home
Contact
Society
Activities
Documentation
Regional History
Research Paper
Documentation Work
Why were the Amis here?
Location Augsburg
Links
Sponsors
Imprint

License for Truth – The Birth of the “Schwäbische Landeszeitung”

 

On October 30, 1945, Curt Frenzel and Johann Wilhelm Naumann were granted License No 7 for the foundation of a daily paper by the U.S. Military Government. It was presented by Colonel Barney McMahon. In these days, a License was a condition sine qua non for editing a daily paper. This was to ensure that media were edited only by those who had not been involved in the Nazi regime. The issue of Licenses was going to change the Geman newspaper market completely. The separation of facts and opinion, a good journalistic tradition, especially at home in the U.S.A. and Great Britain, was hitherto not known in many places of Germany. This was going to be changed – and this is what Curt Frenzel, who set the standards for the “Schwäbische Landeszeitung”, later called “Augsburger Allgemeine”, was standing for, too. For Curt Frenzel, born in the year 1900 in Dresden, the new newspaper was going to be his life’s work. The deputy editor of the “Chemnitzer Volksstimme” who had been prohibited by the Nazis to work in his profession, was imprisoned and lost his vitals. However, after “Zero Hour” his hour should come. On that memorable October 30, 1945, the day of the License award, Frenzel talked about the capitol crime of the National Socialism, its other brutal crimes, the Concentration Camps and the offences of the German military. He called the victorious Allies “Befreier” (saviours) – and anticipated thus Richard von Weizsäcker’s famous definition of May 8, 1945.

(See speech of Bundespräsident Richard von Weizsäcker at the 40th Anniversary of the End of WW II in Europe Ceremony on 08/05/1985 in the German Bundestag.)

 

Here you can have a look at the first edition of the “Schwäbische Landeszeitung”, dated 30/10/1945

 

The newspaper “DIE ZEIT”, dated 11/09/2008, printed a report by Haug von Kuenheim about the award of Licence No 7 by the Military Government for the “Schwäbische Landeszeitung”.

http://www.zeit.de/2008/38/A-Zeitungsgruendung

 

Curt Frenzel
Imprint

upward