Der Landser

Der Landser (literally private, common soldier) was a German pulp magazine published by Pabel-Moewig and featuring mostly stories in World War II settings. The magazine was founded in 1954[1] by writer and former Luftwaffe officer Bertold K. Jochim (1921-2002), who worked as its editor-in-chief until 1999. In September 2013 the Bauer Media Group, its last owner, ceased publishing the magazine.[1][2]

Der Landser
Der Landser work by Franz Kurowski. His narratives in this series appeared under his own name and under pseudonyms Karl Kollatz and Karl Alman.
EditorBertold K. Jochim
AuthorsPaul Carell
Günther Fraschka
Franz Kurowski
CountryGermany
LanguageGerman
GenreWar story—fiction
PublisherPabel Moewig, a subsidiary of Bauer Media Group
Publication date
1954 to 2013
Media typePrint
OCLC313406814

History and profile

The magazine asserted that its war stories were true and that their underlying message was one of peace. In fact many of their stories came with disclaimer reminding the reader of the horrors of war. Critics, however, dismissed such claims as pure lip service to avoid getting indexed by West Germany's Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons which started to index several of their editions in the 1950s.[3]

From its founding, the magazine was criticized for glorifying war and delivering a distorted image of the Wehrmacht and Nazi Germany during World War II. The content of novels was accurate regarding minor technical details, but its descriptions were often not authentic and withheld important contextual information from the reader. Antisemitism, German war crimes, the repressive nature of the German government, and the causes of the war were not mentioned.[4] Germany's leading news magazine Der Spiegel described Der Landser once as the expert journal for the whitewashing of the Wehrmacht ("Fachorgan für die Verklärung der Wehrmacht").[5]

The publisher of the magazine was Pabel Moewig, a subsidiary of Bauer Media Group.[1] In September 2013, Bauer Media Group said it would cease publication of Der Landser following complaints from the Simon Wiesenthal Center.[2] The magazine was closed down on 13 September 2013.[1]

Authors

See also

Notes
  1. Carla Bleiker (16 September 2013). "Publishing house terminates German pulp mag 'Der Landser'". Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 14 April 2015.
  2. Jack Ewing (13 September 2013). "German Magazine Said to Glorify Nazis Will End". The New York Times. Retrieved 10 August 2014.
  3. Corinna Bochmann: Jugendgefährdende Medien im Rechtsextremismus aus Sicht der BPJM (PDF). S.1. Jahrestagung 2006.
  4. Torben Fischer, Matthias N. Lorenz: Lexikon der "Vergangenheitsbewältigung" in Deutschland: Debatten- und Diskursgeschichte des Nationalsozialismus nach 1945. transcript Verlag 2007, ISBN 978-3-89942-773-8, p. 116 (online copy, p. 116, at Google Books) (German)
  5. Kampferprobte Verbände. In DER SPIEGEL 32/1998 3 August 1998, p. 28

Further reading
  • Dirk Wilking: "Der Landser" - Wie ein Mann ein Mann wird (pdf). In Wolfram Hülsemann, Michael Kohlstruck (Hrsg): Mobiles Beratungsteam - Einblicke. Brandenburgische Universitätsdruckerei 2004, ISBN 3-00-015288-1, p. 61-95 (German)
  • Torben Fischer, Matthias N. Lorenz: Lexikon der "Vergangenheitsbewältigung" in Deutschland: Debatten- und Diskursgeschichte des Nationalsozialismus nach 1945. transcript Verlag 2007, ISBN 978-3-89942-773-8, pp. 115–117 (online copy, p. 115, at Google Books) (German)
  • Hagen Fleischer: The Past Beneath the present (pdf). Historein Volume 4 (2003-4), p. 65
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