Talk:Hubert Burda Media

Nazi era
Hi Tataral. Regarding your recent edits: I don't want to "downplay" the Nazi era of Burda, but I don't see any sources for "The company rose to some prominence ". Can you please explain what you mean with "prominence" in the Nazi context? Also, we have "avid antisemite" twice, which should (from my opinion) be outlined in the article of Franz Burda instead of the company, especially if there are no sources that show a strong connection of the Nazi party membershop with company history. Do you agree? --Gallertträne (talk) 11:37, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Nazi era cont.
Seeking feedback/consensus to proposed changes for the Business during WWII section. At the moment, someone sees very keen on slurring the entire Burda family with the Nazi brush, as there is identical copy across several Burda family Wiki pages which seeks to portray all of them as Nazis, which would be a surprising conclusion given the facts below!

Franz Burda Sir was indeed in business with the Nazis, and that should be reflected on Wikipedia, but...:

1) even the generally unfavourable biography of Burda states that he was unlikely to have been an avowed Nazi; essentially he was furthering his business interests by selling printing services to the Nazi regime. (He wouldn’t have had very much choice either - you generally couldn’t say no to the Nazi war effort).

2) It can be shown that Franz Burda took risks on behalf of Jewish friends and employees. He would have made a poor ideological Nazi.

3) Aryanisation - this undoubtedly occurred, but mention should be made of the precise details of the sale, including that Reiss and Burda became long-lasting family friends.

4) Franz’s grandson, Hubert Burda, has won several awards from German-Jewish groups for his efforts with post-war reparations, so he too would be an unlikely Nazi...

I feel the following copy is more appropriate, while still retaining the Nazi references that of course we need to keep.

Business during the Nazi regime
In 1938 Franz Burda and partners acquired a major printing facility, Großdruckerei, Papiergroßhandlung und Papierwarenwerk Akademiestraße Gebrüder Bauer in Mannheim. It was one of the largest and most modern printing companies in the German Reich, with some 250 employees. Its owner Berthold Reiss and fellow shareholders were Jews, meaning that they were forced to sell the business under the "Aryanization" laws relating to all Jewish-owned businesses in Nazi Germany.

As a forced seller, Berthold Reiss was obliged to find a buyer for the firm or face the appropriation of its assets and his personal destitution. Reiss pitched unsuccessfully to several potential buyers before a mutual contact told him of Franz Burda's interest. At the time Burda did not have sufficient capital to buy the business outright, so he paired with Karl Fritz, owner of Südwestdruck. One of Fritz's contacts, Robert Wagner, had the high-level political and banking contacts necessary to approve the deal and secure finance for the acquisition.

After the acquisition, Burda invited Reiss to stay on at the company to help manage the transition of ownership. Reiss’s son Hans would later write that the pair established a good working relationship, despite the circumstances of the acquisition, with Reiss mentoring Burda's transition to managing a much larger business and Burda enjoying the firm’s more informal culture. Burda interjected on Reiss' behalf when the latter was interned as part of Kristallnacht. The Burda and Reiss families developed a friendship after 1945, with Hans Reiss contributing to later Burda projects.

Despite his cordial relationship with Reiss, Franz Burda was indeed a member of the Nazi Party from 1938 onwards. In 1933 he declared that his company had no Jewish employees or shareholders, although, preceding this statement in Sürag, advertisers of the National Socialist program guides NS-Funk and Der Deutsche Sender had claimed otherwise. In reality, Burda knowingly employed a Jewish woman and rejected calls for her dismissal; this may explain why the company was never designated a "model National Socialist company". Burda also intervened against the deportation of an employee's Jewish wife, which led to Burda being reported to the Gestapo. An unauthorised biography of the family, Die Burdas, characterised Franz's membership of the Nazi party as more financial expediency than political ideology. In later official hearings Franz was held to be a Mitläufer, referring to those who were not charged with Nazi crimes but whose involvement with the Party was such that they could not be wholly exonerated.

Franz's son Hubert went on to assume a significant role in the issue of German industrial reparations, for which he was decorated by a number of German Jewish interest groups, including the Ohel Jacob Medal. The publishing company's history during the Third Reich was described by Salomon Korn, a former Vice President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, as a "case study for coming generations as to the question of guilt and conscience, of entanglement and dealing with the burden of this legacy".

At the beginning of World War II, Burda had a staff of roughly 600 employees. In 1941, production of the magazine "Die Sürag" was curtailed due to the war, and instead the company printed maps for the High Command of the German Army and aerial photographs for the Luftwaffe, in multi-color gravure printing. The map of Cherkasy from the Cartographical Studio Dr. Franz Burda was considered the world's first multi-colour gravure printed map. The Mannheim plant was destroyed by bombing; its operations moved to Lahr-Dinglingen in 1943.