Die Entwicklung der ostdeutschen Tagespresse nach 1945. Bruch oder Übergang?

Abstract

The press history of Eastgermany, which started with the end of the world war II, was in the dominating research described as a complete restart: The media history research assumed that the Soviet occupation army during her invasion immediately closed and expropriated each daily publisher. This enterprises were used to build up new party newspapers. The thesis shows, that this picture of Eastgerman press history is incorrect. The Soviet occupation power as well as the - till now not noticed - western occupation power permitted a lot of traditional publishers to publish newspapers.After the war there was a spring of press in the by American and British troops occupied parts of the later GDR for a short time between April and July 1945. A big number of traditional publishers restarted publishing newspapers. It range extended from new founded government gazettes to republished dailies with a tradition of one century and more. These newspapers had a military-governmental and official-civilian function. At the beginning of July the Angloamerican troops handed over Eastgermany and its press to the Soviets.In those parts of Eastgermany, which had been occupied by fighting by the red army, the publishers were closed mostly. But in some regions, which had been occupied without fighting, newspapers could appear a short time after Soviet occupation, too. In the process (also by spontaneous expropriation) new antifashistic local dailies were built up, but also traditional newspaper could come out again, which publishers conformed to the new political situation.When the political and military situation in the Soviet Occupation Zone became more stabile after a few weeks, the newspapers, which had been permitted before, were closed down. Starting at June 1945 a second phase of newspaper founding began. First central party newspapers came out in the capitol Berlin. At July/August in the Eastgerman states the party newspapers of the Communist Party (KPD) followed, since autumn also the regional papers of the other parties.The construction of the press of the KPD was done with the expropriated companies of the NSDAP. The KPD took over some nazi-publishers completely and continued the entrepreneurial structures of the nazi-press.Different to the NSDAP-publishers the traditional local publishers had not been expropriated immediately and everywhere. Traditional Eastgerman local publishers were not allowed to publish any daily, but after stabilisation of occupation structures a big number of it produced announcement and advertisement papers, which were supported by the local authorities. Occasionally the traditional publishers also joined publishing of new dailies. The traditional publishers made an important contribution to the building of the Eastgerman press. They were driven out only, when the communist SED had built up a adequately number of local editions of its regional newspapers.