Reporting from Weimar Berlin: More Than Just the Nazis
Last Saturday, I spoke about The Dragon From Chicago to an enthusiastic audience at History Camp 2024 in Boston.* At the end, a member of the audience stopped me and asked if Sigrid Schultz reported on anything besides politics.
The short answer is yes, indeed she did. In fact, at one point, Joseph Pierson, then managing editor of the Chicago Tribune, felt the need to remind Sigrid that “Public interest in stories involving scientific progress and adventure is much more constant and reliable than its interest in the long-winded maneuvers of international politics.”
Foreign bureaus didn’t just cover the “big news” Sigrid was expected to report on American visitors in Berlin, especially visitors from Chicago, on advances in science and technology, human interest stories, the escapades of Europe royalty, and the arts. Aviation-related stories were particularly popular, because Americans (including the Tribune’s owner Colonel McCormick) were aviation mad, even before Lindburgh’s flight across the Atlantic took over front pages everywhere in May 1927. Sigrid reported many, many aviation stories. In fact, she almost managed to be a passenger on the first Zeppelin passenger flight from Germany to the United States. She was thrilled with the idea, but ultimately the Tribune decided the story didn’t justify the cost of the ticket. Schultz was not pleased. Especially when Lady Hay Drummond-Hay had the distinction of being the only woman on the flight.
At various times Sigrid reported on the opening of direct telephone service from Berlin to Chicago,** royal marriages and misalliances, and the hunt for and status of America’s most notorious World War I draft dodger, Grover Cleveland Bergdoll, whose appearances and disappearances were a regular feature of Sigrid’s “mail stories” in the 1920s and 1930s. ***
In short, Nazis were the big story of her career, but they weren’t the only story.
*For those of you who don’t know, History Camp is a day-long extravaganza for history nerds of all kinds. 50 speakers. 350 attendees. Lots of programs. Many badges simply listed their wearers as history enthusiasts. Rumor has it that they will post videos of the sessions on the website down the road. In the meantime, if you’re interested, here’s the link to my podcast episode on History Camp Author Discussion: https://historycamp.org/pamela-d-toler-the-dragon-from-chicago-the-untold-story-of-an-american-reporter-in-nazi-germany/
**It was a big deal and the story made the front page. Previously calls had to connect through Paris. Sigrid called in the story on February 10, 1928, as the dateline proudly noted, by trans-Atlantic telephone from the Berlin office of the Tribune. She pointed out to her readers that in Berlin night was falling and the street lamps were lit, though she knew it was midday in Chicago: “Science at last enables my voice to conquer time and space.”
***America’s fascination with celebrities, the wealthy, and especially wealthy celebrities, behaving badly is nothing new. Grover Cleveland Bergdoll–wealthy playboy, early aviator, race car driver, and draft dodger–checked all the boxes.
More Stories of Women Journalists
I’ve heard from a number of you that you enjoyed the stories of women foreign correspondents that I posted over the last two months. Some of you shared your own experiences as journalists in the 1970s and 1980s–remarkably similar to those of women reporters in the 1930s and 1940s, alas. More than one of you suggested that any one of the women whose stories I shared would be worth a book in her own right.*. Since so many of you were interested, I think it is time to share a book that I think many of you will enjoy.
Undaunted: How Women Changed American Journalism by Brooke Kroeger is not an encyclopedic listing of women journalists over the last 180 years.** Instead, it is, using her own word, a representative account of women who held meaningful positions in American newsrooms, beginning with Margaret Fuller in the 1840s and ending with the reporters who launched the #MeToo movement with their investigative reporting in the early 2020s. The book is full of intriguing accomplished women, many of whom are largely forgotten. More importantly, it traces what Kroeger describes as a recurring theme that continues into the modern day of “progress followed by setback.”
The book is fascinating, occasionally infuriating (because of the subject, not because of Kroeger’s writing), and overall a delight to read. If you’re interested in women’s history, journalism or, obviously, women journalists, this one’s for you.
*That might be true, but I won’t be the one writing those books. Even if the sources exist, which may not be the case, I’m ready to move on from journalists to something else. I don’t know what, but I most likely will be writing about a tough broad whom we need to know more about.
**And a good thing, too. Such books, whether they look at women journalists or women warriors, are useful, but not much fun to read.
It’s Publication Day for The Dragon From Chicago!
On May 8, 2020, I announced here on the Margins, after months of hinting, that I had a contract with Beacon Press for a new book about Sigrid Schultz, Berlin bureau chief for the Chicago Tribune. I expected to finish the book in two years. *Cue manic laughter*
Four years and a bit later, The Dragon from Chicago is finally out in the world.*
I’ve spent the last four years deep in the world of foreign correspondents, American newspapers. Weimar Germany, “false news,” glass ceilings, American isolationism, Nazis, the Lost Generation, the rise of radio news, daily life in Berlin, and the challenges of getting the news out in the face of tightening controls over the press. I’ve learned a lot in the process, and I’ve tried to share it with you every step of the way, from big stories like the rise of the Weimar Republic to small ones, like my realization that Oscar Mayer, of wiener fame, was a real human being.
Thanks for your support and encouragement along the way. It kept me going on the days when I wasn’t sure anyone would care.
You’ve already received the information that I’m throwing an on-line launch celebration tonight**, in conversation of Olivia Meikle, co-host of the What’s Her Name Podcast. If you’ve already signed-up, you’ll get the Zoom link today. (It may already be in your in-box.) If you didn’t sign up and wish you had, here’s the link:
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87516374458?pwd=UGaOsk76MUIm5PcMF8JtuBN4muZgsa.1
Meeting ID: 875 1637 4458
Passcode: Party
Starting Friday, we’ll be back to business as usual here on the Margins, with some stories that didn’t make it into the book, some Road Trip Through History adventures, and reviews of books that I hope you’ll enjoy as much as I have. There’s never a lack of history to share!
*If you literally see it out in the world, take a picture and share it with me! Or better yet, share it in your social media feeds.
**Assuming you’re reading this on August 6