THE GERMAN PRESS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 128, 1 June 1934, Page 6

THE GERMAN PRESS.

The "abject submission" to which the Press has been reduced in those countries of Europe that have yielded toVlictatorships was stressed by the president of the National Union of Journalists in his address to the annual delegate- meeting that has just ended (eays. the "Manchester Guardian"). His words were forcibly illustrated by the death on Saturday of one of the most famous of German newspapers, the "Voessische Zeitung," familiarly known as "Auntie Voss." For more than two centuries the "Vossische Zeitung" has espoused the cause of liberal thought among the German middle classes.. Its collapse under the blight of Nazi domination leaves a gap in the ranks of civilised journalism, and one which, alas! is not likely to be filled. Of the other great papers that gave free play to ideas; in Germany and made her name known to readers abroad, the ".Frankfurter Zeitung." the "Berliner Tageblatt," and the "Kolnisclie Zeitung" remain, but on sufferance and as scarcely disguised mouthpieces of the Nazi regime. The smaller journals and the independent provincial papers have been dying in dozens, and those that arc left speak with one voice as a condition of their survival. The result is the one that might have been expected. An increasing proportion of the German people is ceasing to be interested in newspapers or is seeking a truer perspective of world and I national affairs from such information as it I can get from abroad. The "Frankfurter Zeitung" faces the problem in an article whose author, speaking for German journalists as a body, asks "Are we boring?" The answer is not in doubt. Whatever the talent of the writer, compulsion to utter daily the same parrot cries will blunt the liveliest mind. That the German newspaper reader should bo dis- ' covering this ie not surprising, but that a jour- j mil of the prestige and history of the "Vos- ji sLsche Zeitung" should die of the process is i a blow to free journalism, Ji