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TheKampfverlag (official name:Kampfverlag GmbH; "Struggle-Publisher") was aGerman publishing house that existed from1926 to1930. The publishing house gained particular importance as the journalistic mouthpiece of the wing of theNSDAP around the brothersGregor andOtto Strasser.
The beginnings of Kampfverlag go back to the year1925: At that time, the pharmacist Gregor Strasser, who had been running a drugstore inLandshut since1920 and had been a member of theLandtag of Bavaria and theReichstag since1924, decided to pursue his civil profession - which he had been doing for years had severely neglected his political engagement - to finally give up in favor of a job as a full-time politician. Together with his brother Otto and the PomeranianGauleiterTheodor Vahlen, who had joined the NSDAP in the course of1925, Strasser decided to set up a National Socialist publishing house that would support the expansion of the party to areas outside ofBavaria, especiallynorthern Germany, should give journalistic support. In contrast to the actual in-house publishing house of the NSDAP, theFranz-Eher-Verlag, the new publishing house was to put a clearer accent onsocialist positions and address the urban working class in particular.
The Strasser brothers took the first step on the way to their own publishing house with the publication of theNationalsozialistischen Briefe starting in the autumn of 1925. The Kampfverlag was founded on1 March 1926. The publishing house was based nearBerlin. The name was influenced by the Nazi idea of the conflict between the "movement" on the one hand and the existing state on the other for political power. In the years that followed, the publisher bought a number of existing newspapers in quick succession and brought them onto theStrasserist line. In addition to the Strasser brothers,Hans Hinkel held a one-third stake in the publishing house and temporarily acted as editor.[1] According to Otto Strasser, the publishing house had eleven weekly newspapers in its program in 1926 and later three daily newspapers. A total of eight newspapers and magazines were published by the publishing house.[2] In addition, there were individual book publications as well as countless brochures, leaflets, advertising leaflets and other comparable media for political advertising work. The brothers brought the tendency of their publications to the formula in which they proclaimed the mouthpiece of a socialism that was "equally hostile toWestern capitalism andEastern Bolshevism".
The costs for founding the publishing house were covered by loans and guarantees, which the founders took out from friends of political sympathy: The industrialist Bruck contributed a loan of 4,000RM to found the Kampfverlag. Among other things, the profits made from the sale of the Strasser's drugstore served as a guarantee. Since the drugstore had been acquired from Strasser's wife Else's dowry, she was de jure a co-owner of the publishing house. After working for almost two years, Kampfverlag was in the green from 1928. Since the drugstore had been acquired from Strasser's wife Else's dowry, she was de jure a co-owner of the publishing house. After working for almost two years, Kampfverlag was in the green from1928. While Gregor Strasser took on the duties of editor and – following his childhood dream of becoming a journalist – contributed numerous articles, Otto Strasser was the editor-in-chief of the Strassersche Zeitungen. Other employees of the Kampfverlags newspapers includedHans Hinkel,Walther Darré and the draftsmanHans Schweitzer.
Within the NSDAP, the journalistic activities of the Kampfverlag and in particular the extensive independence that the Strasser brothers developed in this way from theMunich party leadership, led to various conflicts: On the one hand, there were tensions withMax Amann and the leadership of theEher-Verlag, who were displeased with the loss of their monopoly over the Nazi press and journalism. More importantly, however, the publisher's activity deepened the rift between Gregor Strasser and his one-time followerJoseph Goebbels, which had begun in 1925 and developed into an outspoken personal enmity by the early1930s. Goebbels was particularly angry that the Strasser brothers opposed his claim to control all Nazi publications published in Berlin as Gauleiter of Berlin and that they competed with his house newspaper,Der Angriff.
In the background, the relative independence of Kampfverlag led to ever new conflicts between the Strasser brothers and Hitler, which reached their culmination point in the spring of1930: while Gregor Strasser was ready to switch to Hitler's line and henceforth concentrated on his work as Reichsorganisationsleiter, i.e. as head of the party apparatus the NSDAP, Otto Strasser preferred to turn his back on the Hitler movement and go his own way by founding theCombat League of Revolutionary National Socialists. On4 July 1930, depending on the reading, he left the party or was expelled from it. Previously he had on21 and22 May1930 rejected an offer to buy Kampfverlag for 120,000 RM. Instead, Kampfverlag was wound up during the summer of 1930 and closed on1 October 1930.
Otto Strasser saved a newspaper from the bankruptcy of the Kampfverlag to his new publishing houseDer Nationale Sozialist, which he published from then on as a political weekly under the title Die Deutsche Revolution. In the summer of1931, Strasserverlag was renamedDie Schwarze Front, based on the name of the political group around Otto Strasser, which published a newspaper of the same name from6 September 1931. Until he emigrated in the spring of1933, he used this newspaper primarily as a platform for violent attacks onHitler and the NSDAP in domestic political struggles. After Strasser's flight fromGermany in the spring of 1933, this organ, which he now published fromPrague under the titleDie Deutsche Revolution aus Prag, formed the cornerstone and main mouthpiece of his private war against the Nazi state from exile.
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