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Berlin dispatch, 1919
1 2021-04-19T17:23:27+00:00 4ffbb0ebe0df93a984840a734f34453d39e1ca0a 10 4 Chicago Daily News Rene Feibelman Pays Bas Hotel Amsterdam Holland Berlin February third In room where once sat Bismarck von bulow hollweng sits today phillip scheideman who once upon time tailor and who my end first president new german republic stop twas ten at night when I entered room stop plainly dressed young woman steered me down more less historic corridors stop massive red hangings white frescoed walls portraits emperors and battlefields and then mr scheideman dash a tall dignified looking man who bears striking resemblance late buffalo bill stop he shook hands stop he offered me cigarette stop it contained first real tobacco Ive smoked in berlin stop quote are you a socialist mr scheideman quote I asked stop when mr scheideman had finished answering I gathered that he was and wasnt stop there had been election stop people germany not given socialists majority stop therefor would be wrong impose socialist government on country stop quote therefor quote he concluded quote I stand ready make compromises to serve will people and found for germany democratic republic quote stop quote not socialist state then quote I repeated stop quote no quote said scheideman quote socialization industries government onership and all theoretical points socialism will come if at all later quote stop mr scheideman regarded ruby scarf pin quote cant be otherwise quote he went on germany needs big business capitol stop soldiers workmens council dead stop impossible for it survive stop german revolution was not socialist revolution but democratic one stop this events have shown stop quote this to my knowledge was scheideman first admission present and future government not only anti sparticust also anti socialist same as american stop quoteif you should be elected president germany would you take up official residence in ex kaisers palace quote I inquired stop quote it is little unimportant thing quote said scheideman quote but since typical of americans to be interested in little things I answer stop never quote he concluded stoutly stop quote kaisers palace is museum of old germany stop place for relics not for future new germany stopquote PAGE 2 daily news 2 scheideman then continued talk of high aims noble programes new germany stop outside beyond corridors some hundred visitors waited dash diplomats soldiers civil servants friends politicians etcetera stop I had entered room half expecting interview new species political messiah. stop I left historic room conscious of having spoken to affable combination bismarck and hinky dink of south clark street Chicago stop Hecht What M.E. Dennis objected to plain 2023-01-23T20:21:25+00:00 Midwest MS Hecht Bx. 2, Fl. 19-1.jpg 4ffbb0ebe0df93a984840a734f34453d39e1ca0aThis page is referenced by:
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Ben Hecht’s WWI Dispatch and Editor’s Reply, 1919
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The two documents collected here—Ben Hecht’s Berlin dispatch to the Daily News, February 3, 1919, and assistant editor C. H. Dennis's reply to Hecht, February 7, 1919—highlight an important tension between newspaper eyewitness accounts as personal, essentially provincial ventures, and eyewitness accounts as a collaborative, global enterprise. One of the first American newspapers to employ foreign correspondents to cover the international politics of World War I, the Chicago Daily News boasted firsthand accounts in which information and colorful description coexisted. Correspondents’ insider-outsider positions allowed the News to claim a specifically American viewpoint, meant to interest its Chicago readership.
Ben Hecht served as a war correspondent in Berlin for the Chicago Daily News from 1918-1919, but Chicago was his home base, and his readers could sense it. And in this dispatch, Hecht makes Berlin feel like home by comparing it to Chicago. His move recasts Philipp Scheiemann, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) revolutionary who had recently declared the end of the German imperial government and who would soon be called upon to help found the Weimar Republic, to corrupt Alderman Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna, known for buying poorer Chicagoans’ votes. In Dennis’s opinion, however, this Berlin-cum-Chicago perspective is a mistake. Moving too quickly and superficially to Chicago, Hecht neglects to “interpret” Scheidemann for what he is: a powerful leader, partially responsible for “making the world over.” Dennis explicitly increases the responsibility of the eyewitness by referring to the News’ readers not as “Chicago” or “the nation” but as the voracious, curious “world.” Expanding the reading audience also implicitly claims Chicago as an international capitol, a full participant in the circuitous process of newsmaking.
The News never ran Hecht’s account, but even the decision not to publish required an international network. At minimum, Hecht’s dispatch travelled to Amsterdam, London, Paris, and finally back to Berlin, now with Dennis's cover (with embedded quotations from Hecht, Scheidemann, Bell, and Lawson) and Bell’s (lost) re-“skeletonized” cable. Had the story run, it would have passed to the Chicago news desk as well, and finally to the public. In order for this vast array of readers “not to get lost in the mist,” these editors push for brevity and clarity, for concrete, pithy sketches and informational anecdotes.
We do not know which ninety-five words Bell found so expensively superfluous in Hecht’s already spare skeletonized account, but Bell’s and Dennis’'s editing practices clearly influenced Hecht’s later writing and the News’ standards for national reportage. After continuing for a time in Berlin, Hecht returned to the States, where he went on to pen the long-running series “One Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago.” These factual accounts and character sketches do the work of “interpreting” the city and its inhabitants by defamiliarizing them, allowing Hecht’s readers to imagine their hometown as a foreign land whose everyday events become news by their own collaborative work of interpretation.
-Chalcey Wilding, University of Chicago
Link to the finding aid for this collection
