Jump to content

Das Kleine Blatt

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Das Kleine Blatt
Type
  • Daily newspaper
  • Weekly newspaper
Founded1 March 1927
LanguageGerman
Ceased publication26 June 1971
HeadquartersVienna
CountryAustria
Sister newspapersArbeiter-Zeitung

Das Kleine Blatt (German: The Little Paper) was an Austrian newspaper which was published in Vienna. The paper was affiliated with the Social Democratic Workers' Party, known as the Social Democratic Party. It was started in 1927 and published until 1971 with some interruptions.

History and profile

[edit]

The first issue of Das Kleine Blatt appeared on 1 March 1927.[1][2] It was started as a daily newspaper with a small format which was kept until 1944.[1][3] The paper was inspired from the British penny press.[4] Julius Braunthal was its founding editor-in-chief.[5] Johann Hirsch and Karl Ausch were its editors.[1] It was published by Vorwarts, a publishing company of the Social Democratic Workers' Party.[3] Many inexperienced journalists were employed at Das Kleine Blatt, including Karl Hans Sailer, Marianne Pollak, Jakob Meth, Ludwig Wagner and Walter Süss.[3]

The goal of the paper was to make an indirect propaganda for social democracy with entertaining contributions.[3] Das Kleine Blatt was not a theoretical publication like Arbeiter-Zeitung, another newspaper of the Social Democratic Workers' Party.[3] However, it was an ardent critic of the Nazis claiming that the Nazi Party was the biggest enemy of the Austrian working class.[6] In the first issue Das Kleine Blatt did not feature an editorial, but an illustration on its cover page.[7] Ladislaus Kmoch's comic character Tobias Seicherl was published daily in the paper from 1930 becoming Austria's first daily comic strip.[3] In the early period Das Kleine Blatt had a sports supplement.[8]

From March 1933 Das Kleine Blatt and other Austrian publications were subject to state censorship.[2] On 12 February 1934 the paper was banned, and Julius Braunthal left the paper.[1][3] However, two weeks later it was revived as a state-backed newspaper for workers.[1] In March 1938 the newspaper began to support the National Socialists.[1] During this period it featured antisemitic cartoons.[9]

On 31 August 1944 the paper was merged with another publication and was renamed as Kleine Wiener Kriegszeitung.[2] It appeared under this title until 6 April 1945.[2] After two-year hiatus it was restarted with its original title on 14 June 1947 as the weekly newspaper of the Social Democratic Party.[2] Das Kleine Blatt ceased publication on 26 June 1971.[2]

Circulation and readership

[edit]

In the first year Das Kleine Blatt sold nearly 136,000 copies.[1] Its circulation was 200,000 copies in 1934.[1]

In a study carried out in the 1930s it was found that of 1,320 Viennese female factory workers 48,2% read Das Kleine Blatt.[4] Its readership rate was much higher than those of other Social Democratic Workers' Party publications Die Unzufriedene and Arbeiter-Zeitung of which readership rates were 21,4% and 28,8%, respectively.[4]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b c d e f g h "Das Kleine Blatt". dasrotewien.at (in German). Retrieved 7 July 2023.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Reinhard Müller (June 2010). "Das Kleine Blatt". agso.uni-graz.at (in German). Retrieved 7 July 2023.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g "Das Kleine Blatt". litkult1920er.aau.at (in German). Retrieved 7 July 2023.
  4. ^ a b c Brigitte Bargetz (2019). "Affective Attachments: Women's Suffrage in Austria and the Social Democratic Struggle for Women's Votes in Die Unzufriedene". Frontiers in Sociology. 4: 28. doi:10.3389/fsoc.2019.00028. PMC 8022500. PMID 33869352.
  5. ^ Edward Timms (2006). "School for Socialism: Karl Seitz and the Cultural Politics of Vienna". Austrian Studies. 14: 47. JSTOR 27944800.
  6. ^ Michael Carter-Sinclair (2021). Vienna's 'respectable' antisemites: A study of the Christian Social movement. Manchester: Manchester University Press. p. 189. ISBN 9781526144874.
  7. ^ Deborah Holmes (2006). "The Feuilleton of the Viennese "Arbeiter-Zeitung" 1918–1934: Production Parameters and Personality Problems". Austrian Studies. 14: 103. doi:10.1353/aus.2006.0013. JSTOR 27944802. S2CID 147673876.
  8. ^ Robert F. Wheeler (April 1978). "Organized Sport and Organized Labour: The Workers' Sports Movement". Journal of Contemporary History. 13 (2): 199. doi:10.1177/002200947801300202. JSTOR 260113. S2CID 144129550.
  9. ^ "Image Library". The New Humanitarian. Retrieved 8 July 2023.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Das_Kleine_Blatt&oldid=1198190618"