The world-famous Rudolf Mosse publishing house has stopped payment. It will undoubtedly be able to ensure the continued appearance of the Berliner Tageblatt, its principal publication. But the present Tageblatt looks like a phantom of itself. For many years it was, with the Frank-furter Zeitung, the leading organ of German Democracy. At its head stood Theodor Wolff with a staff of excellent editors surrounded with the finest contributors German literature could provide.
Rudolf Mosse, who came to Berlin from Graetz in Posen, certainly never thought when he died about ten years ago, that the paper which he founded and to which he gave all his love would come to its present moral state. For this, the responsibility falls entirely upon the husband of his adopted daughter, Lachmann-Mosse.
Rudolf Mosse was heart and soul a newspaper publisher while his successor was mainly interested in the purely business side of the enterprise. Above all, he had not the slightest conception of the political importance of his paper and the obligation of the publisher towards the political tradition of his own House.
Around about 1927, the strength of the Nationalist movement in Germany had already become so great that a large number of newspapers of the non-political type of the General Anzeiger thought it would be good business to play up to it. They were still glad to accept advertisements from Jewish businessmen but gave preference in their news columns to Nazi meetings at which the Jews were abused. This tendency made it more necessary than ever for Republican newspapers to fight against it, but Lachmann-Mosse, though he remained a good Jew, rather inclined to bring pressure to bear upon his editors to devote less space to political quarrels, as he termed it, and to turn the paper which made its name fighting for political ideas, as far as possible, into a non-political business paper. Theodor Wolff resisted these plans for many years but at the critical moment of Nazi victory, other forces gained control.
Rudolf Mosse left a fortune estimated at about a hundred million. His heir managed to put this fortune into all sorts of private business enterprises and thus immobilize it. A couple of millions in bank debts made it an easy matter for the Nazi rulers, who held the big German banks in their hands, to wrest the Berliner Tageblatt from him and carry out their complete process of “gleichschaltung.”
IN ZURICH AND PARIS
Lachman-Mosse is now living in Zurich and Paris. It is said he still has a considerable fortune invested outside of Germany. There is no need for him to suffer want but the attitude which he took up contributed to bringing want not only to the Berliner Tageblatt but to German politics as a whole and to his co-religionists.
Unlike Rudolf Mosse, the Ullstein Verlag is still financially potent. Although it issued a large number of non-party weeklies and dailies, this enterprise, under the direction of the five sons of the founder, very effectively supported Democratic policy for many years. Yet here too, the tendency appeared in 1929 and 1930, especially in the Vossische Zeitung, to withdraw from its Democratic fighting character.
Though not for business reasons, but because like many others in Germany it thought that Nazi radicalism could best be fought by concessions to the Nationalists. Apart from the fact that this proved fundamentally an error, the Ullsteins themselves have to suffer for it for the Nazi rulers are doing all they can to make things difficult for the Ullstein Verlag. One attempt of this kind was made very recently when the organ of the Prussian premier, Goering, broadcast false reports about the losses of the Ullstein firm and the fall in circulation of its publications.
National Socialism is seeking to exploit the existing political situation as far as possible for business ends. We must not forget that Adolf Hitler is at the moment the biggest newspaper publisher in Germany. In public he refuses to take payment, but secretly, he calculates the big income derived from his books, papers and periodicals which it is compulsory to buy and subscribe for.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
