The tottering giant: Germany on the ground? Guests with Köppel

QF-Doku-Studio opinion:
What particularly excited us was this statement from the studies/Wikipedia(if it is well researched-which we assume!):
“The only evidence of post-war planning is a quote from a letter by Georg von Holtzbrinck, in which he described a relative in a high position in the Nazi regime on the one hand and an American uncle in the USA on the other hand as the respective insurance for every conceivable outcome of the war”
Perhaps the so! ex-publisher of Der Zeit praised by Köppel could talk or write about this!
---
"Publicist Josef Joffe, on the other hand, sees Germany in a new, unagitated role that threatens no one, as a positive change."
Expert Josef Joffe
Distinguished Fellow at Stanford. Has taught politics and intellectual history at Harvard, Stanford and Johns Hopkins Universities.
Editor-in-chief and publisher of Z e i t, previously head of department at Süddeutsche Zeitung.
---
zeit-verlagsgruppe/Die Zeit, Die Zeit, which has existed since 1946.
Zeitverlag and thus Die Zeit was taken over by the Georg von Holtzbrinck publishing group in 1996 and has belonged to DvH Medien and the Georg von Holtzbrinck publishing group 50 percent each since 2009.The place of publication has always been Hamburg. Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH & Co. KG
is the fourth-largest media company in Germany and also operates internationally. Beginning as a magazine and book advertising company in 1931
The cornerstone of the publishing group was the development of a magazine and book advertising business, which Georg von Holtzbrinck had been running since 1931. Its success enabled him to acquire the Deutsche Verlagsexpedition (Devex) in 1936, which concluded a contract with the German Labour Front (DAF). His NSDAP membership since 1933 and the connections of his uncle Erich von Holtzbrinck, a Standartenführer in the SS Main Office, to Hitler's private chancellery were helpful. Devex took over the distribution of the DAF magazines Schönheit der Arbeit and Freude und Arbeit for two years.Holtzbrinck had already joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933 (membership number 2,126,353).IASLonline,in recent years several studies ISBN: 978-3-598-24906-8 have been produced, looking at publishing thought and action under the conditions of the Nazi dictatorship....
http://www.iaslonline.de/ Florian Triebel
>Thomas Garke-Rothbart: “...vital for our business...”. Georg von Holtzbrinck as a publishing entrepreneur in the Third Reich. With an introduction by Siegfried Lokatis. (Archive for the History of the Book Industry 7) Munich: K. G. Saur 2008. 248 pp. Hardcover. EUR (D) 69.95.
ISBN: 978-3-598-24906-8.<
[1] The historical reappraisal of the prehistory of important players in the German media economy has recently experienced a certain boom. Partly driven by public attention to the behavior of companies and entrepreneurs in the Third Reich, partly motivated (and financed) by the affected companies themselves, and finally by the initiative and perseverance of researchers, a number of studies have emerged in recent years that have sharpened the view of publishing thought and action under the conditions of the National Socialist dictatorship. Thomas Garke-Rothbart's work on "Georg von Holtzbrinck as a Publishing Entrepreneur in the Third Reich" – as the subtitle says – now fits into this series, with the aim of reviewing the background of one of the most important and influential publishing personalities in the Federal Republic of Germany. According to Siegfried Lokatis' introduction, Garke-Rothbart was probably able to rely on financial support and documents from the Holtzbrinck family in the preparation of the study, without any influence being exerted on his presentation.
[2] The structure of the thesis
[3] Garke-Rothart has structured the text largely chronologically; the chapters follow the main stages in Georg von Holtzbrinck's biography during the period under study. In some places, digression-like systematic chapters are interspersed, which, among other things, attempt to clarify the relationship between Holtzbrincks and the NSDAP or shed more light on individual fields of activity of the young entrepreneur. After the presentation, which fills about 190 pages, there is an extensive appendix of another 60 pages, which offers, among other things, publishers' bibliographies of Holtzbrinck's companies and documents excerpts from letters and reports from Garke-Rothart's source research.
[4] Beginning of a storybook career
[5] Georg von Holtzbrinck's publishing career began in 1930 as a "student part-time job". The young law student from impoverished nobility looked for and, together with his fellow student Wilhelm Schlösser, found the opportunity to finance his studies in direct magazine sales. The rapid rise of the two in the hierarchy of the "pusher business" and the imminent founding of their own sales company prove their talent for this special economy. Holtzbrinck and Schlösser successively expanded their entrepreneurial activities; they expanded their sales territories, took over new magazines and publications (including the "German Labour Front"), bought other companies and also began to publish themselves. Memberships in party branches as well as confidants and relatives in high positions of the party and state were helpful for them. With the beginning of the war, they relied on the emerging economy in their publishing activities and entered the lucrative business of field post issues for the entertainment of front-line soldiers. This not only secured them handsome profits and the supply of the important raw material paper, but also saved part of their enterprise, which had thus become "important for the war", from closure in the second half of the war. The only evidence of post-war planning is a letter quoted by Georg von Holtzbrinck, in which he described a relative in a high position in the Nazi regime on the one hand and an uncle in America on the other as insurance for every conceivable outcome of the war. Garke-Rothbart's account ends with the first steps towards rebuilding the companies after the collapse of the Nazi regime.
[6] Comprehensive source author's work at home and abroad
[7] In compiling the study, the author had to contend with highly incomplete source material, which he painstakingly collected through extensive archival research, which took him as far as Washington D.C. and Moscow. This achievement, which probably lasted almost ten years, is to be appreciated without reservation. This is not only because of the perseverance and perseverance of the researcher on his own, but also because Garke-Rothbart has apparently uncovered revealing documents and was able to make them accessible.
[8] Deficiencies in the structure of the study
[9] While the source work done is exemplary, there are obvious shortcomings in the structure and layout of the study. First of all, Garke-Rothbart does not provide the reader with a question for reading. While the subtitle clearly points to a biographical approach, the author explicitly excludes such an approach in the introduction, but then addresses the person of Georg von Holtzbrinck in individual chapters (cf. the chapters "Family Roots", "Youth in War", "At the University – Relations with the Nazi Student League", "Questions about joining the party") and in the conclusion an assessment of his entrepreneurial thinking and actions. In doing so, he comes to the conclusion, which has now been repeatedly stated in research, that (media) entrepreneurs in the Third Reich seized the opportunities offered to them and did good business in the process, without having to have been forced to be convinced party supporters and ideological like-minded members of the National Socialists themselves.
[10] It is also striking that, apart from brief mentions in his introduction to more recent monographs on the history of publishing houses in the 1930s, Garke-Rothbart hardly weaves in his presentation the now considerable state of research on (media) companies and the behaviour of entrepreneurs in the Third Reich. As a result, the work floats largely in a vacuum, without the author classifying the results in the current state of research.
[11] This shortcoming is also due to the fact that the author apparently wrote "simply along the sources" instead of systematizing and distilling. This perception is reinforced by the sometimes very long source citations as well as the many and sometimes far-reaching insertions into the history of individual periodicals and companies. There are also more detailed biographical accounts of individual, well-known authors – while important figures from the immediate environment of Holtzbrinck's activities are only illuminated in the form of woodcuts (for example, Georg von Holtzbrinck's wife Addy or the managing director of the publishing house Deutsche Volksbücher (German People's Books), which he took over, Carl M. Ludwig) or disappear from the depiction without a sound (like his fellow student and long-time business partner Wilhelm Schlösser).
[12] In addition, a clearer structure of the work would have been good. Garke-Rothbart's chosen structure, which devotes a separate chapter to each of Holtzbrinck's major undertakings, forces him and with him his readers to leap forward and backward and does not allow a contoured picture of the overall construction and constitution of his business activities to emerge at certain points in time. Thus, there is also a lack of a (tabular) overview of the available business key figures that could have provided the reader with such an overview.
[13] Unanswered and
further questions
[14] At the end of the reading, the reviewer sees a number of open questions that could have been answered by a clearly structured work, which, although they point beyond the author's implicit biographical approach, would have enriched the current state of research on the history of books and publishing during the Third Reich. For example, Garke-Rothbart occasionally remarks in his study that the work of the traveling magazine advertisers, which was difficult to control, tended to be a thorn in the side of the surveillance authorities of the Nazi regime. Since there are no further studies on the travel book trade so far, a more in-depth examination of the resulting conflicts – if they existed – would have been of interest. Furthermore, Garke-Rothbart makes the assertion (which is well worth considering) that the "book magazines" distributed by Holtzbrinck's companies could provide an "indicator of the prevailing taste of a broad readership" because of the constant pressure to recruit new members. Since little is known about actual reading behaviour in the Third Reich so far, the results of an analysis based on this could have contributed significantly to new things.
[15] The present study is therefore by no means the last word on the early history of the media entrepreneur Georg von Holtzbrinck. It is to be hoped that the documents from the family tradition made accessible by Garke-Rothbart will remain accessible to the public and thus provide the opportunity for further intensive research.

Dr. Florian Triebel
BMW Group ClassicSchleißheimer Str. 416DE - 80935 Munich
Date of publication: 29.09.2009
Fachreferent:PD Dr. Thomas Keiderling.
Editor: Julia Ebeling.
---
https://www.derpragmaticus.com/tv-sendungen > today's video
---
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verlagsgruppe_Georg_von_Holtzbrinck
---
ServusTV is an Austrian private television channel based in Wals-Siezenheim in the province of Salzburg. Owner: Red Bull Media House GmbH
https://www.servustv.com/
---
Google to
Roger Köppel | World Economic Forum ??

The World Economic Forum
https://www.weforum.org › rog...
·Roger Köppel. Publisher, Die Weltwoche. MA, University of Zurich; Exel.Ed., Columbia University. 1997-2001, Editor-in-Chief, Das Magazin; 2001-04, Editor-in ...https://www.weforum.org/people/roger-koppel/
---
Prof. em. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Hans-Werner Sinn |https://www.ifo.de/sinn-hw