Introduction
German Anti-Semitism and the Press during the Weimar Republic, 1918-1933
This project is supplementing our current research project which investigates, from a comparative and transnational perspective, the coverage of German anti-Semitism during the Weimar Republic in the international press, taking as examples Great Britain, France, Italy, Austria, and the United States. Importantly, the project asks to what extent information was exchanged across national borders, thereby enabling foreign audiences to form an opinion about German anti-Semitism prior to the rise of Nazism.
In this process, a key role was played by the German daily press. Since German articles were often quoted verbatim or in substance by foreign papers, they contributed considerably to the shaping of the public perception of Weimar anti-Semitism abroad. However, the relationship between the press and anti-Semitism in the Weimar Republic is a little researched field. We still lack a comprehensive study of the role of the German press in spreading or combating anti-Semitism.
With the project subsidies we therefore aim to investigate the state of research in regard to the relationship between the German press and anti-Semitism during the Weimar Republic and to compile a comprehensive bibliography. Moreover, we are building up a list of digitised German and foreign newspapers dating from the years 1918-1933. This compilation will be useful as a starting point for further research from a comparative and transnational perspective.
During 2014-2017 the project has received funding from the University of Bremen’s institutional strategy ‘Ambitious and Agile’ under the Excellence Initiative launched by the German Federal Government and the German Federal States (M8 Post-Doc Initiative PLUS, € 9.986,00).
Stephanie Seul
