Volksstimme (Austrian newspaper)

Volksstimme
Type
  • Daily newspaper
  • Weekly newspaper
PublisherGlobus Verlag
Founded5 August 1945
Political alignmentCommunism
LanguageGerman
Ceased publication3 March 1991
HeadquartersVienna
CountryAustria
OCLC number32276137

Volksstimme (German: People’s Voice) was a communist newspaper published between 5 August 1945 and 3 March 1991 in Vienna, Austria.

History and profile

The newspaper was first published in Vienna on 5 August 1945 under the name of Österreichische Volksstimme (German: Austrian People's Voice).[1][2] The paper was the organ of the Austrian Communist Party.[1][2][3] The founding publisher was Globus Verlag.[4] Its sister publication was a monthly theoretical journal entitled Weg und Ziel.[5]

The paper was renamed as Volksstimme on 21 February 1957.[1] Its frequency was also changed over time: it was started as a daily, but then it began to be published on a weekly basis.[4] It published news on national and international affairs as well as official party documents.[2] The paper was also a platform for the fractions within the party to express and defend their views about the events.[6] Georg Auer worked for the paper as a motoring correspondent in the 1950s.[7]

Volkstimme was deeply affected from the Soviet activities in Europe during the Cold War due to its reports and the different approaches in the Communist Party. After the 1956 events in Hungary the paper was censored by the Austrian Chancellor Julius Raab.[8] Following the Prague Spring and the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union a conflict occurred in the Austrian Communist Party which also affected Volksstimme in that most of its reporters left the paper in 1968.[4] It ceased publication on 3 March 1991.[1][9][10]

References

  1. ^ a b c d "Volksstimme". Aeiou Encyclopedia.
  2. ^ a b c "Volksstimme". Great Soviet Encyclopedia. 1979.
  3. ^ William B. Bader (1966). Austria Between East and West, 1945-1955. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. p. 228. ISBN 978-0-8047-0258-4.
  4. ^ a b c Roland Graf (2002). "Anachronism or sting in the flesh? The remarkable success of regional Communist newspapers in Austria". Oxford Austrian Studies Association. Archived from the original (Conference paper) on 1 June 2015.
  5. ^ J. Wilczynski (2019). An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Marxism, Socialism and Communism. Berlin; New York: De Gruyter. p. 97. ISBN 978-3-11-085205-9.
  6. ^ Kevin Devlin (July–October 1969). "Czechoslovakia and the Crisis of Austrian Communism". Studies in Comparative Communism. 2 (3–4): 19. JSTOR 45366910.
  7. ^ Richard Johnson (23 October 2000). "Celebrating our man in Vienna". Automotive News. Retrieved 15 December 2014.
  8. ^ Johanna Granville (2010). "Between Scylla and Charybdis: Austria's First Test Case of Neutrality during the Hungarian Crisis, 1956–57". Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics. 26 (4): 511. doi:10.1080/13523279.2010.519188. S2CID 144313200.
  9. ^ "Austria Press and Media". Press Reference. Retrieved 15 December 2014.
  10. ^ Mary Kelly; Gianpietro Mazzoleni; Denis McQuail, eds. (2004). The Media in Europe: The Euromedia Handbook. London; Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publishing. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-7619-4131-6.