Death of the F.Z.

Death approached what was once one of the world's renowned newspapers. From Frankfurt-am-Main came news that on Aug. 31 the 86-year-old Frankfurter Zeitung will cease publication because of "a shortage of manpower and materials."

Before 1933 the F.Z. was probably the best paper in the Reich. Thorough, honest, culturally excellent, crusading, well edited, it had a circulation of some 250,000 (large for Europe) at its peak, a considerable circulation outside Germany.

The F.Z.'s owners were Jewish liberals. When Adolf Hitler began "Aryanizing" the German press, the F.Z. was taken from the Simon family (descendants of Founder Leopold Sonnemann) and taken over by German Aryans.

The F.Z. managed for a while to retain fragments of its integrity. It occasionally criticized by inference and innuendo, subtly interlarding from Hitler's past speeches.

The best example, perhaps, of F.Z.'s continuing struggle to be independent came after the British attack at Taranto in late 1940. While all other German papers were printing the Italian version of the action, F.Z. baldly said: "Some devil-may-care, foolhardy British airmen succeeded in firing torpedoes at Italian warships and damage was done to the young Italian fleet, which is only in most painful growing stages. The loss suffered will be felt for a long time."

Such indiscretions undoubtedly had something to do with the F.Z.'s death. But just as responsible, if not more so, was the fact that the F.Z.'s onetime liberal influence was still coveted by German liberals. With a newsprint famine, the Nazi Party organs would be the ones to stay, such papers as the Frankfurter Zeitung the ones to go.

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