Print Price: $147.00

Format:
Hardback
336 pp.
15 integrated halftones and five tables, 156 mm x 234 mm

ISBN-13:
9780199547784

Publication date:
August 2009

Imprint: OUP UK

Press and Politics in the Weimar Republic

Bernhard Fulda

Press and Politics offers a new interpretation of the fate of Germany's first democracy and the advent of Hitler's Third Reich. It is the first study to explore the role of the press in the politics of the Weimar Republic, and to ask how influential it really was in undermining democratic values.

Anyone who seeks to understand the relationship between the press and politics in Germany at this time has to confront a central problem. Newspapers certainly told their readers how to vote, especially at election time. It was widely accepted that the press wielded immense political power. And yet power ultimately fell to Adolf Hitler, a radical politician whose party press had been strikingly unsuccessful.

Press and Politics unravels this apparent paradox by focusing on Berlin, the political centre of the Weimar Republic and the capital of the German press. The book examines the complex relationship between media presentation, popular reception, and political attitudes in this period. What was the relationship between newspaper circulation and electoral behaviour? Which papers did well, and why? What was the nature of political coverage in the press? Who was most influenced by it? Bernhard Fulda addresses all these questions and more, looking at the nature and impact of newspaper reporting on German politics, politicians, and voters. He shows how the press personalized politics, how politicians were turned into celebrities or hate figures, and how - through deliberate distortions - individual newspapers succeeded in building up a plausible, partisan counter-reality.

Readership : Scholars and students of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazism, and of media studies

Reviews

• `Review from previous edition This is a highly original study that fills a gaping hole in the literature on Weimar Germany. Focusing on Berlin, but always with an eye to the 'national' picture, Fulda's work offers not so much a history of the press in the Weimar years as a history of the Republic through the lens of the press. The links he forges between political coverage, entertainment and the increasing consumer orientation of publishers and readers alike show how much we can gain by approaching politics as an integral part of popular culture, and vice-versa.
  '
  Corey Ross, University of Birmingham