The fastest newspaper in the world was printed in Berlin

Besides the more « serious » newspapers, the tabloids occupied an important place in the press scene of Berlin. Those with the highest sale figures were BZ am Mittag, Welt am Abend and Nachtausgabe, with around 200.000 copies daily.

In October 1904, Berlin experienced a media revolution. On that day, the "Berliner Zeitung", founded already in 1877, became the BZ am Mittag (B.Z. at noon).

It was faster, more up-to-date, more modern, attuned to the pulse of the young cosmopolitan city. The B.Z. was sold exclusively at kiosks and by hundreds of newspaper boys. Unlike the other papers, it appeared at noon, more precisely at 13 o'clock. The editorial deadline was at 12. Thus, the reports were more detailed than in the morning papers and much earlier than the evening papers.

BZ at Noon was a great success for Ullstein, the most important publishing house in Germany. Something like "Berliner Zeitung 2.0". Because the old BZ had a morning and an evening edition, as the other newspapers in the megacity. The morning papers were printed at night and evening papers in the afternoon. But at midday, the presses stopped. Why ? So the Ullsteins invented the lunchtime newspaper. And to make it immediately clear to the reader that modernity and speed were the key words now, the paper’s name was abbreviated to B.Z. Only two letters, world city speed! The title was not in fracture, the traditional German black-letter type, but in a modern type, designed by graphic artist Carl Schnebel. Slanted diagonally to the right, the characters « BZ am Mittag » slashed the static geometry of the conventional newspaper page.

"BZ appears today at noon"

Ullsteins B.Z. am Mittag wrote newspaper history. In 1905, a sports supplement was launched. In 1908, a car of B.Z. participate in the first car rally around the world. In 1911 the newspaper donated 100.000 marks as part of the prize for the "B.Z.-Preis der Lüfte" competition for aircraft pilots. And the newspaper itself was delivered by airplanes. In the afternoon, copies were available throughout Germany and in major European cities.

The B.Z. called itself « the fastest newspaper in the world ». On October 17, 1913, a Zeppelin crashed on the Johannisthal air field, outside Berlin. That was at 11 o'clock, 60 minutes before the editorial deadline, enough time for the detailed reports to be on the street at 13 o'clock. In 1918, B.Z. was the first newspaper to announce the renunciation of Kaiser Wilhelm II. As the great social-democratic leader and future president Friedrich Ebert was leaving the National Theater in Weimar, after having given a speech at the National Assembly (gathered at that theatre to discuss a Constitution for the newborn republic), a newspaper boy offered him a copy of B.Z. in which the speech he had just delivered was already printed.

Many famous journalists wrote for the B.Z. Arthur Koestler (chief editor for foreign affairs), Bella Fromm, Walter Kiaulehn, Egon Jameson and the young Billy Wilder, who wrote a piece about men working as dance partners for elder ladies at the Hotel Adlon.