Die Weltbühne

The foundation of Die Schaubühne was an indirect result of plagiarism involving Siegfried Jacobsohn, the 23-year-old theater critic for the Welt am Montag (‘World on Monday’).

In the opening article of its first issue, titled Zum Geleit (‘In Preface’), Jacobsohn wrote of his conviction that "the character of a nation and a specific time is expressed more vividly in drama than in any other form of literature".

The motto displayed on the cover of the first four issues was a quote from Friedrich Schiller's essay Die Schaubühne als moralische Anstalt betrachtet (‘The Theater Viewed as a Moral Institution’): “As surely as visual representation has a more powerful effect than lifeless letters and cold narrations, just as surely does the theater have a deeper and longer lasting effect than morals and laws.” This was an indication of how Jacobsohn wanted his enterprise to be understood: as enlightenment in the spirit of classicism.

The great importance attached to artistic debates at that time was due in part to the fact that the arts were less subject to repression in the German Empire under Emperor Wilhelm II than politics and journalism.

In subsequent years writers such as Lion Feuchtwanger, Robert Walser and Harry Kahn, as well as the theater critic Herbert Ihering, also joined the enterprise.

Unlike Kerr he was a resolute critic of naturalism and held Max Reinhardt's achievements as a theater director and manager in far higher esteem than those of Otto Brahm.

In order to keep the paper from appearing too "Tucholsky-heavy", he adopted three pseudonyms in 1913 which he retained until the end of his publishing career: Ignaz Wrobel, Theobald Tiger and Peter Panter (‘panther’).

In November 1915, under the pseudonym ‘Cunctator’ (Procrastinator), journalist Robert Breuer launched a series of articles critical of the policies of the German government and the political state of the Reich.

Transformed into ‘Germanicus’, Breuer returned to the paper in January 1916 as a commentator and, in spite of his pseudonym, led a permanent fight against the annexation demands of the Pan-German League.

After the initial successes of the German spring offensive in 1918, Jacobsohn's editorialist Robert Breuer moved away from his hitherto anti-annexation position and abandoned the paper's previous line in other areas as well.

In March 1919 Tucholsky defended himself in the programmatic text "We the Negatives" against accusation that he did not view the new republic positively enough: "We cannot say yes to a people which, even today, is in a condition which, had the war by chance ended favorably, would have led us to fear the worst.

We cannot say yes to a country obsessed with collectivity, and to which the corporation stands far above the individual.” In the following years the Weltbühne took a strictly pacifist and anti-militarist course, calling for a harsh reaction by the Republic to the numerous political assassinations and even during the occupation of the Ruhr urging fulfillment of the peace terms laid down in the Treaty of Versailles.

Although Jacobsohn knew that he was exposing himself to great personal danger, he began on 18 August 1925 to publish manuscripts about the murders provided by the former Freikorps member Carl Mertens.

From there she tried to continue to exercise influence on the journal, which had been forced to move its editorial headquarters to Prague after the Austrian Parliament was deprived of power by Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuß.

[3] Under the influence of Budzislawski, an economic journalist close to the communists who had been an occasional contributor to the Weltbühne in Berlin, Edith Jacobsohn made a break with Schlamm.

More recent research, based on an evaluation of the editorial archive, assumes that Budzislawski wanted to take over the leadership of the Neue Weltbühne for reasons of personal reputation and as a staunch opponent of Hitler.

An application for the reissue of a license certificate in 1962 stated: "It should be particularly emphasized that among these matters, one of the tasks that was considered and accepted was the influencing of intellectual circles at home and abroad, especially in West Germany.

"[4] In cases of doubt, the editors decided in favor of current political requirements and against the magazine’s tradition, as can be seen from an internal statement from the mid-1950s: "In the past – before 1933 – the Weltbühne, especially under the leadership of Carl von Ossietzky and Kurt Tucholsky, had unfortunately embraced pacifist trends unconditionally.

In the subsequent appeal proceedings before the regional high court at Frankfurt, the publisher's interim owner, Bernd F. Lunkewitz, attempted to reach an out-of-court settlement with Jacobsohn.

The editors of the paper were therefore completely surprised by Lunkewitz's unilateral action and added their own statement to his declaration: "The cast of the Weltbühne stands stunned at the front of the stage, takes off its hat, bows to its loyal audience and lets it be known: We can think of nothing more to say about this dirty trick!"

Such independence was also a reason why, despite the not exactly opulent fees, an author like Tucholsky kept returning to the Weltbühne and published works there that he could not get printed in middle-class papers like the Vossische Zeitung or the Berliner Tageblatt.

The background to the criticism was probably the fact that from the very beginning of the Weimar Republic, the Weltbühne did not allow itself to be pinned down to the particular political position of any party and did not see its ideas of a democratic and social Germany realized by any of them.

Until the end of the Weimar Republic, the paper accused the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in particular of having betrayed the ideals of the November Revolution and of not having broken vigorously enough with the traditions of the German Empire.

(...) In Berlin, Teiteles is allowed to calmly write that the 'Kahr government is laughable', but if he comes down to us and says something like that, he’ll get such an old-fashioned Bavarian face-slapping that the fat he's stored up will be beaten right into butter.

-- Anonymous (Ludwig Thoma) in the Miesbach Anzeiger, 2 February 1921 The Weltbühne was not only closely followed – and attacked – by representatives of the radical political right but also admired for its concept and linguistic standards.

Also noteworthy is a comment by the young conservative publisher Heinrich von Gleichen-Rußwurm, who combined his criticism of the Weltbühne's stance with a sharp disapproval of anti-Semitic rabble-rousing: "We refuse to defame the authors we oppose as Jews.

In addition to this, the authors of the Weltbühne deny us the easier possibility which the second rank of this race offers, namely, the possibility of dismissing them by pointing out their linguistic incapacity, in short, their 'jabbering'; Peter Panter, Theobald Tiger – alias Kurt Tucholsky – and also Weinert and Kaminski jabber at most in excitement; otherwise they write a German which we would like to wish on the National Socialist press chiefs and student councils along with the faculty for German studies."

"The Weltbühne is a tribune in which the entire German left, in the broadest meaning of the word, has a voice; we demand from our staff clarity, personal rectitude and a good style.

Whether this principle is correct or not is another question; it is how I took over the paper from my late teacher Siegfried Jacobsohn, and it is how I passed it on to Carl von Ossietzky, who did not deviate a finger’s width from this direction.

Politische Vernunft für die Verteidigung der Republik gegen ultralinke 'Systemkritik' und Volksfront-Illusionen, [Leopold Schwarzschild versus Carl v. Ossietzky.