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overview
This page considers the Mosse, Scherl and Ullstein media
groups, dominant in Germany before 1933
This page covers -
 introduction
An argument could be made that the modern newspaper was
born and flowered in pre-1933 Germany (rather than in
New York or London) under the auspices of the Ullstein
and Mosse families. The fate of their media operations
- and of competitors such as Scherl and Sonnemann's
Frankfurter Zeitung - offers a vantage point
for understanding the shape of newspaper and book publishing
outside Germany and for insights into issues such as antisemitism
and cooption of major banks or industrial groups.
Ullstein
Leopold Ullstein acquired the daily Berliner Zeitung
and Stahl & Assmann printing house in Berlin in 1877.
That provided the basis for publications such as Berliner
Illustrierte and Berliner Morgenpost. His
five sons extended the range of publications by launching
B.Z. am Mittag, Die grüne Post,
Tempo, Die Dame and Uhu. The
group successfully expanded into book publishing, advertising
and photo services. In contrast to some competitors it
weathered the 1930s Depression with some success, with
the national Grüne Post for example gaining
a million plus readership in rural markets following launch
in 1929.
The family was forced off the Ullstein board immediately
after Hitler became German Chancellor and was forced to
sell its media assets during the following year, with
the Ullstein group being renamed Deutsche Verlag in 1937.
Axel Springer took a stake
in the renamed Ullstein AG after the War, gaining control
in 1959 and buying out the other shareholders in 1985
Mosse
Rudolf Mosse (1843-1920) expanded from advertising
- his Annoncebureau, founded in 1867 and with over 120
offices by 1900, was modelled on the Havas agency - into
newspapers.
He'd initially block-booked all advertising space in periodicals
such as Kladderadatsch und the Fliegenden
Blätter. In 1872 he founded what became the
Mosse publishing group, responsible for the Berliner
Tageblatt (together with the Frankfurter
Zeitung the major liberal newspaper in Germany), the Berliner
Morgenzeitung, Volkszeitung and 8-Uhr
Abendblatt. His brother Albert Mosse was a distinguished
jurist who, as adviser to the government of Japan, helped
draft that nation's constitution. Mosse was a pioneer
in modern international advertising, owning several advertising
companies in addition to extensive printing and book publishing
interests. Like Ullstein, Mosse commissioned high profile
buildings from leading modernist architects (eg illustration
here).
Son in law Hans Lachmann-Mosse assumed control after the
death of Rudolf Mosse in 1922. The Mosse family left Germany
the day after Hitler was appointed Chancellor.
Rudolf's grandson George (1918-1999) was responsible for
some of the most insightful writing about Nazism and its
antecedents, such as the 1964 The Crisis of German
Ideology: The Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich.
Scherl
August Scherl (1849-1921) launched a printing and publishing
house in Berlin in 1883, acquiring publisher Heribert
Kurth before launching the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger
in 1888, the Berliner Abendzeitung in 1889 and
the Neueste Berliner Handels- und Börsennachrichten
in 1894. In 1899 he launched the illustrated Die Woche,
followed by Der Tag in 1900, the Gartenlaube
in 1904 and the Praktischen Wegweiserund in 1905.
Scherl expanded aggressively into advertising (on the
model of Havas), theatre management, film finance, travel
agencies, lotteries and investment in fads such as monorails.
Financial crisis in 1914 saw closure and spin-off of some
operations, with Scherl losing control first of the newspapers
and printing operations and then of the book publishing
arm. Most media assets came under control of Alfred Hugenberg
(1865-1951).
Hugenberg has gained notoriety as an example of German
conservatives who thought that they could readily manipulate
Hitler ("We'll box Hitler in .… In two months
we'll have pushed Hitler so far into a corner that he'll
squeal"). He'd achieved a high profile within manufacturing
and investment circles as a senior executive of the Krupp
conglomerate and a representative of heavy industry. As
the delegate for a range of investors he acquired control
of Scherl in 1916 and later went on to gain control of
UFA, along with substantial metals and mining interests.
He served as leader of the Deutschnationale Volkspartei
(DNVP) from 1928 and as Minister for Agriculture in the
first Hitler ministry.
During the 1920s and early 1930s the 'Hugenberg Konzern'
included
- UFA
(feature film and newsreel production, distribution
and financing, cinema chain)
- Scherl
(over 300 daily and weekly newspapers, magazines, technical
periodicals, film and radio journals, directories and
tourist guides, book publishing)
- a
major news agency (Telegraph-Union)
- media
finance and leasing operations
'Coordination'
of the German media after 1933 saw nationalisation of
UFA in 1937 and the publishing arm in 1944.
studies
For an overview see Peter de Mendelssohn's Zeitungsstadt
Berlin: Menschen und Mächte in der Geschichte der
Deutschen Presse (Berlin: Ullstein 1959) and Kurt
Koszyk's Deutsche Press 1914-1945 (Berlin: Colloquium
Verlag 1972). Context is provided by Modris Eksteins' The
Limits of Reason: The German Democratic Press and the
Collapse of Weimar Democracy (Oxford: Oxford Uni
Press 1975) and Peter Fritzsche's Reading Berlin 1900
(Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 1996).
For Ullstein see Hermann Ullstein's The Rise &
Fall of the House of Ullstein (New York: Simon &
Schuster 1943), Hundert Jahre Ullstein (Berlin:
Ullstein 1977) edited by Joachim Freyburg & Hans Wallenberg,
Lynda King's Best-sellers By Design: Vicki Baum and
the house of Ullstein (Gary: Wayne State Uni Press
1988) and Oron Hale's The Captive Press in the Third
Reich (Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 1964). Bella
Fromm's Blood & Banquets, A Berlin Social Diary
(New York: Carol 1990) offers a perspective from inside
the Vossische Zeitung. Appropriation is discussed
in Harold James' The Deutsche Bank and the Nazi Economic
War Against the Jews (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press
2001).
George Mosse's Confronting History: A Memoir
(Madison: Uni of Wisconsin Press 2000) is of particular
merit. German works include Elisabeth Kraus' Die Familie
Mosse (Munich: Beck 1999) and Bernd Sösemann's
Theodor Wolff: Ein Leben mit der Zeitung (Berlin:
Econ-Ullstein-List Verlag 2000).
There has been no major English-language study of the
Scherl group or its slippery founder - a precursor of
Robert Maxwell - forcing reliance
on works such as Hans Erman's August Scherl: Dämonie
und Erfolg in wilhelminischer Zeit (Berlin: Universitas
Verlag 1954). Scherl's
loss of ownership is discussed in Sal Oppenheim Jr
& Cie: A Family & a Bank (London: Weidenfeld
& Nicolson 1994) by Michael Stürmer, Gabriele
Teichman and Wilhelm Treue.
For UFA's early history see The UFA Story: A History
of Germany's Greatest Film Company 1918-1945 (New
York: Hill & Wang 1996) by Klaus Kreimeier, Das Ufa-Buch
(1992) edited by Hans-Michael Bock & Hans Toteberg.
For Hugenberg see in particular John Leopold's Alfred
Hugenberg: The radical nationalist campaign against the
Weimar Republic (New Haven: Yale Uni Press 1977)
and Gerald Feldman's characteristically incisive 'Right-Wing
Politics and the Film Industry: Emil Georg Stauss, Alfred
Hugenberg, and the UFA, 1917-1933'. A perspective on the
news agencies is provided by Matthias Lau's Pressepolitik
als Chance: Staatliche Öffentlichkeitsarbeit in den
Ländern der Weimarer Republik (Stuttgart: Franz
Steiner Verlag 2003). Henry Ashby Turner's German
Big Business & the Rise of Hitler (New York:
Oxford Uni Press 1985) offers cautions regarding claims
about Hugenberg's influence.
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