Pleasure, Practicality and Propaganda: Popular Magazines in Nazi Germany, 1933–1939

General interest magazines were an important part of everyday life in Nazi Germany: appearing every week or in some cases fortnightly they provided millions of readers with entertainment, non-fiction reporting and advice articles. Although these mass market periodicals formed a major part of the Nazi propaganda machine, they are still decidedly under-researched. Even the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung (BIZ), Germany’s most popular pictorial magazine during the 1930s and 1940s, has attracted little scholarly attention; many other journals that also enjoyed a wide circulation among Germans after 1933 are totally forgotten. 1 This neglect is surprising since popular magazines clearly merit close attention when we address the history of pleasure and its political and social functions in the Third Reich. Unlike newspapers, general interest magazines offered most of all unpolitical content meant to entertain. Buying the BIZ or one of its competitors must therefore be seen as an act of pleasure-seeking while the magazines were designed to channel and satisfy this need in such a way that it helped the purposes of the Nazi regime.

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Notes

  1. So far, sound research has only been done on radio programme guides and on a small segment of the thriving market of women’s magazines. See: T. Bauer, Deutsche Programmpresse 1923–1941. Entstehung, Entwicklung und Kontinuität der Programmzeitschriften (Munich, 1993); S. Lott, Die Frauenzeitschriften von Hans Huffzky und John Jahr. Zur Geschichte der deutschen Frauenzeitschrift zwischen 1933 und 1970 (Berlin, 1985). As a rare example of research into the content of illustrated magazines see: E.-M. Unger, Illustrierte als Mittel zur Kriegsvorbereitung in Deutschland 1933 bis 1939 (Cologne, 1984). Google Scholar
  2. For details compare: K. C. Führer, ‘Die Tageszeitung als wichtigstes Massenmedium der nationalsozialistischen Gesellschaft’, in Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 55 (2007), 411–434, here 415–417. Google Scholar
  3. Carl Schneider, ‘Die Zeitschrift im Lesezirkel’, in: ZSV 37 (1935), 73–5, here 75. See also: Helmut Schlien, ‘Lesezirkel und Zeitschrift’, in: ZSV 40 (1938), 457–9. Google Scholar
  4. The sole exception was radio programme guides which were considered as unsuitable for Lesezirkel since their content, consisting mostly of programme announcements, was quickly dated. Compare the retrospective account: W. Carlsson, ‘Probleme des Lesezirkels’, in Der neue Vertrieb, 5 (1953), 190–192, here 190. Google Scholar
  5. W. König, Volkswagen, Volksempfänger, Volksgemeinschaft. ‘Volksprodukte’ im Dritten Reich. Vom Scheitern einer nationalsozialistischen Konsumgesellschaft (Paderborn, 2004), 83. Google Scholar
  6. See, for example: A. Steiner, ‘Zur Neueinschätzung des Lebenshaltungskostenindex fürdie Vorkriegszeit des Nationalsozialismus’, in Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte, vol. 2 (2005), 129–152. Google Scholar
  7. See for example: R. J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power (London, 2005), 477–483. Google Scholar
  8. Tagung der Zeitschriften-Verleger, in Hamburger Fremdenblatt no. 40, 10. 2. 1939; K. W. Schade, ‘Die Zeitschrift im Kulturhaushalt des deutschen Arbeiters’, ZSV, 41 (1939), 453. Empirical evidence that magazines were indeed read even in remote villages see in: A. Schmidt, Publizistik im Dorf (Dresden, 1939), 98–101; J. Müller, Ein deutsches Bauerndorf im Umbruch der Zeit. Sulzthal in Mainfranken. Eine bevölkerungspolitische, soziologische und kulturelle Untersuchung (Würzburg, 1939), 118–119. Google Scholar
  9. For critical remarks on Seine Majestät das Photo and the corresponding neglect of journalistic texts in illustrated magazines, see: H. Schlien, ‘Fortsetzung von Seite 5607 …’, ZSV, 40 (1937), 323–324, here 233. For the lack of photos in daily papers see G. Ulmer, Das Lichtbild in der Münchner Presse (Würzburg, 1939), 119–143. Google Scholar
  10. See D. Herzog, Sex after Fascism. Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany (Princeton, 2005), 37–42. For examples of such ‘piquant’ photos see in the Münchner Illustrierte Presse (1938), no. 7, no. 10, no. 11, no. 15, no. 17, no. 18. Google Scholar
  11. A. Klein, ‘Probehefte und Prospekte’, Der Zeitschriften-Buchhandel, 54 (1933), 348–350, here 348; G. Ecker, ‘Der Roman in der Zeitschrift’, ZSV, 39 (1937), 153–154. Google Scholar
  12. See: BIZ (1937), nos 1–31. Except for the Austrian A. Lernet-Holenia, author of Der Mann im Hut, the serial set in Hungary (nos 22–31). All the writers of these BIZ-novels are literary no-names. Lernet-Holenia’s novel has been credited with subversive meaning (R. Roček, Die neun Leben des Alexander Lernet-Holenia. Eine Biographie (Cologne, 1997), 207–210), but the heavily truncated version published in the BIZ hardly sustains such a reading. Google Scholar
  13. Compare, for example: F. Moeller, The Film Minister. Goebbels and the Cinema in the Third Reich (Fellbach, 2001); L. Schulte-Sasse, Entertaining the Third Reich. Illusions of Wholeness in Nazi Germany (Durham, 1996). Google Scholar
  14. For the bookmarket see: T. Schneider, ‘Bestseller im Dritten Reich. Ermittlung und Analyse der meistverkauften Romane in Deutschland 1933–1944’, in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 52 (2004), 77–97. Google Scholar
  15. See, for example: J. Hermes, Reading Women’s Magazines. An Analysis of Everyday Media Use (Cambridge, 1995), 62–65; D. Gauntlett, Media, Gender and Identity. An Introduction (London, 2002), 152–210. Google Scholar
  16. See many examples in: E. H. Lehmann, Die deutsche Zeitschrift im politischen Kampf (Leipzig, 1938), 3–38. Der Führer in Österreich!’, BIZ special edition, 15 March 1938; ‘Das Grossdeutsche Reich ist erstanden!’, MIP 1938, no. 12. Google Scholar
  17. H. Obenaus, ‘The Germans: “An Antisemitic People”. The Press Campaign after 9 November 1938’ in D. Bankier (ed.), Probing the Depths of German Antisemitism. German Society and the Persecution of the Jews, 1933–1941 (New York, 2000), 147–180. Google Scholar
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  19. D. Bankier, ‘Signaling the Final Solution to the German People’, in: D. Bankier and I. Gutman (eds), Nazi Europe and the Final Solution (Jerusalem, 2003), 15–39, here 21–24. For isolated anti-Semitic content see for example: ‘Der ewige Ahasver’, in: BIZ 1943, no. 22; ‘Es mehren sich in unserem Lande die Anzeichen einer antijüdischen Bewegung’, in: ibid., no. 27; ‘Hochfinanz und Judenstern Hand in Hand’, in: IB 1943, no. 7; ‘Sensation und Judenfax’, in: ibid., no. 13; ‘Freibeuter Roosevelt pachtet die Welt’, in: ibid., no. 19. Google Scholar
  20. R. Sachsse, Erziehung zum Wegsehen. Fotographie im NS-Staat (Dresden, 2003). Google Scholar
  21. See, for example: W. Stiewe, ‘Zeitschriftenarbeit im Kriege’, in ZSV 43 (1941), 42–43. Google Scholar
  22. O. E. Sutter, ‘Zuflucht bei der Zeitschrift’, in ZSV 44 (1942), 265–266. See also: E. H. Lehmann, Die Zeitschrift im Kriege (Berlin, 1940), 29–34. Google Scholar
  23. As a beginning see R. Rutz, Signal. Eine deutsche Auslandsillustrierte als Propagandainstrument im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Essen, 2007). Signal was a pictorial magazine that was sold only outside Germany in occupied countries, but its editorial staff worked in close collaboration with the BIZ. Google Scholar
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. McMaster University, Canada Pamela E. Swett ( Associate Professor of History ) ( Associate Professor of History )
  2. University of Birmingham, UK Corey Ross ( Professor of Modern History ) ( Professor of Modern History )
  3. Université Panthéon-Assas (Paris II), France Fabrice d’Almeida ( Professor of Contemporary History ) ( Professor of Contemporary History )

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© 2011 Karl Christian Führer

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Führer, K.C. (2011). Pleasure, Practicality and Propaganda: Popular Magazines in Nazi Germany, 1933–1939. In: Swett, P.E., Ross, C., d’Almeida, F. (eds) Pleasure and Power in Nazi Germany. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230306905_7

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