When TIME reappeared on German newsstands two months ago after seven years' absence, Journalist Peter Weidenreich thought that the blow ought to be softened. A native Berliner who left Germany for the U.S. about the time Hitler's Wehrmacht moved into Austria, became a naturalized American citizen, served with SHAEF's Psychological Warfare Division (as radio commentator and editor of German-language newspapers) in the late war, Weidenreich figured that TIME would be a stiff jolt for Germans accustomed to the controlled misinformation of Herr Gocbbels' press. To help make TIME more intelligible to German readers, he wrote the following piece (given here in translation) for Berlin's Tagesspiegel. Although I disagree with some of his observations, I found his viewpoint interesting and believe you will, too:

"I can well remember the astonishment with which, as a newly naturalized American citizen, I first saw TIME Magazine. I thought that I had gained a working knowledge of America and the American idiom through dictionaries and constant reading of the New York Times, but I nearly gave up when I saw the miniature package of world events between the covers of TIME. Names mentioned in the telegram-like articles were usually unknown to me; parts of its contents seemed incomprehensible, others without meaning. The pushed-together political reviews which, like other stories coming from dozens of sources, were all strung through the same needle's eye, were a complete mystery to me. And then the captions; and the language altogether. I gave up.

"Today, Friday means TIMEday to me. After years of reading the magazine I am now content not to find some events which all other papers wrote up, but to find others, which the New York Times had disregarded, take on new meaning when brought together with the other occurrences in their field. The reader sits in the needle's eye where all the news is being pulled through, and he is amazed.

"This week I read that TIME will be sold once more in Berlin--together with the Taegliche Rundschau, the Telegraf, the Kurier, and the Tagesspiegel. The results should be interesting. Perhaps some explanations will be in order, so that the 'New Germany' won't mistake a critique of President Truman as the first step by certain political elements to start a 'putsch' or news about Russian officers being arrested somewhere as the beginning of a new war. Here, therefore, are some comments that may help in reading TIME:

"This magazine belongs to a private enterprise; it is not controlled by any officials of any kind, and is NOT the official American mouthpiece.

"It is meant for American readers; it is not tailored for your consumption.

"TIME presumes its readers to have a thorough knowledge of current events, and expects them to follow the news in daily papers also.

"Its [picture] captions will be almost unintelligible as far as you are concerned. Don't worry too much about them; even many Americans don't (I still have to read the captions twice and three times).

"TIME believes, no, knows it's always right. If you disagree with anything in it, they will throw their mighty machine of newsgatherers into third gear and somehow prove you wrong, even if it's terribly costly.

"I just hope that this new mental nourishment won't be too much to take for readers whose fare used to be the Goebbels' controlled press only."

TIME is one problem Germans would not have had to meet if Hitler had won the war.

Cordially,

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