BZ Is Back

In West Berlin last week were signs: "Die BZ ist wieder da [BZ is back again]." BZ is the House of Ullstein's tabloid Berliner Zeitung, once one of the biggest papers in Berlin with a circulation of 510,000, specializing in sports, features, entertainments and easy-to-read news. In pre-Hitler Germany, when the House of Ullstein was the largest publisher on the continent, BZ was confiscated by Hitler, along with the Ullsteins' four other dailies, five weeklies and six magazines. Last year they got some of their property back (TIME, Feb. 4, 1952), and under Karl H. Ullstein, 61, grandson of the founder, started up the Berliner Morgenpost again. It quickly became the biggest daily in the city (circ. 190,000). The reopening of BZ was the Ullsteins' second major step in their comeback as publishers.

Even before BZ was reborn, it ran into tough opposition from Berlin's other Allied-licensed dailies, most of them closely tied to the political parties. U.S. High Commissioner for Germany James B. Conant "has licensed a pure sensation sheet," cried the pro-Christian Democratic Der Abend. "A sensational, apolitical paper lulls to sleep the will to remain free." Conant quickly replied to the protest that "my refusal to grant such a license could be construed as protection of an existing quasi-cartel." BZ's Editor Wilhelm Schulze, who ran the paper before Goebbels named his successor, hoped to get half a million readers again by sticking to BZ's old formula. Said Editor Schulze: "I want to provide lively reading for everyone from the Direktor down to the Hausfrau." But the uproar among Berlin papers at BZ appearing on the streets again was so loud that its initial circulation was below 100,000, and Editor Schulze found himself engaged in more public-relations work than editing.