ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the role played by Münzenberg’s extraordinary network of publishing enterprises: newspapers, journals, and book publishing, and the pioneering methods he initiated to communicate the ideas of socialism to a large working-class audience.
In November 1921, the Workers’ International Relief (IAH) published the first issue of the Illustrated Workers’ Newspaper. By the 1930s, it would attain a circulation of 420,000. One of his key projects was the Vereinigung der Arbeiterphotographen (The Association of Worker Photographers) and their magazine, The Worker Photographer.
Münzenberg and his organisation continued, though, to have their vehement sectarian opponents within the KPD who considered that what he was doing was akin to Salvation Army work, rather than promoting ‘the worldwide proletarian revolution’. To the right, the Social Democrats viewed him simply as a tool of the Comintern. Nevertheless, he went on to create a media empire which had an enormous impact on the political and cultural life of Germany.
