Research on the history, culture and society of the Weimar Republic
In the current issue of Comparativ, Bernhard Fulda compares the emergence of public opinion polls and political public relations management from the 1930s:
Bernhard Fulda: ‘The Market Place of Political Opinions: Public Opinion Polling and its Publics in Transnational Perspective, 1930-1950’, S. 13
In the current edition of Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, Corey Ross gives an introduction to the social history of film and radio, the ‘new media’ of the Weimar era. He paint an ambivalent picture, highlighting both their democratizing effect across old class divides as well as the potential to itensify political and social friction.
>> Contents page (pdf, in German)
The entire back catalogue (1918-1933) of Die Weltbühne, one of the most important forums for leftist intellectuals in the Weimar Republic, has been uploaded to the Internet Archive. It can be viewed online or downloaded as PDF under the Creative Commons license.
The Staatsbibliothek Berlin offers a digitized, fully searchable archive of the Vossische Zeitung, charting the whole development of the Weimar Republic: ‘The Vossische Zeitung is one of the most outstanding sources for the study of political reporting and public opinion in Germany. The Vossische Zeitung Online 1918 – 1934 database contains every issue of the Berlin daily newspaper from the end of World War I to the beginning of the “Third Reich” with all of the newspaper’s coverage and commentaries on the political, social and cultural events of that epoch.’
To access this resource, you have to be logged into the network of the Staatsbibliothek as a registered user.
The press of the German minority in Poland is the topic of this new publication:
This new volume on the history of the mass media in Europe includes some interesting articles on the role of radio in German society (1930-1960) and catholic media policy (1920-1970):
Ute Daniel and Axel Schildt (eds.): Massenmedien im Europa des 20. Jahrhunderts
The official history of German public relations generally starts after 1945, when major agencies were set up and most companys built up their own corporate pr departments following US standards. This new publication (based on an MA thesis handed in at the Freie Universtät Berlin) shows that the industry had been established much earlier and that corporate pr had been firmly established already in the 1920s and 30s.
