Introducing Die Woche, the German Weekly, and the 1916‐44 Machinations of the German Media By James A. Elliott, Ph.D. and Sam Ginsburg

Contents Page 1‐4. This introductory text 5. Front cover of Die Woche Vol. 17, issue 43 (23 October 1915) 6. Inside front cover of the same issue, advertising some August Scherl Verlag publi‐ cations 7. Table of contents page from the same issue. 8. Back cover of Die Woche 1914 issue 39, listing all the August Scherl Verlag periodi‐ cals (from Wikicommons) 9‐10. Additional notes and comments

(The original copy of issue 43, held in a university library, is quite fragile and tattered, and the scans reflect that. While many digital copies of Die Woche (“The Week”) can be found online at the Hathi Trust digital archive, www.hathitrust.org, the archive doesn’t have this particular issue.)

Dr. H. Roesing’s article, “Bilder und Typen aus Russisch=Polen” was published in Vol. 17, issue 43 (23 October 1915) of Die Woche, a weekly news magazine reminiscent of Life Magazine. A little research into Die Woche and its publishers opens a fascinating window into German indus‐ try, especially the publishing and film empires of (say) 1883‐1933+, as well as the rise of the Nazi Party and Hitler’s consolidation of power. (Thanks to Kayla Ginsburg for pointing out the original article was part of something else, a weekly magazine in this case.)

I. August Scherl (1849 to 1921) August Scherl started his publishing business in October 1883. Die Woche was started in 1889. In 1900 he changed the company name to August Scherl Verlag G.m.b.H. (Verlag means publishing company or publishers.) By the early 1900’s his publishing group had the largest circulation of any publishing group in .

There is very little written in English about August Scherl or August Scherl Verlag, so there is some uncertainty about his political views. David Welch is unequivocal: “The Berliner Lokalan‐ zieger ...” [sic.] (another of Scherl’s papers) “claimed political neutrality but was blatantly conser‐ vative in outlook.” (pg. 29)

Mildred Wertheimer, writing in 1924 about the nationalist Pan‐German League (a discussion of which is beyond the scope of this note), is less definite. She divides the press into liberal and na‐ tionalist, with Der Tag, the Scherl Berlin morning daily as a nationalist paper “withe mor or less of a Pan‐German reputation.” Der Tag’s masthead was “serving no party; a free organ for all par‐ ties.” (pg. 189) [To be fair, we must note that one could be very conservative while being also being wishy‐washy about the Pan‐German League, one of many conservative institutions.]

Wertheimer goes on to list some more strongly nationalist (right‐wing, non‐Scherl) papers: The Tägliche Rundschau (Daily Roundtable) was “an independent newspaper for national politics ...” whose editor was on the executive board of the Pan‐German League”, so he was a strong nation‐ alist. The editor of the Deutsche Zeitung was “well‐known for his super‐nationalist ideals.” Die Post had “a notorious Pan‐German reputation.” She lists several other papers which she consid‐

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ered much more nationalist than Scherl’s Der Tag. It makes one speculate that Scherl himself was less than a “mover and shaker” among German Nationalists. But the situation changed in 1916, as will be seen below.

II. (1865‐1951) Alfred Hugenberg was a giant of German industry from 1909 to 1933, when he fell out of grace with Hitler’s regime. While he’s mentioned in many books, including Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, much of the following sketch is from Alfred Hugenberg: the radical nationalist cam‐ paign against the , by John A. Leopold.

Hugenberg was an early believer in what’s known as radical German nationalism, believing in anti ‐socialism, anti‐democracy, and German expansionism. In 1890 he helped start the Pan‐German League, an organization which included among its goals a) advancing the interests of German speakers everywhere, and b) eventual unification of all German speakers under one political gov‐ ernment, i.e. some sort of Greater Germany. In 1891 he received a doctorate in political econ‐ omy, and after a series of (mostly quite successful) activities, was invited in 1909 to become the chair of the Board of Directors of Krupp Armaments Company in Essen, marking the start of his tenure as a “giant of German Industry,” often holding a number of major board positions at the same time. Much of his power was based on forming and chairing trade groups, especially in German heavy industry such as steel‐making and coal‐mining.

By the end of 1914, he was advocating the need for a propaganda system to promote the views of German industry. The natural choice was to own a publishing company. As it turned out, Au‐ gust Scherl Verlag had gotten into financial difficulties, and was targeted as a strategic acquisition for the right. (Scherl invested in a variety of money‐losing ventures outside the publishing com‐ pany and those might have been the cause of the “financial difficulties.”) The other major Berlin publishers were Jewish‐owned, too democratic, and needed a conservative counterweight. It took Hugenberg until 1916 to put together the coalition and money to buy the Scherl firm. By July the new owners were working on moving its publications further to the political right. Hugenberg immediately started working on purchasing other news and advertising agencies and publications, as well as starting new ones from scratch. After the war, he left Krupp to concen‐ trate on publishing and politics, which naturally went together. (He kept and expanded his activi‐ ties in other industries, however.) While some of his news acquisitions were kept separate, by 1926 the Scherl firm had greatly expanded.

III. Hugenberg and the Nazis Hugenberg was not a member of the Nazi party. In 1920, he had been elected to the Reichstag as a delegate of the German National People's Party (Deutschnationale Volkspartei, DNVP), a right‐wing coalition of groups which supported Hitler, but had their own somewhat different, pro ‐industry agenda. In 1928, he became party chair. When Hitler rose to power in 1933, Hugen‐ berg became Agricultural Minister and Economy Minister. But he was no one’s “yes man”, argu‐ ing against Hitler’s positions on several occasions. Within a few months he deviated from some official Nazi lines, and was forced to resign his cabinet positions on June 27. About the same time, as chairman of the DNVP, Hugenberg had to sign a letter of “voluntary dissolution”, ending organized right‐wing dissent with the Nazis. (All non‐Nazi political parties were dissolved be‐ tween mid‐May and mid‐July, 1933.)

Part of Hugenberg’s problem was that he was more of a capitalist and free‐market person than the official Nazi position and had spoke out at the 1933 London conference with comments that

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had not been approved in advance. (Shirer has no respect for Hugenberg, calling him “thickheaded” and “of wooden mind,” as if Hugenberg was over his head at the top level of na‐ tional politics.)

Shortly thereafter, he was forced to sell part of his publishing empire to Franz Eher Nachfolger GmbH , one of the main publishing subsidiaries of the Nazi party. (Most of the German inde‐ pendent press was either shut down or forced to sell during this period. Two‐thirds of the daily circulation was in papers owned by the Nazi party or by individual party members at the start of WWII, according to Shirer. [pg. 246] The radio system was always government‐owned, so the Nazis automatically controlled it.) By the end of 1935, Hugenberg owned only Scherl and UFA (Universum Film AG), the major German film company. He was forced to sell UFA to the Nazis in March 1937; Scherl in 1943‐44. It wasn’t a bad life: Hugenberg earned an estimated 500,000 Marks annually from his holdings, and was allowed to keep his seat as one of the 22 non‐Party members in the Reichstag which he was given in the fall of 1933. In 1944, the Nazis shut down Die Woche, ending that part of the saga. But one wonders how Hugenberg came to own UFA?

IV. Hugenberg and the German Film Industry The following is mostly based on The UFA Story, by Klaus Kreimeier, translated by Robert and Rita Kimber.

In November 1916, under Hugenberg’s leadership, the Deutsche Lichtbild‐Gesellschaft (German Motion Picture Company, or DLG) was formed, continuing his push for a “full‐service” right‐wing propaganda machine. (Think of Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin and Alexander Nevsky, or Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur and Foreign Correspondent, for example, and remember that silent newsreels with subtitles could be very effective propaganda tools.)

Soon thereafter, in 1917, the German military formed its own film company, Bild und Filmamt (The Photography and Film Bureau, or BUFA), which was opposed to DLG in several ways: First, BUFA was a government arm, but DLG was an agent of heavy industry, loyal, but not overly sup‐ portive of the Weimar government. Second, BUFA was backed by a number of industries such as banking and shipping which perceived their interests to conflict with those backing DLG. Third, the military’s goal was to centralize all German film‐making, and DLG was an obstacle.

In any event, General Erich Ludendorff, Quartermaster General of the entire German military, and effectively co‐head with Chief of Staff Field Marshall Paul von Hindenberg, decided that a new film company was needed, one that would be above the DLG‐BUFA fray, and be able to pro‐ ject German propaganda more effectively. He wrote a memo to that effect on July 4, 1917, and UFA was officially formed on December 18, 1917. The initial Board is noteworthy: representa‐ tives from Deutsche Bank, Dresden Bank, the German electrical industry (Robert Bosch, no less), and representatives of the Hamburg‐American and North German Lloyd shipping lines, among others. UFA immediately started buying up German production, distribution and theatre hold‐ ings, including some owned by foreign companies such as the Danish Nordisk‐Films company.

UFA complicated media politics because it was nominally under the control of BUFA, which was distrusted by many of the UFA staff, while the DLG‐BUFA disputes continued unabated. By the end of the war, DLG was renamed Deulig‐Film, BUFA was buried in the film bureau of the Interior Ministry, and UFA was the dominant German film powerhouse, buying up more and more other film operations.

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Over the years, various government and private shareholders sought to sell their UFA shares, and Deutsche Bank bought many of the shares, becoming majority shareholder in 1921, just in time for the start of German hyperinflation, which UFA seemed to weather relatively well. However, it, along with much, if not most,e of th German film industry were in poor straits after the post‐ inflation restructuring. By 1925, UFA was negotiating with members of the U.S. film industry for relief. UFA wanted distribution in the U.S. along with infusions of debt and equity capital, in ex‐ change for providing German distribution of .U.S films. In the end, these arrangements only in‐ creased American film penetration of Europe and decreased UFA’s financial strength. In March 1927, in a feat of financial wizardry beyond the scope of this note, UFA was purchased by Hugen‐ berg and his associates, now including I.G. Farben, the chemical company which also produced the photographic film used to make movies.

V. Film Trivia. Of interest to Fritz Lang fans, it turns out that August Scherl Verlag was the publisher of Metropo‐ lis, the 1926 book by Thea von Harbou, then Lang’s wife. (It published her other books as well.) In 1927 Lang made the famous movie of the same name (at the UFA studios), which continues to have a significant cult following.

UFA had made or distributed all (?) of Lang’s films from the time its acquisition of Decla/Bioscope was completed in June 1922 until he left Germany for Paris during the spring or summer of 1933 after first divorcing von Harbou. Lang was not the first in Paris – Erich Pommer, Billy Wilder, Paul Lukas and Peter Lorre were already there, to name a few of the better‐known members of the German film industry. Pommer and Lukas had been to the U.S. previously. Pommer was the only of the four to return to Germany to live after WWII, but he didn’t stay.

In Paris, Lang directed one film, Liliom, starring Charles Boyer. He later said it was his favorite of all the films he directed. He sailed for the U.S. with an MGM contract on June 6, 1934 (exactly ten years before D‐Day!), along with David O. Selznick of MGM and an entourage including the director George Cukor.

Bibliography Note: where a book conflicts with Wikipedia, the book has usually been given preference.

Kreimeier, Klaus, trans. by Robert and Rita Kimber, The Ufa Story, Harper Collins, 1996 Leopold, John A., Alfred Hugenberg: the radical nationalist campaign against the Weimar Republic , Yale University Press, 1979 McGilligan, Patrick, Fritz Lang, the Nature of the Beast, St. Martin’s Press, 1997 Schweitzer, Arthur, Big Business in the Third Reich, Indiana University Press, 1964 Shirer, William, L., The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Simon and Schuster, 1960 Welch, David, Germany, propaganda and total war, 1914‐1918 : the sins of omission, Rutgers University Press, 2000 Wertheimer, Mildred S., The Pan‐German League, 1890‐1914, Columbia University Studies in history, eco‐ nomics, and public law no. 251, 1924.

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Back cover of Die Woche 1914 issue 39 listing the various August Scherl Verlag publications, from Wikicommons.

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Additional Notes and Comments The following are notes and comments that are less central to understanding the German media, but ones we find interesting none the less.

1. In June, 1933, Hugenberg was succeeded as Economic Minister by Kurt Schmitt, head of Al‐ lianz, Germany’s largest insurance company, and an insurance industry leader. For an eye‐ opening look at and its life under the Nazis, read Gerald Feldman, Allianz and the Ger‐ man insurance business, 1933‐1945, Cambridge University Press, 2001 2. We’ve previously mentioned that the DNVP did not completely share the Nazi agenda. Here are some differences: ¶¶ Topic Nazis DNVP

Anti‐Semitism Core Value Not a core value; some factions were in favor, others indifferent Capitalism and Free The Nazis created a completely The DNVP was pro‐business, es‐ Enterprise state‐controlled economy pecially heavy industry, and more (reminiscent of their arch‐ capitalist. enemies, the Communists)

3. In Rise and Fall, Shirer doesn’t mention the last pre‐WWII (1933‐37) U.S. Ambassador to Ger‐ many, William E. Dodd. But Shirer does mention him favorably in his very engaging Berlin Di‐ ary: “He struck me as a blunt, honest, liberal man with the kind of integrity an American Am‐ bassador needs here.” Later Shirer includes the Dodd family in a list of their Berlin friends. To find out more about Dodd, read Erik Larson, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin, Crown books, 2011. According to Wikipedia, Dodd tried unsuccessfully to alert the U.S. government about the rising dangers of . Shirer’s Berlin Diary includes this little tidbit: “Geneva, November 6 [1938]… I’ve (…) started a play … called ‘Foreign Correspondent.’” But it seems likely that he never published it and that Hitchcock didn’t knew about it before directing his Oscar‐nominated film of the same name . (The play is listed as still in draft form in 1943, according to the index to the William L. Shirer Papers at his alma mater, Coe College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa) None the less, Berlin Diary gives the impression that Shirer and especially Edward R. Murrow pioneered the practice of radio broadcasts to the U.S. by foreign correspondents. (Berlin Diary gives many examples of the efforts Shirer and Murrow made in order to get the news aired on American radio. Wikipedia (8 June 2015) and the many books and films about Murrow strongly reinforce this story. It seems likely that their broadcasts were part of Hitchcock’s inspiration for the movie’s final scene.) According to Wikipedia (6/7/2015), some historians claim the published version of Berlin Diary has some major embellishments when compared to Shirer’s original notes. 4. All governments use propaganda during war time (and before, if they have warning.) Some‐ times it’s more subtle but often less subtle. For examples of the latter, in the context of American propaganda at its entry into WWI, read some of the material published by the Com‐ mittee on Public Information. (Available at the Hathi Trust digital archive, www.hathitrust.org.) The “Committee” was headed by George Creel, whom some described

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as a “muckraking journalist” who bent the facts to suit his needs. Others considered the Committee’s work to be the largest public relations program in history, and the launching of modern public relations. There’s a lot of material on Creel and the Committee. We’ve mostly used Alan Axelrod’s Selling the Great War, The Making of American Propaganda. 5. Propaganda vs. Public Relations, an aside. What’s the difference between public relations (PR) and propaganda? It depends on who you read or talk to. One political scientist said “PR is positive, propaganda is negative.” PR firms claim that PR uses truths/facts, while propa‐ ganda uses lies, innuendo, etc. One online dictionary used “information, especially of a bi‐ ased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view” The original use (from 1622) was Propagating the Faith. In this context, propaganda isn’t necessarily factual—faith is a matter of belief, after all. So propaganda is about spreading what you want someone to believe, or about getting more or more committed believers. The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) has the following definition from 2012: “Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.” Their prior definition, in use from 1982 to 2011, was “Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial re‐ lationships between organizations and their publics.”

Supplemental Bibliography The following are sources listed in this Additional Notes and Comments section which are not listed in the bibliography on page 4.

Axelrod, Alan, Selling the Great War, The Making of American Propaganda, Palgrave MacMillan, 2009 Feldman, Gerald, Allianz and the German insurance business, 1933‐1945, Cambridge University Press, 2001 Larson, Erik, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin, Crown Books, 2011 Shirer, William, L., Berlin Diary, Alfred Knopf, 1941

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