zinetalk

Zine Prehistory Pt 1

Independent Publishing & The Resistance In Nazi Germany Pt 1

This article originally appeared in another form in my zine She Cheated On College Exams, along with another article on the pre-history of zines, ‘Jedermann Sein Eigner Fussball’. The intention of these articles was to demonstrate that the history of zines doesn’t merely start with the science fiction fanzines of the 1930s or the UK punk zines of the late 1970s. As a student of history, I disregard the notion that the zine (or fanzine) is an unconnected phenomenon that ‘just happened’, completely detached of other developments in the history of independent publishing. Equally I disregard the simplistic teleological history that a single unbroken connection can be drawn, starting with science fiction fanzines through punk zines such as Sniffin’ Glue, bringing us to the zine that we are familiar with today. As a sympathiser of Marxism, I consider the history (and pre-history) of zines to contain a narrative that includes beat poetry chapbooks, revolutionary war broadsides, Russian Samizdat and the publications of Expressionism, Dada, Surrealism, Futurism, Lettrism and Situationism. Furthermore, as much as some who have written on the subject assert, the history of zines is not a history of independent and revolutionary writing that only existed in a opposition to censorship from governments and big business, but a history of the ownership of the means of production and the distribution of published material to the public. An important part of the pre-history of zines (and perhaps in an academic sense, a controversial part) is the history of independent publishing in the resistance to the National Socialist regime in Germany. The explosion of independent and revolutionary publishing from both ends of the political spectrum in the days of the Weimar Republic is significant in a pre-history of zines by itself, however the dramatic changes that occurred under the Nazi dictatorship is just as poignant. Due to the almost symmetrical nature of this period of history, the first half of this two-part article series will deal with the history of independent publishing prior to 1933 and the rise of Adolf Hitler to Chancellor of Germany, followed by the second half which will deal the deconstruction of any independent publishing under the Third Reich.

The 'Golden Years' Of The Weimar Republic

The history of independent publishing and the pre-history of zines is the history of ownership of the means of production and the access of published material to the public, rather than any political regulation or conscious ideological motives. Although government control is a factor in the history of independent publishing, it is negligible compared to the mainstream publishing world. A history of independent publishing is a continued juxtaposition between the economics of producing a publication and a publication’s distribution through the public. Depending on the size of the publication’s impact on its readership, government interference is rarely a major concern in independent publishing. Economic pressures and the accessibility of a publication are more immediate concerns.

However, a history of independent publications cannot exist in a vacuum and one must consider its relation with the mainstream publishing world, particularly the mainstream press and the socio-economic conditions that a publication is created in. The following article examines the publishing world, both the mainstream press and the independent political journals, in Germany from the mid-1920s until the late 1930s. What was the relationship between the mainstream press and the independent publishing world like and what changes occurred as Germany transformed from a liberal democracy into a fascist dictatorship under the National Socialist regime? Who was producing independent publications and what function did they serve, in relation to the function of the mainstream press? What impact did the independent publications have on the resistance movement within Germany in the pre-Second World war period?

Unlike the British Press that had been monopolised into a group of nationally circulated dailies, the German press was much more varied. In Weimar Germany, there was at least 4,700 daily papers and nearly 10,000 journals or periodicals. At this time, to reach a large readership required a substantial investment in print production and although the amount of papers and journals was large, Press trusts and publishing houses monopolised the means of production, with the bulk of material syndicated in the ‘district papers’. This meant that only five per cent of papers had produced more than fifteen thousand copies. Parish-pump papers and one man printing operations, using plates rather than rollers were widespread and as Michael Burleigh wrote, relied heavily on ‘advertisements, announcements and items written by keen amateurs’. The varied structure of the German press meant that Germany’s leading liberal daily paper, the Berliner Tageblatt sold only an average 130,000 copies in the early 1930s, which was roughly matched by Nazi Party’s daily paper, the Völkische Beobachter.

As economic uncertainty fluctuated during Weimar Germany, some of the papers that were financially unkempt were taken over by industrialists and other big businesses. Multi-media magnate Alfred Hugenberg oversaw a large publishing house as well as interfering substantially in the political process, openly backing conservative politicians in the Reichstag. Other industrialists such as Paul Reusch of the Gutehöffnungshütte, Carl Bosch of IG Farben and Hugo Stinnes all had controlling interests in papers in Munich, Frankfurt and Berlin respectively.

On the other hand, each political party produced its own journals and papers, paid through party funds. To counter the concentration of ownership by the conservatives and the big businesses, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) produced at least 200 papers throughout the years of the Weimar Republic, alongside the German Communist Party’s (KPD) thirty-five. In the mid-1920s, Willi Münzenberg was appointed by Lenin to direct the Workers’ International Relief (Internationale Arbeiter Hilfe or IAH). The IAH was not officially part of the KPD, which helped during anti-Communist repressions and sought to bring relief to the German working class during the times of economic hardship. In 1924, Münzenberg also set up a publishing house, Neuer Deutscher Verlag (NDV), separate from the IAH or the KPD, who published the Communist daily paper, Die Rote Fahne (‘The Red Flag’).

In 1927, the NDV started the publication, the Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung (‘Worker’s Illustrated Paper’), a weekly paper that was explicitly Communist but embraced the avant-garde art of Weimar Germany. Alongside artists such as Tina Modotti, Käthe Kollwitz and the anonymous Fuck, the most prominent artist of the AIZ was photomontage artist John Heartfield. Heartfield’s brother, Wieland Herzfelde, also owned a small publishing house named Malik Verlag, which began as a forum for the Dadaists in the early 1920s, but continued to produce avant-garde and revolutionary publications throughout the years of Weimar Germany. Compared with the mainstream journals such as Berliner Illustrierte and Münchner Illustrierte Presse, which had circulations of 1.6 million and 500,000 respectively, the AIZ had a considerable readership. By the early 1930s, the AIZ had a circulation of around 280,000, aimed at a less affluent readership that was increasingly ignored by the mainstream press. According to the AIZ, 42 per cent of its readership was skilled workers and 33 per cent unskilled workers, with less than 20 per cent of its readership in bourgeois professions.

Despite its large readership, the A-I-Z was unable to muster the support amongst the working class to resist the Nazi rise to power. Although the NDV was technically independent of the KPD, like the Party itself, Münzenberg was indeed heavily directed by the Third Communist International, which from 1928 until the assumption of power by Hitler in January 1933, asserted the notion of ‘social fascism’. Instead of uniting with the Social Democrats in a united socialist front against the Nazis, the Communists believed that the Social Democracy was the ‘twin brother of fascism’. While some, such as the exiled Leon Trotsky, appealed for a united front, Münzenberg declared:

"Nothing could be as detrimental to the German working class and communism and nothing would promote fascism so much as the realisation of so criminal a proposal [of Social Democrat-Communist unity]… He who proposes such a bloc only assists the social-fascists. His role is indeed… plainly fascist".

The A-I-Z capitulated to the Comintern’s direction and promoted the idea of ‘social-fascism’. The Communists also failed to understand that fascism was more than the ‘rule of monopoly capitalism in its purest, most untrammelled, most invulnerable form’ and was a mass movement with great middle-class support as well as successfully attracting votes from the working class. The A-I-Z maintained the view of fascism as a mere instrument of capitalist rule. John Heartfield’s montages of Hitler taking a bribe from an industrialist (‘Behind me, there are millions’) and Hitler as a puppet of industrialist Fritz Thyssen (‘Tool in God’s hands? Toy in Thyssen’s hands!’) remain powerful images, but underestimated the Nazi’s expendable ideological notions of big business. For these reasons (and indeed many more), the German working class suffered one of the greatest defeats when Adolf Hitler assumed the position of Chancellor on January 31, 1933. The effect of the Communist press on the defeatism and wrongly directed political action of the working class should not be underestimated. However, as we will see in the second part of this article, the rise of the national Socialist regime did not end all resistance.

Coming Soon
Part 2 of Independent Publishing & The Resistance In Nazi Germany

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