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The Death of News? The Problem of Paper in the Weimar Republic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2017

Heidi J. S. Tworek
Heidi J. S. Tworek*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
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Abstract

In the early 1920s, the press faced an existential challenge. Publishers proclaimed the death of news, not because nothing was happening, but because there was insufficient paper to print newspapers. While historians of the early modern period have long investigated material constraints on the spread of information, the problem of paper in Weimar Germany shows that the economics and politics of supply chains continued to shape cultural production in the twentieth century as well. Rationing during World War I subsequently became a crisis in the 1920s, when paper shortages, which had started as an issue of prices and supply chains, ballooned into a discussion about the role of the press in political and economic life, about the relationship between the federal states and the central government, and about the responsibility of a democratic government to ensure an independent press. Paper became a litmus test for the relationship between politicians and the press. The failure to resolve the crisis not only undermined the trust of publishers in Weimar institutions, but, this article argues, also enabled greater control by right-wing media empires. The public sphere, it turned out, had a very material basis.

In den frühen 1920er Jahren sah sich die deutsche Presse mit einer existentiellen Herausforderung konfrontiert. Verleger verkündeten sogar den Tod der Nachrichten, nicht etwa aufgrund eines Neuigkeitsmangels, sondern aufgrund des ungenügenden Papiers für den Zeitungsdruck. Die Historiker der frühen Neuzeit untersuchen zwar schon lange den Einfluss materieller Engpässe auf die Informationsverbreitung. Doch der Papiermangel in der Weimarer Republik zeigt die noch im 20. Jahrhundert bestehende Einwirkung der wirtschaftlichen und politischen Aspekte von Lieferketten auf die kulturelle Produktion. Die Rationierungen während des Ersten Weltkrieges weiteten sich in den 1920er Jahren zu einer regelrechten Krise aus: Die Diskussionen über den von den Preis- und Beschaffungskettenproblemen verursachten Papiermangel entwickelten sich bald zu Grundsatzdiskussionen über die Rolle der Presse im politischen und wirtschaftlichen Leben, die Beziehung zwischen den Ländern und der Zentralregierung sowie die Verantwortung einer demokratischen Regierung zur Bewahrung einer unabhängigen Presse. Das Papier wurde somit zur Feuerprobe für die Beziehung zwischen Politik und Presse. Die Unfähigkeit des Weimarer Staats, die Krise zu lösen, schwächte nicht nur das Vertrauen der Verleger in die Weimarer Institutionen, sondern stärkte auch die Kontrolle durch die nationalkonservativen Medienimperien. Es stellte sich heraus, dass die Öffentlichkeit auf einer sehr materiellen Grundlage fußte.

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Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 50 , Issue 3 , September 2017 , pp. 328 - 346
Copyright
Copyright © Central European History Society of the American Historical Association 2017 

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References

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