The History of German Government Press Offices since the Weimar Republic

The final speaker in this IAMCR 2019 is Nicolas Hube, who presents a comparison of the public press offices of German governments through the 20th century. The government spokesperson service was institutionalised very soon after the 1918 revolution, and the Federal Republic’s service built in part on these origins.

The first government press office was created in 1917 in response to the creation of a similar office in France, and continued after the transition to the Weimar Republic; the explicit aim was to combat propaganda. The press office’s leader was a very high-ranking government official. The aim of the office was the pacification of the press through acculturation: through regular press conferences, press engagement was channelled into standardised engagement.

Similar structures continued after World War Two, also because some of the people involved in the Federal Republic’s press office had already held similar roles during the Weimar period; the press office leader was now in the rank of state secretary. Here, too, the initial aim was to counter East German and Soviet propaganda, and there was a palpable sense that German people had become accustomed to being governed in a propagandistic manner, even if the term ’propaganda’ itself gradually disappeared. Instead, the term ‘Öffentlichkeitsarbeit’ (public opinion work) was used for the function. Part of the press relations work in this context was about setting the rules for government-press engagement.

During the Weimar and Nazi period, individual ministries had their own press officers or spokespeople, too, and this also continued into the federal era. During Weimar times, the chancellors’ spokespeople were largely ex-diplomats and ex-military officers; in the Federal Republic, spokespeople were predominantly journalists or political staffers. After leaving office, spokespeople often took on diplomatic posts or went into politics in their own right. This also represents a trend of professionalisation in political communication.