The Refugee's Best Friend

Its dingy, fourth-floor Manhattan offices resemble a countinghouse out of Charles Dickens. There is no city room rush, no Teletype staccato. The 27 staffers are mostly elderly women. Yet the weekly German-language Aufbau (Reconstruction) is one of the biggest (circ. 30,129) and most influential foreign-language papers in the U.S. Edited by stocky, effervescent Dr. (of Law) Manfred George, 66, Aufbau is an outstanding example of a paper that has bucked a 50-year-long decline in the U.S. foreign-language press.* This week, as it celebrates its 25th anniversary with a Waldorf dinner, Aufbau can and does trace its success directly to the fact that in the desperate days of Nazi Germany, it was the voice of help and hope for thousands of Jewish refugees.

Editor George was himself a refugee. He fled Germany in 1933, arrived almost penniless in the U.S. in 1938, got a $15-a-month job editing Aufbau, then a four-page monthly put out by New York's German Jewish Club (now the New World Club, it still owns Aufbau). George turned Aufbau into a weekly, built up circulation by offering its subscribers English lessons, information about naturalization, jobs and housing. Today Aufbau reflects the change in its times: it features first-rate theater and opera reviews, columns on the stock market, chess, stamp collecting and photography. Its famed "search column," which helped refugees trace their families after World War II, has given way to a supplement devoted to aiding Jews in establishing their claims for restitution from the German government.

Yet Aufbau, says Manfred George, has "never stressed the concept of collective guilt for Germany." This policy has paid off in cordial relations with the German government. In 1951 Theodor Heuss, President of West Germany, gave Aufbau an exclusive on the decision of the West German government to pay restitution to Jews for property they lost under Hitler.

To get Aufbau to its subscribers in 49 states and 83 foreign countries, George works 14 hours a day seven days a week in a shabby office cluttered with pictures of such old friends as Marlene Dietrich (he wrote her first biography), Albert Schweitzer, and Thomas Mann. Most of Aufbau's feature articles come from outside contributors and George does the drama and movie reviews himself. With 60% of its space devoted to ads. Aufbau turns a handsome profit, last year gave $47,700 to needy refugees.

Because of its personalized approach to its readers, Aufbau has developed a stout reader loyalty, gone far to uphold Editor George's claims that it has grown into "a paper for uprooted people all over the world." Wrote one Aufbau reader: "Gratitude alone would be an important factor in my continuing to read the paper."

* In the World War I era, there were some 2,000 foreign-language periodicals in the U.S. with an estimated total circulation of 10,000,000. Today there are only some 800 with an estimated total circulation of 4,000,000.

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