Communication Historical Biography of the Journalist Walter Gyssling (1903-1980)

Simon Sax, B.A.

Shortly before Walter Gyssling fled Germany in 1933, he wrote: "Since today I know what a pogrom is." With this words the journalist bore witness to the riots of the SA against the Jewish population in Munich after the Nazi's seizure to power. Doing so, he created his perhaps most frequently quoted text. Gyssling had good reasons to elude the grip of the new authorities in Germany. From 1928 to 1933 he worked for the Central-Verein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens (Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith) - above all as an archivist and propagandist at the Wilhelmstraße office. Thanks to the works of Arnold Paucker and Leonidas Hill, his work from this period, for example the editorship of the famous "Anti-Nazi", has not fallen into oblivion. A main focus of the PhD-project is the examination of this phase from a communication studies point of view. In addition, a social history perspective is taken into consideration. For the period after 1933, the focus of the investigation lies on Gyssling's activities in exile organizations.