Welt am Abend, a red success in Berlin

But if BZ am Mittag had been the first tabloid, it did not stay long alone. The very rightist Nachtausgabe, owned by the millionaire Alfred Hugenberg, was launched in 1922, as an evening edition of his newspaper Der Tag. And in 1925, Communist deputy Willi Münzenberg, known as "the red Hugenberg", bought the left-wing newspaper "Die Welt am Abend", with a print run of just 3,000 and turned it into a successful daily newspaper. While being openly communist, the paper avoided the dogmatism of Die Rote Fahne, organ of the Party, and addressed a public which went beyond the extreme left.

The reason most often invoked by KPD members for not reading the Rote Fahne was that the party organ was not entertaining enough. A reader specified his expectations: 'I would like to read something about the natural sciences, literature, crime, in short, I want to feel the pulse of life. . . not always politics and more politics. » Readers demanded local news, illustrated supplements, serialized novels and a cover of "bourgeois sports" (especially football).

As one female party member explained it was difficult to compete with the bourgeois press and its ‘Interesting News from Around the World’, Letter Box, Household Chat, Fashion Templates and the like. One female Berliner Morgenpost reader explained she was quite satisfied ‘that there is at least one newspaper which reports as good as nothing on politics’. Although this was not necessarily an accurate account of the Morgenpost’s offerings, it reflected the widespread consensus that the

entertainment provided by the Ullstein paper was the decisive buying factor. Women generally did not hold back with their criticism of the Communist party organ. Numerous reports tell of quarrels within the family about the Communist party organ, with cases of wives cancelling the subscription to the Rote Fahne and ordering the Berliner Morgenpost instead. When not subscribing to the Morgenpost themselves, many women shared the newspaper with a neighbour’s wife. A common reply of non-Rote Fahne readers was ‘that I also have a wife and that she would raise hell if I were to cancel the Motte [Morgenpost] and would subscribe instead to the [Rote] Fahne . . . And in order . . . to have peace and calm at home I adhere to my wife’s wishes in this regard.’

One prosaic reason suggested was that these newspapers simply offered more paper and that readers did not care whether their wrapping paper contained editorial text or advertisements. This was not entirely facetious: in the absence of plastic, newsprint was a crucial element in any household and value for money was not only measured in terms of content.

The Rote Fahne failed to appeal to women just like the KPD failed to appeal to the female electorate.

« Press and politics in the Weimar Republic », by Bernhard Fulda, Oxford University Press, 2009.

But if the Communists did not read the Fahne that often, they willingly read another red newspaper : Welt am Abend. It was read ten times more than Rote Fahne, a fact that the Communist Party (KPD) didn’t like. But they could not blame Münzenberg for being successful. Because the good Willi was a born organizer, coupled with a brilliant propagandist. He had probably never read Das Kapital, but he was doing more for the Marxist cause than all the apparatchiks of the KPD. And his success was not limited to Welt am Abend; he had built a whole media empire. A.I.Z., a sort of Communist Life Magazine, was also a success. Not to mention Prometheus Film, which stood behind several famous productions 

Münzenberg’s independence annoyed the party bureaucrats and, when the day came, he was duly punished. Exiled in France because of the Nazis, his body was found a rope around his neck in a wood. Suicide? Assassination by Stalin's orders, rather.

But back to Berlin and to Welt am Abend. It had about ten pages: three or four on politics, one with news from Berlin, one with soap operas, two about culture, film and theater, a sports page, and the economy. The advertisement occupied a whole page. Each edition contained photos, drawings and some caricatures. The focus was on entertainment, as shown by the space devoted to serialized novels. Welt am Abend could proposed 'Jack the Ripper: Revelations about the life of a sexual murderer' (the Nachtausgabe proposed on its side 'Nelly is disappointed by men! A brunette’s novel'. )

For example: the first page of the April 6, 1932 issue is devoted to the trial of the two men who had tried to murder the German ambassador in Moscow. "An act intended to provoke an armed intervention of the capitalist powers against the workers' state. "

In the following pages the fact is stated that the Prussian Minister of the Interior, the Social Democrat Severing, has passively assisted while the SA were arming themselves. Swedish millionaire Ivar Kreuger, who has recently committed suicide in Paris, is now proved to have been a forger, proclaims Welt am Abend: in his safe deposit box, falsified Italian state bonds have been found.

Then, the second part of a series on corruption in the National Socialist elite. Technical progress makes it possible to envisage electric prostheses in the future. "Red sportsmen in action": sportsmen are supporting Thälmann, the communist candidate for the Reich presidency.

An advertisement for Kurt Tucholsky's book "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles", illustrated by John Heartfield. "Not the kind of book you read once and then leave aside". 236 pages of the best paper. Kosmos editions. Price reduced from 3 mark to 1.50 mark.

Two serialized novels: Fort-Vaux, by Ernst Glaeser and Gold-diggers and hunters in Grand-Chaco, by Walter Burkart.

Among the authors that had contributed to the journal are Egon Erwin Kisch, Alfred Döblin, Lion Feuchtwanger, Kurt Tucholsky, Erich Mühsam, Thomas Mann and Georg Lukács.

In 1932, Welt am Abend printed 180,000 copies, BZ am Mittag 150,000, Nachtausgabe 185,000, 8-Uhr-Abendblatt 80,000, Tempo (launched in 1929) 120,000 and Der Angriff (nazi) 95,000. As for Rote Fahne, it had just 19,000 copies.