The Weimar Republic's “Press Parliament”

Abstract

Journalists, not state officials, hosted the Reich government's main press conferences in the Weimar Republic era. International/unique, the setup evolved from World War briefings run by Imperial Germany's military censorship. In the 1918 November Revolution, newspaper correspondents turned the tables on the authorities to organize the Berlin Press Conference. For the next 14 years, the capital press corps' daily noon meeting with spokesmen or cabinet ministers emerged as the young democracy's key political news hub. It was often called a “press parliament” to emphasize its institutional character in the ambivalent, conflict-rich but productive relationship with a new Reich press department and ministries. The paper explores the conference's institutionalization based on participant accounts and previous works. The paper studies self-organization, government responses, culture, conflicts, confidentiality issues, and the de-institutionalization by the National Socialist regime in 1933. Postwar West Germany restored the Weimar-era model, which is still followed a century after its invention.