Satire: The “Eulenspiegel”: Alternative ideas about party discipline

At the beginning of May 1954, the “Eulenspiegel” started as a weekly paper for satire and humor. It had a predecessor called “Frischer Wind”, founded at the Berlin unification party conference of the KPD and SPD in April 1946. Lex Ende, the editor-in-chief of the new SED central organ “Neues Deutschland”, wanted to shine as head of entertainment at the same time. For the cheaply presented joke paper, named after a Soviet operetta by Isaak Dunayevsky, the Stalin military administration supplied the name, newspaper license and the complete model of the unified party. It’s piquant that at the same time, under US license, left-wing anti-fascists in West Berlin were producing an “organ for literature, art, satire” every two weeks called “Ulenspiegel.” It had more quality than the “Fresh Wind” and then, when the Cold War began in 1948, it also moved under Soviet license and was discontinued in 1950. The “fresh wind” now blew alone, with full force from the blowpipes of the Cold War.

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The founding of the Eulenspiegel was the result of a temporary political thaw after Stalin’s death in 1953 and the uprising of June 17th. In 1954 came the wave of new establishments: cabarets in all large cities and print media based on bourgeois tradition such as “Wochenpost”, “Magazin” and “Sibylle”. And the “Fresh Wind” became the “Eulenspiegel”, initiated on May 1, 1954 as a new project by the previous chief windmaker Walter Heynowski, who later became famous as a documentary filmmaker. It was a new magazine published by its own new publisher. “I had a satirical empire in mind (…) and, astonishingly, my daring project was approved,” Heynowski said in 2006. The SED Central Committee decided everything – even if the government press office was responsible for the magazine and the Ministry of Culture for the book publisher.

Heynowski hijacked the abandoned bank building of the Pferdemenges Bank in Bonn on Kronenstrasse in Berlin and combined the artistic and literary satire of “Ulenspiegel” in the new weekly paper. with the popular humor of “Fresh Wind” on 16 pages. Just two years later, Heynowski left the magazine to found the TV radio documentary studio in Berlin-Adlershof. Heinz H. Schmidt, an experienced newspaper editor for the exiled KPD who had emigrated from England, came as his successor from the “Magazin”. Before that, as an emigrant from the West, like Lex Ende, he had endured increasing punishments and humiliations in the party.

In 1957, in the “Eulenspiegel,” commonly known as “Eule,” Schmidt introduced the layout that was valid for decades, alternating black-and-white and color pages: politically current affairs in black and white at the front, culture and reading history in the middle, and concrete criticism of “passivists” and so on at the back a picture story with sequels. In color, domestic and foreign policy alternate. Lighter laugh food either on the cover or on the back.

Old masters such as Fritz Koch-Gotha, Wilmar Riegenring and Georg Wilke were adorned with original graphic manuscripts. Karl Schrader and Kurt Klamann even developed their own style for the “Eule”. A generation later, Heinz Behling, Louis Rauwolf, Harri Parschau, Peter Dittrich, Henry Büttner and I also took off. Then Manfred Bofinger, Barbara Henniger, Peter Muzeniek, Heinz Jankofsky and Reiner Schwalme joined. Hansgeorg Stengel’s puns found the literary style for the “Owl” in the editorial direction, in his own verses and in the joke version of the puzzles. The other prominent text authors such as John Stave, CU Wiesner, Renate Holland-Moritz, Rudi Strahl, Ulrich Speitel and Ernst Röhl started out as editors and became particularly well-known as owl book authors.

The harshness of criticism that Heinz H. Schmidt’s editorials, signed “That was Till’s projectile,” delivered from April to November 1956 remained unique. “The ›Eulenspiegel editor-in-chief carried out courageous satire, presented ideas for a democratic socialism including a democratic public as well as alternative ideas of party discipline,” said Sylvia Klötzer in her 2006 study “Satire and Power – Film, Newspaper, Cabaret in the GDR.”

This could no longer be said of his successors. Gerd Nagel, who played the boss from 1967 to 1989, retroactively stated: “The ‘Eulenspiegel’ For me and my predecessors, he was an original child of the GDR. That stood and fell with this system. We were not a fifth column, a nest of resistance. We wanted to make the GDR better …” However, in addition to the extensive reader mail, investigations by the little-known “Workers’ and Farmers’ Inspection” were often used for investigative research. This could be very unpleasant for the officials – and a necessary critical outlet for the audience.

Political supervision was carried out by the Central Committee of the SED as editor. The editor had previously intervened as a censor four times. Incriminated pages were reprinted each time at the expense of the responsible editors. Things were different at the turn of the year 1957/1958: the Kretzschmar portraits of leading GDR politicians, which were maintained until 1963, opened with the bang of a New Year’s Eve central page. Twelve rulers had their own comments printed on them, only Ulbricht had made a mistake. Schmidt’s public reaction to the Ulbricht caricature not being printed cost him his job. The center page appeared – and at the same time he appeared in the photo with the rejected portrait of the party leader in his hand and the words “Some things take care of themselves” in the illustrated magazine “Freie Welt”.

After him, another emigrant from the West, Peter Nelken, came up. Until his death from cancer in 1966, he tried to practice liberality in keeping with the “Owl”. If Ulbricht didn’t look so severe as a caricature, it was also printed in 1963. From 1967 to 1989, Gerd Nagel ensured the continuity of criticism that was as effective as possible. During his time, circulation increased from 300,000 to 500,000 copies. The coveted subscription to the Gazette, which was inexpensive at 30 pfennigs per issue, was happily passed on. But the explosiveness of 1989 only becomes apparent in the issues from December onwards. Now there was a fireworks display of “turnaround” jokes. In 1991 the relaunch began as a more sophisticated monthly satirical magazine. Conscious of tradition, but free and independent. Private sector in high-performance printing together with many new employees from West and East.

Harald Kretzschmar, born in 1931, was a freelance illustrator for the weekly magazine “Eulenspiegel” since August 1955. Among other things, he published a total of 1,361 portraits there.

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