The Lohrer Zeitung as a daily companion throughout the century

Finally, an editorial in which the excessive armaments policy of the German Reich was held partly responsible for the “social question” prompted the government of Lower Franconia and Aschaffenburg to ban the LZ on the basis of the Socialist Law of October 21, 1878. But Carl Keller did it took advantage of a loophole: From March 8, 1884, subscribers to the LZ received number 1 of the “Newest News”. In doing so, Keller circumvented the ban. He immediately appealed and was successful. After a thorough examination, the responsible Reich Commission declared that the ban was legally untenable and had to be lifted. On June 14, 1884, Keller announced the reappearance of the “Lohrer Zeitung”. He firmly rejected the accusation that he was promoting “social-democratic aspirations”.

In July 1913 Friedl Keller, the son of the founder, born in Lohr in 1883, took over the newspaper. He continued to run it after returning from World War I military service. Carl Keller, who had worked hard to maintain his newspaper, died in 1919. Friedl Keller dedicated his life’s work to the newspaper. He was supported by his uncle Josef, his father’s brother, who worked in the editorial office until old age. He died aged 94 in 1940.

The LZ had survived the First World War and the German Empire when, on April 7, 1919, a military detachment from the Würzburg garrison arrived in Lohr to support the Soviet Republic, which an “action committee of the revolutionary proletariat” had proclaimed here. The revolutionaries occupied the editorial offices of the Lohrer Zeitung and the Lohrer Anzeiger, which the local poet Nikolaus Fey had taken over in 1918, and placed them under censorship. Nevertheless, on April 9, 1919, the LZ published an appeal signed by all democratic forces in the city to support the elected state parliament and the Hoffmann government (SPD), which had fled from Munich to Bamberg. The revolutionaries then gave up. The Lohr Soviet Republic came to an end after a few days.

In the years that followed, the Lohrer Zeitung became increasingly popular. The scoreboard ran into difficulties as a result of inflation and the economic crisis and could no longer be maintained. On August 1, 1922, in friendly negotiations, Friedl Keller acquired the publishing rights to the gazette, which became part of the Lohrer Zeitung, and with it its archive.

synchronization

In 1933, after the National Socialists had “seized power”, the process of bringing the press into line was less spectacular, but all the more emphatic. Until then, the LZ had made it clear that little good could be expected from the Nazis, but Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels had the press under control in a very short time.

In the supra-local part one only needed to “align” the press services, on which all newspapers depended. In the local sections, the censorship by local and supra-local offices of the party and the authorities quickly ensured that only what was acceptable to the brown rulers could appear. In the years that followed, only particularly attentive readers could occasionally read between the lines that the editors did not agree with everything they were forced to expect of their readers.

The fate of the “Tagblatt”

The “Tageblatt für Spessart und Frankenland”, which was founded in Lohr in 1933 with an explicitly Christian-conservative attitude and made no secret of its aversion to the Nazis, learned that resistance was futile. As a result, the newspaper was initially banned and when it finally appeared again, it was just as “conformed” as all the others. A few months after the first appearance it had to give up completely.

Even the Lohrer Zeitung did not find it easy to hold its own against the Nazi party publishers and the competition from the party newspapers. During these years, the imprint officially names several “chief editors” who were responsible to the party and the authorities for the “line loyalty” of the newspaper. In practice, Friedl Keller continued to head the editorial team. From 1937 he was supported by the young editor Gerhard Böhnhardt, who had come to Lohr from Einbeck in Lower Saxony.

With the beginning of the Second World War, censorship was tightened. After the Stalingrad military catastrophe, even the publication of death notices for those who died was subject to strict regulations and was ultimately banned entirely. Otherwise, readers might have had doubts about the victory reports that continued to dominate the headlines. The people of Lohr only got one sentence to read in their newspaper about the heavy air raid that reduced Würzburg to rubble on March 16, 1945: “Nuremberg and Würzburg were the target of British terrorist attacks during the night.”

On March 31, 1945, when American tanks were already stationed in the Spessart, the Lohrer Zeitung appeared for the last time, still with perseverance slogans: “Nevertheless! We believe! We fight! We work!” and “Successful counterattack southeast of Aschaffenburg”.

After the American invasion at Easter 1945, the LZ, like all other newspapers, was banned by the military government. Instead, notifications with official announcements, private advertisements, but also short local news appeared at irregular intervals and in a wide variety of formats (paper was scarce). The “Lohrer Zeitung” was not allowed to appear again until 1949. In the meantime, however, the newspapers licensed by the occupying powers had become firmly established. The LZ was only able to win back part of its former readership.

Friedl Keller took over the editing again, supported by Gerhard Böhnhardt, who succeeded him after Keller’s death on August 13, 1960. Hans Nestmeier worked as a freelancer for both the Main-Post and the Lohrer Zeitung. The “Volksblatt” also had a permanent editor in Otto Madre

Karl Anderlohr also learned his journalistic craft at the Main-Post. He joined the editorial staff of the LZ in 1976 and took over responsibility in December of the same year. The supra-local part was designed in the post-war period by joint editors, first in Frankfurt, later in Nuremberg and Würzburg, finally together in an editorial and printing community with the “Kitzinger Zeitung”. The fact that the focus was on the local section was underscored by the fact that local events moved to the front page from 1981.

However, the commitment of everyone involved in the editorial and technical production gradually stretched far beyond what tariffs set and sometimes pushed the limits of physical endurance. Increasingly, the question arose as to how long such a workload could be sustained – quite apart from the economics.

Juliane Sommer née Keller, the last owner, finally decided in 1993 to sell the Lohrer Zeitung to the Mainpresse-Zeitunggesellschaft. From September 1, 1993 it appeared with a new design, but for a few months under the previous title and with the familiar head, until that was also given up for reasons of time and money and the LZ finally merged into the Main-Post.

The bound volumes of the Lohrer Anzeiger since 1850 and the Lohrer Zeitung from 1883 as well as the short-lived “Tageblatt” are in the Lohr City Archive. They document one and a half centuries of Lohr town history as reflected in the newspapers published here.