 13 regulation 171–2, 176, 187, 204, 218–21 self-reference 20, 206 slogans 215 telling readers how to vote 161, 209 trial reporting 56, see also circulation figures; editors; headlines; journalism; provincial press; readership; sensationalism; tabloids Niederbarnimer Kreisblatt 107–8, 109, 123 Noske, Gustav 81, 99 NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) 12, 24, 35, 64, 131–2 anti-Nazi reporting 159–62, 188–90 anti-Young Plan coalition 144, 150 ban on SA and SS lifted 198 bourgeois supporters 201–2 Boxheim documents 186–7, 189 election losses 78, 130 electoral breakthrough 2, 12, 35, 40, 131, 149, 162–6 emergency decree banning SA and SS 194–6, 197, 201 Hesse elections 187 Hindenburg vote 119 in media limelight 162–8 party martyrs 153–5, 171, 222

322

Index

NSDAP (cont.) political violence 134–5, 146, 153, 155–6, 159–60, 163, 167, 171, 184, 199 press attacks directed against 159–62 press censorship 221 press support 40–1, 70–1 Prussian local elections 149 Prussian state election success 178 rallies 66, 152, 183, 184, 214 Reichstag elections 23, 74, 128–9 SA wing of 159–60, 163, 164, 165, 172–3, 178, 184–5, 191, 194–8, 201 Saxony state election success 156–7, 167 Thuringia state election success 151–2, 167 US ambassadorial report on 214, see also Der Angriff; Hitler, Adolf NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) rallies 145, 146 Nuschke, Otto 5, 20, 96, 134, 159, 166, 218 Oletzkoer Zeitung 61 opinion leaders 209–10 Oranienburg, Prussia 107–17, 124, 128 Oranienburger General-Anzeiger 114 Organisation Consul (right-wing terrorist group) 60–1 Orwell, George 223–4 Osborn, Max 204 Ossietzky, Carl von 61, 100, 117, 118, 189, 217–18 Papen, Franz von 198, 199, 219, 221 parliamentarianism 132–4, 162, 163, 168, 169, 215 personal advertisements 28 photographs 12, 14, 29, 32, 34, 81, 138–41 Pol, Heinz 217 polemics 62, 84, 86–7, 104, 113, 132, 136, 148, 167, 171, 197, 205, 216–17, 220 police 7, 136–8, 141, 143, 174 political violence 12, 125–6, 134–43, 146, 153, 155–6, 159–60, 163, 167, 169, 170, 171, 180–7, 200–1, 213–14, 223 politicians 9–10, 62, 66, 72 Barmat scandal 79, 95, 104 editors and 19–20 Erzberger 53 immunity from prosecution 172 Magdeburg judgement 87 newspapers and 203–7 polemical press coverage concerns 171 press attacks on 11, 37 press freedom 219 Politikverdrossenheit (political dissatisfaction) 215–16

posters 7, 122, 192–3 Prenzlau, Prussia 109–17 124, 128 Prenzlauer Zeitung 110 presidential elections 11, 75, 91, 101–2, 105, 106, 107–14 press decree (1931) 176, 187 press leaks 90, 186 Pressedienst (news agency) 29, 90 Preussische Staatsbank 80, 91, 94, 102 Prignitzer 110, 111, 114, 124 printers’ union strike 68 private property 122 prize draws 37, 38 propaganda 19, 200, 205 anti-republican 83 caricatures 36 courtroom 68–9, 165–6, 171, 186, 213 Nazi 64, 68–9, 146, 156, 165–7, 167–8, 183, 211, 214, 215 pro-Hindenburg 192 spoken word 74 state 218–19 tabloids 35 provincial press 3, 5–6, 13, 78, 126–30, 214–15 anti-Communist reporting 198–9 Barmat scandal 79 Communist threat 181 Ebert 81, 82, 84 economic coverage, lack of 174–5 Erzberger 56–7, 61, 63 expropriation issue 120–6 Hindenburg’s eightieth birthday 126–7 Hitler coverage 64, 67 opinion leaders 210 parteilos (non-partisan) 117–20, 130 presidential race (1925) 107–18, 122 Prussia 6, 79, 163 Barmat investigation 94–6, 98, 99, 100–1, 102, 104 local elections 149 Nazi party offices, search of 194 press regulation 220 provincial papers 109–30 referendum 178–80, 221 street violence 198–9, 201 von Papen coup 199 public opinion 4, 8, 72, 88, 190, 203, 204 Barmat trial 95 Erzberger trial 58 First World War 19 Prussian referendum 178–80 stereotypes 215, see also readership Publizistikwissenschaft 4 Pünder, Hermann 204

Index radio 3, 218–19 Ranke, Leopold von 8 Rathenau, Walther 62, 81 readership 1, 3 Berlin 7, 17 bourgeois 32, 119 business section 175 editors 20 Erzberger campaign 53, 55 Erzberger-Helfferich trial 56 female 16, 27, 29 Hitler on types of 74 information processing 211–15 judiciary 89–90 press confidence 203 press influence on 72–3 surveys 205 tabloid 16 working class 26, 32, 33, 34, 210, see also newspapers Reich Agrarian Association 3 Reichsanzeiger 97 Reichsausschuss coalition 144–6, 150 Reichsbanner organisation 126, 147, 155, 172, 191, 195, 196–7 Reichslandbund 79 Reichstag elections 12, 23, 39–40, 64, 117, 128–9, 149, 169 (1924) 71 (1928) 74, 127 (1930) 161–2, 178 (1932) 202 (1933) 221 Rheinische Zeitung 28 Richter, Wilhelm von 80, 89, 98 Rickert, Heinrich 6–7 Rosenhaft, Eve 222–3 Rote Fahne, Die 11, 17, 18, 20, 22, 23, 24, 26, 33–4, 44, 143 bans on 141, 180, 200, 221 Barmat scandal 76, 77, 79, 93 declining circulation 177 expropriation issue 120, 121 incitement to violence 153, 154 May demonstrations 135, 136 Prussian referendum 178 Sklarek scandal 148, 149 unemployed protests 174 Rothard, Erwin 81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 88 Ruhr 67, 96–7 Saxony state elections (1930) 156, 167 scandals 10, 11, 37, 76–80, 162, 215, see also Barmat scandal; Sklarek scandal Schäffer, Hans 188

323

Scherl (publishing house) 14, 22, 25, 31, 40, 53, 146, 166–7, 218, 220 see also Hugenberg Schmitt, Carl 199 Schulz, Heinrich 58, 60–1 Schweitzer, Hans 36, 69 sensationalism 16, 17, 30, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 81, 97, 132, 148, 167 caricature of 207, 208 exposure of corruption 37 government guidelines to control 188–9 May Day demonstrations 136–8 street-violence 170, 186 serialized novels 29, 34 Severing, Carl 20, 98, 152, 171, 174, 184, 194, 200, 204 Sklarek scandal (1929) 37, 147, 167, 223 slogans 215 Social Democratic Party see SPD Sollmann, Wilhelm 28–9 Sösemann, Bernd 5 Soviet Union 33, 121 Spartakus uprising (1919) 19, 47, 137 SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany) 17, 18–19, 20, 24, 28–9, 75, 186, 194 Barmat scandal 78–9, 91, 92–5, 99–100 elections and press support 39, 44 Erzberger murder, reaction to 62 expropriation issue 121–2 Höfle’s death 101 hostile press 220 munition workers’ strike 82, 86 National Assembly elections 47 National Socialist violence 66 Prussian referendum 178, 179 regional disadvantage 119 Reichstag elections 127, 128–9, 130 Ruhr compensation 97 Sklarek scandal 148–9 warship construction 133 Wilhelm Marx, support for 110, 116 Spengler, Oswald 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, 203 spiral-of-silence theory 210–11 Sportpalast 100 Springer, Axel 4 ‘stab-in-the-back’ legend 10, 11, 47, 48, 55, 57, 61, 81, 82, 168 Stampfer, Friedrich 206 Stein, Adolf 5, 58, 88, 91, 100, 104, 175, 218 Stein, Fritz 190 Stinnes, Hugo 22, 30, 43, 48, 80, 218 Strasser, Gregor 160 street violence 169, 170, 173, 174, 181, 198–9, 200–1

324

Index

Stresemann, Gustav 37, 41, 43, 75, 87, 97, 103, 112, 113, 133, 144, 198, 204 strikes 68, 82, 83, 85–6, 202 subscriptions 16, 22, 26, 38, 107, 161 supplements 16, 29, 107 syndicated columns 16 tabloids 3, 9, 12, 16–17, 20, 22, 23, 32–8 anti-democratic 37, 38 content and layout 34, 36 editorial guidelines 188–9 financial panic 177–8 murders 153 NSDAP coverage 161 partisanship 35–8, 43 Wessel murder trial 163 Tag, Der 17, 22, 24, 25–6, 30, 31, 32, 35, 77, 84, 97, 100, 174, 197 Tägliche Rundschau 30, 47, 52, 55, 58, 62 tax reforms 51 Telegraphen-Union (news agency) 90, 118, 146, 184 Tempo 24, 35, 37, 136, 137, 141, 148, 155, 156, 159, 186, 189 Thiess, Frank 214, 215 Thuringia state elections (1929) 151–2, 167 Tillessen, Heinrich 60–1 Tönnies, Ferdinand 72, 204 trade unions 3, 120, 121 Tucholsky, Kurt 119–20, 206, 217, 218 Uckermärkischer Kurier 110 Ulbricht, Walter 171 Ullstein (publishing house) 2, 14, 16, 17, 21 anti-Hindenburg coverage 113 circulation figures 21, 22, 23, 24 exposure of local corruption 37 finances 32 government guidelines 188–90 political moderation 41 tabloids 35 unemployment 179, 200 United States gold standard 169 loans to Germany 112 report on NSDAP 214 street violence in 201 Vaterländische Vereine 100 Verhey, Jeffrey 8 Versailles Peace Treaty (1919) 49–50, 63, 64, 119, 150 violence see political violence; street violence Völkischer Beobachter 23, 25, 30, 60, 64, 71

Volksstimme 61–2 Volkszeitung 119, 120, 126–7 Vorwärts (SPD) 15, 18, 20, 23, 24, 35, 39, 42, 44, 98, 206 anti-Young Plan 150 banned 221 Barmat scandal 77, 78, 91, 93, 95, 99–100, 102 ‘civil war’ warnings 172, 185, 199 Erzberger 53, 58, 61 expropriation issue 121 Hitler coverage 66, 69, 185 Magdeburg trial 83, 84, 85, 86, 103 May Day demonstrations 135–6, 142 Ruhr compensation 97 Sklarek scandal 148 Wilhelm Frick 152 Vossische Zeitung 5, 18, 20, 23, 24, 30, 48, 61, 79, 85, 91, 113, 117, 174 Wahrheit (anti-Semitic journal) 147 Weber, Max 3–4 Wedel, Ambassador 51 Wegener, Leo 7 Weiss, Bernhard 37 Wels, Otto 89 Welt am Abend, Die 17, 24, 33–4, 37, 39, 44, 133, 134, 135, 143, 147, 156, 158–9, 186, 210 anti-Nazi 159–60 declining circulation 177 press freedom 176, 189 ‘red referendum’ 178 unemployed protests 174 violence provoked by Nazis 183, 184 Welt am Montag, Die 183–4 Weltanschauung journalism 17–21, 42, 124, 218, 222 Weltbühne, Die 119, 189, 209 Wessel, Horst 153, 163, 222 Westarp, Count 51, 151, 158 Westarp, Graf 123 Wilhelm II, Kaiser 11, 45 Wilhelmine period 7, 8, 45 Winkler, H. A. 39 Wirth, Joseph 133, 134, 176, 177, 178, 181 Wittenberge, Prussia 109–17, 119, 120, 124, 127, 128 Wolff, Theodor 5, 49, 166, 179, 218 Wronkow, Ludwig 218 Young Plan 2, 131, 143–6, 150 Zarnow, Gottfried 213 Zeitungswissenshaften (newspaper science) 4

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