History
After the foundation of the German Empire in 1871, the Frankfurter Zeitung became an important mouthpiece of the liberal bourgeois extra-parliamentary opposition. It advocated peace in Europe before 1914 and during World War I.
During the period of the Weimar Republic, the paper was treated with hostility by nationalist circles because it had pronounced itself in favour of the Treaty of Versailles in 1918. At that time it no longer stood in opposition to the government and supported Gustav Stresemann's policy of reconciliation.
The Frankfurter Zeitung was one of the few democratic papers of that time. It was known in particular for its feuilleton, edited by Benno Reifenberg, in which works of most of the great minds of the Weimar Republic were published.
After the 1933 seizure of power by the Nazis, several Jewish contributors had to leave the Frankfurter Zeitung, such as Siegfried Kracauer and Walter Benjamin. Because it was convenient for propaganda abroad, the paper was initially protected by Propaganda Minister Goebbels. Dictator Adolf Hitler banned the newspaper in 1943.
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung considers itself somewhat as a successor organisation to the Zeitung, as many former journalists of the Frankfurter Zeitung helped to launch it after 1946.
Read more about this topic: Frankfurter Zeitung
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“If you look at history you’ll find that no state has been so plagued by its rulers as when power has fallen into the hands of some dabbler in philosophy or literary addict.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
“The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)