The TELI Century: From the Roaring Twenties to Post-Globalisation

By Wolfgang Chr. Goede, Board member German Science Writers TELI and former EUSJA Honorary Secretary (2012-2016)

A century in 8,000 words. Sounds almost like rocket science. YES WE CAN. As TELI’s 100th anniversary is approaching the following milestones of the German Science Writers are highlighted here.

• In the run-up, from the age of enlightenment to the German Empire.
• In the main run, TELI’s founding in Berlin’s Roaring 1920s and its path through the Nazi era, its development in the Federal Republic of Germany FRG, in comparison with science journalism in the communist German Democratic Republic GDR, the merger of the two and their performance in globalisation with its civil society ramifications.
• And in closing post-globalisation, the age of autocratisation, AI upheavals.

Let’s embark on an insightful media journey through the depths and shallows, the disruptions of power, powerlessness, and self-empowerment.

The idea of founding TELI was preceded by a growing wave of technical inventions as part of an emerging new scientific world: the increasingly dense network of newspapers, embedded in original scientific publicity. As early as 1650, the Einkommenden Zeitungen, published in Leipzig, reported news from the world of early research and the investigation of nature. The more the Age of Enlightenment gained momentum, the more diligently science fed the rapidly expanding press.

TELI roots

In 1750, there were already 250 newspapers in German-speaking countries, including the Hamburgische unpartheyische Correspondent, which was also popular for its reviews of new scientific literature—in 1806, it had a record circulation of 56,000 copies. In 1833, the Pfennig-Magazin was published, based on the English Penny model. It was the first popular science magazine, richly decorated with woodcuts, with a circulation of 100,000. The Moralische Wochenschriften (Moral Weekly Magazines) spread the ideas of the Enlightenment in terms of its social and political vector. When the revolution of 1848 to abolish princely rule and establish a liberal constitution and freedom of the press failed, the hour of the Gartenlaube (Garden Shed) had come: well-behaved and apolitical, as its name suggests, but also covering technology and research – a formidable bestseller and long-seller: The magazine was published from 1853 to 1944, with a circulation of almost 400,000 copies at times[1].

In addition to the “press,” other innovations were born, new institutions and events that brought science to the people, sowed curiosity, and established a tradition of knowledge that flourished outside of academia. In 1827/28, Humboldt gave his famous Kosmos lectures in Berlin on his scientific adventures and findings in the Americas, attracting 13,000 visitors from a remarkably broad social spectrum, from the king to the maid. In 1888, the Urania Society, which still is going strong today, followed in the footsteps of the great humanist with a fireworks display of scientific demonstrations. The institution is considered the prototype of science centers. The idea conquered the New World (from where the format returned to the Old World at the end of the 20th century). Urania curated show effects, but its intellectual ambition was high, supporting citizens in becoming mature and teaching them the joys of using their minds.

Founding spirit

These are essentially the historical roots of TELI, which were leading in the 20th century to the founding act. This took place in Berlin, the city and hub of newspapers, the heart and soul of journalism during the Weimar Republic. Around the Spree river, 150 newspapers competed with up to three (!) editions per day. Supposedly, more than 400 trams passed through “Potsdamer Platz” every hour. The German capital was buzzing with new technology, cutting-edge research, and open-mindedness, to which half a dozen Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes (later Max Planck Institutes) contributed. Art, culture, and theater were booming, and by 1914 there were 300 movie theaters. Berlin was a magnet for the avant-garde, for those who thought differently and innovatively, and along with New York, London, and Paris, it was one of the major hotspots and centers of transformation for the world of tomorrow in a rollercoaster ride between extremes, which found such impressive cinematic expression in Babylon Berlin.

Embedded was a veritable flood of alternative cultural impulses such as feminism and homosexuality, the Wandervogel movement and esoteric anthroposophy: “Germany around 1900 resembled a laboratory in which reactions to the culture of the ‘modern age’ were tested,” judges historian David Blackbourn. [3][4] Amidst such upheavals, breakthroughs, and revolutions, shaken heavily by the First World War, the idea of bringing together technology journalists and press spokespeople from large companies in a professional association began to take root in the mid-1920s. On January 11, 1929, they launched TELI as the undisputed world’s first organisation of technology and science journalists.

The late TELI member Hans Christian Förster[5] recounted this and TELI’s emergence. The obituaries in Berlin’s media praise the author as a kind of walking encyclopedia and intimate expert on Berlin’s history. The East Berliner vividly described the founding years of TELI in Am Anfang war die TELI. Journalismus für Wissenschaft und Technik 1929-1945 (In the Beginning was TELI: Journalism for Science and Technology 1929-1945). According to the imprint, it was a joint work by journalists from both East and West Germany, created in 2007 in anticipation of the 80th anniversary in 2009. Since then, the work, in the graphic style of the 1920s, has adorned the landing page of the journalists’ association.

Nazi TELI

After the splashy launch of TELI, Hitler became Reich Chancellor four years later and the march toward dictatorship, war, and the Holocaust began. The Nazi apparatus and its propaganda actors immediately curtailed journalistic freedom. Using selected TELI protagonists as examples, Förster traces the reception of this turning point. The regime systematically planted nationalistic enthusiasm for technology, including automobiles (“Volkswagen”) and new media such as radio and television (“Volksempfänger”), also as part of civilian armament for the war. And with that, the Nazis were not necessarily at the wrong address with the TELIans.

But the founder and first TELI chairman, Siegfried Hartmann (1875-1935), remained skeptical of the Nazi state. Meanwhile, co-founder Hans Dominik (1872-1945), the popular science fiction author of his time, also known as the “German Jules Verne,” opportunistically vacillated, attempting to come to terms with the Nazis in order to ensure the smooth sale of his books; see Detlef Münch’s multifaceted portrait of Dominik for more on this. Many of the founding generation had been socialised in the early years of the German Empire and the economically and technologically successful founding years (“Gründerjahre”) of the 1880s. “Enthusiastic about technology and science” is how the DNA of those who came together under the slogan “Technik voran” (Technology ahead) can be described. Many would probably have sung Heinrich Seidel’s homage to the art of engineering. Comic book language creator Erika Fuchs immortalised him in a timeless idiomatic monument in “Dem Ingeniör ist nichts zu schwör” (An engineer can do anything).

Heinrich Kluth (1902–1986), Hartmann’s successor from 1932, navigated the political constraints and, in his speech to prominent party members on the fifth anniversary of TELI, demanded that press reporting should be “generally understandable, German, and diverse”; because only a people that was sufficiently educated in technology to make proper use of technical progress would have a future in the world. Quote: “It is our most sacred duty to work toward this goal for Germany.”[8] Around 1938, Kluth joined the NSDAP as a member and remained TELI chairman after the end of the war until 1962, after which he became honorary chairman/member.

During his tenure, TELI, like other associations, was brought into line and placed under Nazi supervision; Jewish members were expelled, some of whom perished in concentration camps, according to Förster’s research. TELI members were drafted as soldiers, others went to the front as war correspondents, and some were deemed indispensable and assigned to important engineering and propaganda tasks on the home front. The last TELI meeting took place in 1944.

West German TELI

Then, in the early 1950s, during the years of reconstruction in the West German Federal Republic GFR to the legendary economic miracle, TELI was back[9], stronger than ever, with 250 members, including plenty of renowned names. It was divided into several regional groups[10] throughout Germany. Its active members provided journalistic coverage of the growing technology scene. With automobiles and chemicals, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering, the Federal Republic remained technology-driven and once again grew quickly into a significant economic power. Accompanying this process, TELI kept to its mission to clarify technical contexts, as laid down in its founding principles.

However, as in the early days, most TELI members were not trained for this. They tended to come from engineering disciplines with, at best, very technical writing skills. Nevertheless, efforts were made, at least in the form of appeals, to improve the communication skills of the members and to provide the population with more informative education. The anniversary publication Forschung kritisch gesehen. Die TELI erschließt Wissenschaft und Technik von heute und morgen (Research Viewed Critically: TELI Explores Science and Technology of Today and Tomorrow)[11] – with a foreword by the then Minister of Research and Technology Volker Hauff – addresses this and warns against technophile romanticisation:

“In addition to romantic admiration for smoking chimneys and pounding machines, for glowing steel blocks under hissing steam hammers,” the rapid scientific and technological advances at the turn of the century gave rise to growing concerns “about the destruction of the rural idyll by a ‘lifeless machine world.’” In this respect, and in dispelling these concerns, TELI and the Deutsches Museum in Munich, which opened in 1925, four years before TELI was founded, shared the same spirits.

Its founder, Oskar von Miller, also wanted to use the presentation of technology, in a hands-on museum setting, so to speak, to demonstrate to concerned people, socialised in a world of unspoiled nature and purely agricultural forms of cultivation, that the new devices were not driven by any diabolical forces. This was an almost superstitious fear that caused great unrest among the population, leading some to fear a revolution, according to historian and long-time museum archivist Wilhelm Füßl[12]. Munich’s Museum Island, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2025 in the presence of the Federal President and its 100 millionth visitor, manages – another family connection – the extensive archives of TELI[13].

Europe TELI

The TELI50 anniversary publication by the prestigious ECON publishing house is a “Who’s Who” of the science and technology journalists of the time who gathered under the TELI umbrella. Two contributions are particularly noteworthy. Hermann Laupsien, co-editor of the book, department head at Handelsblatt and known as “Mister Technik,” devotes the chapter “Critical Journalism” to manipulative, sensationalist, and false reports in German journalism on research topics. He counters them with a duty to truth derived from science, the constitution, and ethics in general – a maxim that is still valid today and all the more important in times of fake news and conspiracy theories, yet one that is increasingly violated.

In the introductory chapter, the then 77-year-old Kluth takes the floor to take stock of half a century of TELI and its history. He also makes the technological spirit of optimism in Berlin at the beginning of the 20th century emotionally tangible, for example with Orville Wright’s record flights over Tempelhof (the later airport) and the beginnings of a revolutionary “monorail” stabilised by a “balance gyroscope” (which decades later gave rise to the unpopular magnetic levitation train, which ultimately celebrated its premiere in China).

Kluth’s contribution, which also reflects the diversity of the new media of the time and their appetite for technology, makes it clear: everything seemed possible in those Roaring Twenties, embedded in the bustling Weimar Republic and Germany’s hotly contested first democracy. The former TELI chairman, who held the top job for three decades, is enthusiastic about the great achievements of that time, which overlapped with those of the subsequent Hitler years: synthetic rubber and coal liquefaction, magnetic sound and image recording, jet propulsion and rocket research, nuclear fission.

At the end, he finds only one cryptic sentence about the Nazi dictatorship, the Holocaust, and World War II:

“Despite the extremely turbulent decade marked by unpleasant political and war-related events, he (Heinrich Kluth, writing about himself in the third person) consistently and successfully continued the basic idea (of TELI) with the support of older and younger members.”

From here, he quickly moves on to the TELI 25th anniversary celebration at the Technical University of Berlin in September 1954, with the highlight being a Siegfried Hartmann commemorative coin in bronze, silver, and gold, awarded to TELI dignitaries and important figures in research and business. In the 1960s, the association increasingly focused on cooperation in Europe, which culminated in the founding of the EUSJA in 1971 under the auspices of its then chairman Heinz Rieger[14] (1970-77: dpa science correspondent, the very first at the major news agency).

At that time, there were already nine large science journalism associations in Western Europe based on the TELI model, which in 1974, in the “Salzburg Declaration,” advocated for a fundamental improvement in the conditions of science journalism in politics, research, business, and the media throughout Europe.

TELI lobbyism

This appeal proved fruitful, at least in West Germany. In the 1970s, many daily newspapers, such as the Süddeutsche Zeitung, launched science supplements. The FAZ also served as a model for this. However, what is largely unknown is that the impetus for this came from the US press market, where supplements were enjoying a renaissance, having been discovered as a convenient platform for advertising and promotion. The ambitious acquisition did not stop at the usual suspects—fashion, cuisine, tourism—but also brought technology and science into the advertising fold[15], along with the products grouped around them, which now had to be enriched with editorial topics. Until then, these had been relegated to a rather modest existence in the arts and culture sections. This gave science journalism in Germany a big boost, supported by tailwinds from the advertising industry and the economy.

In addition to established media outlets such as Bild der Wissenschaft, founded in 1964 by Heinz Haber, new publications emerged, such as P.M. Magazin (whose name may have been inspired by the globally successful Popular Mechanics, which had been on the market since 1902). P.M. redefined the popular science segment in Germany with its very own articles, achieving circulation figures of over half a million with a large readership among young people. Many found their way into technical and scientific professions through reading P.M. With sister editions in France (Ça m’intéresse) and Spain (Muy Interesante), Italy (Focus) and also in many Latin American countries (i.e. Mexico, Colombia Muy Interesante, Brazil Superinteressante) the concept spread throughout Europe and across the Atlantic[16].

Yes, things loosened up, and a lot even changed quite fundamentally during those years. Last but not least, the Bosch Foundation launched a training offensive and trained one hundred science journalists in the 1980s. The advisory team included Reiner Korbmann, editor-in-chief of Chip, Bild der Wissenschaft, and organiser of dialogue forums, who is still a senior TELI member today. The Bosch program was led by communication scientist Stephan Ruß-Mohl, who also made a name for himself in science journalism as a professor at the Free University of Berlin and the University of Lausanne. All in all, these were great times for science journalism, not least as a result of the hands-on lobbying work of TELI and EUSJA.

However, many of the increasingly well-trained science journalists did not think much of TELI. For some, it was not journalistic enough, did not draw a clear line between critical reporting and commercial corporate communications and pure science communication, and, to put it bluntly, was closer to the VDI (Association of German Engineers) than to journalism. And so, in a kind of backlash, the split came about. In 1986, prominent representatives of the profession, Rainer Flöhl (1938-2016) FAZ, Günter Haaf (*1946) GEO, Jean Pütz[18](*1936) WDR, founded the “Science Press Conference” WPK.

It was intended to complement the political Federal Press Conference and wanted to set its own research topics and shed light on controversial issues. With the annual “Wissenswerte” (Knowledge Matters) event, in which TELI was initially involved, the WPK has gained a striking profile.

Chernobyl fallout

The WPK took a very journalistic approach, which, however, met with resistance even in the major Frankfurt daily newspaper FAZ in its empirical journalistic day-to-day business: during the Chernobyl reactor disaster, it ignored and boycotted reporting on the historic incident, according to information provided at the time by Flöhl out of consideration for “economic interests.” Ironically, this was almost in line with the leading media in the communist GDR, which showed consideration for its big brother and Soviet hegemonic power. Therefore, the East German media criticised the West German media as “exaggerated and misleading.”

Chernobyl was the topic of debate among German science journalists who gathered in Stuttgart in the summer of 1986 for a two-day conference hosted by the Bosch Foundation. This was preceded by months of politically escalating and population-unsettling wrangling over radiation limits, similar to the controversy over infection risks and disease rates during the coronavirus pandemic three and a half decades later. Die Feder, the magazine of the IG Druck und Papier trade union for journalists and writers, reported in its September 1986 edition under the activist headline: “Get out of the ghetto and rebel! What science journalism can learn from Chernobyl.”

Haaf was also on the Bosch panel. He was annoyed that, as with all controversial scientific issues in the past, the political departments had taken control of the reporting on the nuclear disaster, even though experts on reactor technology and radioactivity were few and far between there. “15 years down the drain,” Haaf fumed. That was the time he had spent with other reform-minded colleagues trying to strengthen the science departments in the media. When social scientist Dr. Hans Peter Peters, Jülich Nuclear Research Center, put forward the thesis of neutrality, arguing that science journalists should be neither advocates nor critics, Haaf countered that “there is no such thing as value-neutral research,” which is why there can be “no such thing as value-neutral science journalism.” “Truth is a beautiful ideal goal,” but science journalists are caught between rival groups trying to pull them to their side, because:

“Scientists are not ascetics, but people who fight for their reputation and money for their research projects. Their attitude toward the hot topics of our time, such as energy and radiation, is determined by their personal philosophical worldview.”

In other words, researchers are not beings extraordinary sui generis, but are just ordinary people like everyone else. He received support from a radio colleague who urged self-help: “If scientists can’t give us an explanation for Becquerel, we’ll just have to figure it out for ourselves and find out how much milk we can still drink.”

This led to the plea by Viennese communication scientist Professor Wolfgang R. Langenbucher, who in the 1970s pioneered a degree program for journalists at the Ludwig Maximilians University Munich LMU, which produced both all-rounders and science journalists; his initiative was not without controversy, as journalism was traditionally considered a profession requiring literary talent, which could only be learned through an internship. Langenbucher’s Stuttgart cornerstones, which he wanted to see applied to all genres of journalism:

• Seeking out contradictions and abuses
• Addressing conflicts with journalistic courage
• No collusion with the powerful, no false pursuit of harmony[20]

He drew on Karl Popper’s tradition of thought, according to which there are no irrefutable truths, only approximations. Through falsification, the scientific proof of errors in old theories, new ones arise that are closer to the truth.

Haaf, now 79 years old and living on Lake Starnberg, is one of the most combative, articulate, and reflective German science journalists. Instead of going to college, he completed an apprenticeship as a publishing clerk and learned his journalistic skills as a Hobby editor –  the German technology magazine in the 1960s. His professional career took him to prestigious publishing houses and publications, including Stern, Zeit, Geo andfounder of Geo-Wissen, and Natur – with detours to the US as a fellow at Science and Scientific American. His career was crowned by his position as editorial director at Wort & Bild Verlag. Among other publications, this publishing house produces Apothekenumschau, which is considered the most important German health magazine. Haaf is a prototypical example of how a bottom-up entry into science journalism is more beneficial to the industry than the top-down entry via an academic doctorate, which is becoming increasingly common today.

TELI reunification

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, most science journalists in the GDR found a new home in TELI. In 1999, the last year before the turn of the century, a large, quasi-festival of science journalists took place in Berlin with well over 200 participants, which was the last such event for the time being.

TELI celebrated its 70th anniversary together with colleagues from the former GDR and members of WPK and EUSJA, as recorded in the commemorative publication Kompass für die Zukunft (Compass for the Future). The Cold War was finally over, the borders were open, and exchange and globalisation were in full swing, as evidenced by the stream of guests from Budapest to Warsaw and Moscow. Everything was in tune, so to speak, with Francis Fukuyama’s celebrated End of History, which found huge resonance in those years after almost half a century of Cold War.

This was represented not only by this major pan-European East-West/West-East event, but also by the congress chairman Gerhard Kirsch: TELI managing director and 2nd chairman, graduate journalist from the University of Leipzig and, for 18 years until the fall of the Berlin Wall, head of the press office at the Ministry for Environmental Protection and Water Management of the East Berlin GDR, as well as chairman of the science journalism section of the Association of Journalists (VdJ) in the GDR. Both traditional associations had merged across the borders of the seemingly insurmountable wall.

East German journalism

This study thus enters into the debate on journalism/science journalism in the Marxist-Leninist workers’ and peasants’ state of the GDR, the German Democratic Republic. It was founded as a counter-model to the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) by one of the victorious powers over the Third Reich, the Soviet Union, which was also the occupying power in East Germany: the FRG and the GDR were linked by 40 years of hostility and competition. A study on GDR journalism conducted at LMU in the early 2010s came to the following conclusions[22]:

• GDR journalism was dominated by the state’s class struggle agenda. The rules were laid down by the first generation, the post-war generation. These were often returnees who had been persecuted by the Nazis and now set out to build a better Germany, “who, in addition to their experience in the militant press (in the Weimar Republic), brought with them a political goal,” the victory of socialism.
• Lenin’s doctrine of journalists as collective propagandists and agitators shaped the media system. Journalists were firmly embedded in party political hierarchies and their leaders, which is why “no autonomous journalistic field could develop.” The standards for both publication and evaluation of their media work were subject to strict political control and thinking in terms of class enemies. The most dangerous ones were beyond the “anti-fascist protective wall,” in West Germany.

The authors, Michael Meyen and Anke Fiedler, hold this rigid functionalisation partly responsible for the failure of the GDR experiment. Interviews with a large number of journalists socialised in the GDR suggest “that the quality of commitment to the GDR changed from unconditional support for the GDR project among those born in the years that had experienced fascism and post-war hardship to lip service.” It was only at the very end that “the wave of social change in 1989 … reached the editorial offices and thus the mass media public.”

The study was published in 2011 as a book entitled Die Grenze im Kopf. Journalisten in der DDR (The Border in the Mind: Journalists in the GDR) and is still considered a representative analysis of GDR journalism. After its publication, it was widely discussed in the German media, notably in the Berlin Tagesspiegel, excerpts of which are provided below to complete the picture.

• “Freedom … had to be fought for, and only those who were particularly skilled in their field could claim it.” Good relations with the apparatus were important; those who did not excel in either area moved to apolitical departments (which, as in the West, included science journalism).
• Under such conditions, freedom was redefined, as Manfred Quiring, long-time Moscow correspondent for the Berliner Zeitung, says: as “the ability not to tug at the chain.” Most GDR journalists had learned the tools of the trade and how to deal with this ideology at the journalism department of Karl Marx University in Leipzig, known as a training ground for cadres and also called the “Red Monastery.”
• Günter Schabowski, former powerful editor-in-chief of Neues Deutschland, admits “that from today’s perspective, he can classify much of what he considered completely normal at the time as restrictive – ‘because we lived under the illusion that we were independent’”.
• The bottom line of this fundamental reappraisal of GDR journalism from 1949 to 1989: “Meyen and Fiedler also conclude that many of those surveyed were less engaged in journalism than in a kind of ‘PR for the GDR enterprise.’”

East German science journalism

Many of these statements fit quite neatly into science journalism. One example is someone who is still active in Berlin public life—the aforementioned Gerhard Kirsch, born in 1937, who was conference chair of the 70th TELI anniversary in 1999 and has been involved in media and journalism related to Berlin tourism in the new millennium. At the first all-German seminar on science journalism in Bonn in 1990, he was invited as a speaker in his capacity as an expert on the GDR journalism scene. The minutes quote Kirsch as saying:

“In the past, scientific reporting in particular was a niche area in which journalists were able to escape state paternalism more than was possible in other fields. However, it should not be overlooked that science journalism largely took on the character of announcement journalism.”

Looking back from the 2020s, Kirsch supplemented, specified, and exemplified these statements in an interview[23]:

• Regarding his statement: “Much of the scientific and technical content in the editorial offices was predetermined. However, reporting with scientific background information was significantly promoted in cases of objectively difficult circumstances such as heat waves, drought, cold spells, and flooding, as well as in cases of disaster. Overall: The editorial offices were mainly provided with controlled information about important national and international scientific and technical events, such as trade fairs and major conferences and meetings. The focus was always on the decisions of the party. The possibilities for free reporting were therefore limited.”
• On independence: “All kinds of violations of legal regulations on keeping the air, water, and soil clean were known in the GDR—some of them even crossed borders. People knew which rivers, streams, and lakes were polluted. These were violations and omissions that were also prohibited in the GDR. Courageous informants in central bodies, companies, and scientific enterprises advised trustworthy, competent journalists where exactly they could find this information. This then appeared in longer, self-researched articles, some of which were several pages long – e.g., in Eulenspiegel, Wochenpost, and the critically acclaimed television program Prisma. The differences in content between the individual media were greater than some of those who condemned the GDR wholesale would have us believe.”
• Personal involvement: Kirsch cites the discharge of industrial waste across the entire Middle Elbe, slurry deposits in Bitterfeld, and toxic waste dumps in Schönberg as examples of investigative science journalism in the GDR. As press spokesman for the Ministry of the Environment, he himself passed on relevant information to colleagues in the press, who then began their research on site. In doing so, he himself came under the scrutiny of the Stasi secret service, but the backing of his minister and the journalists’ association protected him from the familiar reprisals and persecution.
• Today’s perspective: “Journalistic activity is based on principles, convictions, and feelings in all social systems. Courage and a willingness to take risks are required to illuminate the broad fields of reporting to the very edges. Personal, trusting relationships can make a difference—then as now.”

As Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature, and Reactor Safety (1987-1994), Klaus Töpfer brought Gerhard Kirsch onto his staff as press spokesman after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Nazi assessment

And now? What does the history of Germany as a whole teach us, especially in today’s once again uncertain future? What constitutes high-quality science journalism? More specifically, looking at TELI’s history: Kluth versus Kirsch, two leaders (both of whom also suffered under the political circumstances) – how should they be assessed? One was close to business, the other close to the state. Unlike the East German, who has his GDR biography and is open about it, the West German has completely ignored his Nazi biography, even when he had the opportunity to comment on it. Both associations, as the TELI review of 1929-45 suggests, were loyal to the Nazi and SED (communist party) regimes, just as the FRG-TELI was loyal to the Western victorious powers and their mission of democracy and freedom, but:

It is well known that there was no “zero hour” in the West in 1945, but that occupied West Germany, committed to democracy, continued to operate in many areas of government as well as administration largely with personnel from the Nazi era. “Most of my teachers were Nazis” is a frequently heard comment from the student generation of the 1950s and 1960s. For example, a popular sports teacher at a high school in Kiel was a party member and functionary in the “Lebensborn”, which sought to breed Aryan people. This only became known in the 2010s, despite publicly accessible archives documenting the case.

It was not until the 1970s that the reappraisal of Nazism was progressively intensified in academia, research, and business. However, many perpetrators were only convicted after the turn of the century. This was the case in Kiel’s garden city of Kronshagen, where a once highly respected pastor was only exposed as a Nazi perpetrator through meticulous historical research conducted for the town’s 750th anniversary in 2022. A street named after the Nazi mayor is now to be renamed. In rowing, the discussion about the Nazi past of its officials and clubs has only just begun in 2024. This striking delay is also highlighted in the title of the 2025 new publication Der blinde Fleck. Die vererbten Traumata des Krieges und warum das Schweigen in den Familien jetzt erst aufbricht (The Blind Spot: The Inherited Traumas of War and Why the Silence in Families is Only Now Being Broken).

Overall, the East’s historical accusation against the West was well-founded, but it also sheds light on the fact that the GDR largely ignored its Nazi history; according to the SED interpretation, the perpetrators were only on the other side of the wall, and it was only after reunification that the GDR’s own Nazi sociotope became an issue.

PR agencies

Regarding Meyen/Fiedler’s finding that journalism in the GDR, and thus also science journalism, served as propaganda for the GDR: Could the dictum be applied that TELI was also a kind of PR agency, not for the state, but for technology and business? After all, TELI, the Technical-Literary Society was named after the PR departments of large companies, which in the early days were called technical-literary offices. And TELI, as progressive as it was for its time, wanted to be more of a hub for communication about research, science, and technology, bringing together researchers, business, and journalists.

In addition, the people organised in TELI, like Kluth himself, were often trained engineers, not journalists by trade. He called himself “Obering” (Lead Engineer) in the 50th anniversary publication and, as before, expressed a great passion for technical progress. In this spirit, TELI was led into the newly emerging Federal Republic of Germany, more as a forum for science communication than as an advocate for independent, critical journalism on technical and scientific challenges, and blind to the past and the lessons learned from it. This path led to a split, namely the founding of the Science Press Conference (WPK) as a journalistic authority on research topics.

On the eastern side, however, there was at least a desire for a new beginning, after 80 million deaths as a result of Nazi warfare and six million Holocaust victims, to create socialist citizens in the spirit of communist utopia as an alternative to Nazi compatriots. Under the dominance of Soviet Stalinism (with millions of Gulag deaths), this remained a deceptive idea, a naive one for many comrades-in-arms who, like some cultural figures, later distanced themselves from it, accepting persecution, imprisonment, and expulsion in return. Nevertheless, as part of the Eastern Bloc and the Warsaw Pact, with headquarters in Moscow, there was little room for freedom, both for party leaders and those below them in the hierarchy, as well as for the citizenry.

Another decisive obstacle was that Marxism sees itself as an objective scientific doctrine, against which there is no counter-thesis in the sense defined by Popper in his definition of scientific progress. No matter how well-argued the objections to a theory may be, they have no chance of success, either politically, socially, or scientifically. The system has, so to speak, cemented itself in place, contrary to all the lessons of development and adaptation that we know from evolution. In this respect, there was no opposition to the party, including the research and technology development taking place under its umbrella, in accordance with the SED’s claim and the maxim of all autocratic-totalitarian regimes: the party is always right.

Nothing could be more wrong. The opposite is the way to go. Every person, especially those organised in parties and ideologised, is fallible—control and balance, the famous “checks and balances,” are crucial, which is only possible in democratically constituted societies with institutionalised separation of powers and a liberal constitutional order. In this respect, the western part of divided Germany, with all its late-brown past and devotion to industry, but commitment to a social market economy, was on a better path for humanity.

COVID criticism

In studies on journalism in the GDR, its representatives are portrayed as water carriers for the regime, completely untrained for the job in the early years and later indoctrinated. But even in the FRG, which supposedly headed the free press, only a few media outlets had the courage to do what Der Spiegel did in “Bedingt abwehrbereit” (Conditionally Defensive, a report which ended in jail for the editor-in-chief, what created the magazine’s reputation as “assault gun” of democracy), and even then, arbitrariness and conformity prevailed.

The journalism magazine Der Journalist reports on this regularly, including back in 9/83, “Die falsche Berufswahl” (The wrong career choice). Preaching democracy in editorials, but treating the editorial staff like a lord treats his servants, even threatening violence to enforce their policies, was no exception in West German editorial offices, and was even concealed by the leading media. Comment by a so-called noble pen, who investigated such a conflict: “Oh, he didn’t mean it that way.”

At a science magazine, an editor said that she had only one reader, her editor-in-chief, whose thumbs up meant green light for her manuscript, and thumbs down meant trash can. Editors-in-chief in many media outlets still act like absolute rulers. Freelancers are also particularly familiar with this: if an article is not to the department’s liking, for example if it is too free-thinking and not sufficiently in line with the editorial policy, then it is often the end of the freelance collaboration, possibly even accompanied by a rebuke, and those who are not careful may even lose their fee: freelancers are almost outlaws.

In the “golden West,” as it was known to many GDR citizens, journalism and science journalism were not bedded on roses, not at all. The above examples put into perspective the black-and-white thinking about the East that is widespread in the West. The deep misunderstanding between the two sides, which was never overcome even with reunification, and may even have deepened, has increasingly led to the political polarisation that is so often lamented in recent decades.

Overall, journalism and science journalism could also be viewed with considerable criticism in reunified and modern Germany. The coronavirus pandemic provides grounds for such criticism and is reminiscent of the Chernobyl reactor disaster. In his 2023 review Corona-Kommunikation: Eine Krise in Wissenschaft, Politik, Medien (Corona Communication: A Crisis in Science, Politics, and the Media), Weitze diagnosed a multitude of mishaps, inconsistencies, and massive errors in the cooperation between the media, research, and the political apparatus. Excerpt from the blurb:

“Scientists have often succumbed to the temptation to counter proven misinformation in public discourse with scientific findings that later proved to be false themselves. And media representatives have occasionally confused good science journalism with reporting on individual studies and preprints.”

Overall, it is a sober and factually well-researched and curated assessment based on case studies – but the work was not really welcomed by the scientific community as a contribution to transparency and enlightenment. Few people wanted to know about the systemic errors and mishaps. Then, in July 2025, the Bundestag officially decided to set up a commission of inquiry to review the political handling of the coronavirus measures.

Autocratisation

After the pandemic, the world has slipped into another crisis. The era of globalisation, ushered in by the fall of the Berlin Wall, had been innovatively shaped by TELI, also across Europe, with the Science Debate[24][25][26], which brought journalists and scientists together with the public and enabled citizens to have a say. Globalisation has now transformed into de-globalisation, re-nationalisation, and even multi-polarity. In a rollback, borders, especially between East and West, are back.

US President Trump’s treatment of his country’s universities, especially the renowned Harvard University, also reveals a new, delicate relationship with research. What Christina Berndt, award-winning science editor of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, writes about Trump’s motives, namely to shackle the independent spirit of research on the path to the autocratisation of the USA, is probably correct:

“Populists hate science … After all, it is science, with its centuries-old methods of proof and doubt, that ultimately provides the facts that populists would most like to twist into alternative facts. It can therefore often, very painfully for phrase-mongers, refute what populists simply claim. Because it fits their worldview. Because they want it. Because it suits them when they’re out on a soul-searching quest. Science just gets in the way.”

However, US science journalism has so far remained largely silent on the matter. Laura Helmuth, the internationally renowned editor-in-chief of Scientific American, founded in 1845 and thus the world’s oldest science journal, resigned after Trump’s election. The former president of the National Association of Science Writers (NASW) had previously implemented a novelty: Since 2020, Scientific American has spoken out in favor of, and thus automatically against, candidates for the highest office in the United States (while some leading media outlets, such as the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, refrained from doing so for the first time in 2024, unlike in 2020).

With this step, science journalism had taken a highly visible step into the political arena. In doing so, it acknowledged that science journalism cannot be separated from journalism, and journalism as such cannot be separated from politics. This must have been an annoyance for many in the research community, which traditionally claims to be neutral and open to all sides.

US science journalism is internationally regarded as a beacon of excellence in the field, both in terms of craftsmanship and programmatically. It serves as a model for many of the 70 national and regional associations organised within the World Federation of Science Journalists (WFSJ). These associations form a colorful communicative patchwork and, incidentally, are often far less journalistic than one could ever say of TELI. In light of the political upheaval at home, will US Americans, like the TELI forebears of 1933-45, keep a low profile and instead seek a modus vivendi with an unpredictable, self-defeating state? Or, empowering themselves, find a response?

Civil courage

The media in the Third Reich, in the GDR, also in the FRG and in reunified Germany, and currently also in the USA: They wrestle with science, the hierarchies in research, politics, press houses, broadcasting companies, and media corporations over the facts and their interpretation, from which a picture of truth emerges. This was, is, and remains the task and is a constant challenge, without a formula for it other than the practice-oriented, pragmatic one: entering this profession with a good measure of moral courage, embedded in a professional understanding, as outlined by Haaf/Langenbucher in the 1980s on the occasion of the Chernobyl disaster.

This is also emphasised by the US sociologist Dorothy Nelkin. In her outstanding 1995 book, Selling Science, she described our collective major handicap in dealing with science and authorities of any kind:

“We faithfully write down everything our scientists—gods—tell us … It never occurs to us that these people, too, might have motives that are less than honorable.”

Since its beginnings in the 17th century, journalism has been a matter of free spirit, courage, and independent thought. Much more so than today, by the way. In the German Empire (1871-1918), authorities threatened disobedient editors with imprisonment. State censorship was omnipresent. Criticism of the rulers and their policies met with a very low tolerance threshold. To maintain newspaper operations, most editorial offices had a colleague known as a “sitting editor.”[27] If the censors intervened over reporting, they were imprisoned, without editorial work coming to a halt.

Then, as especially today, the spirit of Immanuel Kant and his categorical imperative applies to all media departments: Sapare aude! Have the courage to use your own understanding. Often quoted, rarely realised. The fear of conflict blocks the powers of reason. Fear is Homo sapiens’ all-powerful inner companion and dashing censor. In this respect, this review of TELI history, a century of science journalism, and the prelude to TELI100 concludes with Goethe, whose knightly hero Götz von Berlichingen takes a stand against absolutism and, in his struggle for self-determination against the nobility, clergy, and scholars, has him rebelliously proclaim in the Sturm und Drang period:

Where fear gives way, freedom grows.

Pictures & Captions © TELI

Sources & References

[1] See Wolfgang C. Goede: History of Science Journalism, pp. 235ff, in: German Association of Specialist Journalists (ed.): Specialist Journalism. Communicating Expert Knowledge Professionally. UVK Konstanz, 2004

See also >> http://pantaneto.co.uk/the-twenties-exciting-times-in-germany-wolfgang-c-goede/ (04.07.2025)

[2] After David Blackbourn: The Germans in the World. Settlers, Traders, Philosophers. A Global History from the Middle Ages to the Present. DVA, Munich 2023, p. 444

[3] See Blackbourn, p. 455

[4] The word “Schwul” (gay) originated in the Berlin dialect long before “gay” became common in American usage, see Blackbourn, p. 536

[5] Obituaries in Tagesspiegel >> https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/hans-christian-forster-geb-1953-2404861.htmlv/ and the Association for the History of Berlin >> https://www.diegeschichteberlins.de/64-allgemein/statisch/774-nachruf-fuer-hans-christian-foerster.html (June 28, 2025)

[6] Detlef Münch: The Images of Technology. Hans Dominik’s Technical Fiction 1902-1921. Synergen Dortmund 2017, see the TELI Science Debates review https://www.teli.de/der-prophet/ (June 28, 2025)

[7] See Manfred Kluth on his father Heinrich Kluth and his contributions to the TELI Archive, as well as the creation of “In the Beginning was the TELI” >> https://www.teli.de/zum-tode-von-manfred-kluth-ein-diamantener-bund/ (June 28, 2025)

[8] “In the Beginning was the TELI,” p. 29f

[9] >> https://www.teli.de/zum-tode-von-manfred-kluth-ein-diamantener-bund/ (July 2, 2025)

[10] The TELI regional circles experienced a boom until around the turn of the century, after which they gradually lost their presence due to competition from many new science formats. The most successful, and still in existence today, is the TELI Southern Regional Circle in Munich. For a long time, it was chaired by Dietmar Schmidt, former press spokesman for Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU), honorary member of the Bavarian Journalists’ Association (BJV), and a major contributor to the Munich Press Club.

[11] See also the entry on TELI in Wikipedia >> https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technisch-Literarische_Gesellschaft (June 28, 2025)

[12] S. Wilhelm Füßl: Oskar von Miller. 1855 – 1934. A Biography. C.H. Beck, Munich 2005, pp. 247ff (the author is the museum’s long-time archivist).

[13] The TELI archive at the Deutsches Museum is available for further scientific research: a huge resource for doctoral students!

[14] >> https://www.teli.de/wp-content/uploads/pdf/eusja-book-teli-hr.pdf, p. 15 (June 28, 2025)

[15] >> Bruce Lewenstein in “Can Science Be Funny?”, pp. 145ff

[16] The author is a former P.M. Editor and TELI member since the 2000s.

[17] Review >> https://www.polsoz.fu-berlin.de/kommwiss/arbeitsstellen/wissenskommunikation/media/bericht.pdf (June 28, 2025)

[18] Jean Pütz, in his late 80s and, as remembered from his TV shows, as jovial as he is controversial, continues to stand by as a member of TELI for decades and in 2024 presented a TELI Jour fixe at the Munich Press Club to a packed house on the methanol economy and energy from the desert >> https://www.teli.de/teli-jour-fixe_jean-puetz/; https://www.teli.de/unterhaltsam-und-lehrreich-ein-abend-mit-tv-legende-jean-puetz-und-ceo-frank-obrist-wie-zu-hobbythek-zeiten/ (June 29, 2025)

[19] The author’s request at the Bosch Science Journalism Conference in Stuttgart in 1986

[20] Similar to the quote from the 1990s by Tagesthemen presenter Hanns Joachim Friedrichs >> https://www.rnd.de/medien/hanns-joachim-friedrichs-warum-ist-sein-beruehmtes-journalistenzitat-ein-missverstaendnis-656PQPXXD5DQBHNIQQI3Z5PDGI.html (July 4, 2025)

[21] TELI: Compass for the future? Journalism in the tension field of the knowledge and media society. 70 Years of the Technical-Literary Society (Technisch-Literarische Gesellschaft e.V.), Vistas Berlin 1999 (with a worthwhile TELI documentation by Hans Christian Förster, the history of its formation and all chairmen up to the turn of the century, see pages 201-216, as well as six pages with TELI members and their publications >>

https://lux.collections.yale.edu/view/text/5432d934-c87b-4350-886f-61a47afcc65d (June 28, 2025)

[22] >> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269783634_Journalisten_in_der_DDR_Eine_Kollektivbiografie (June 30, 2025)

[23] With the author of this study on July 7, 2025

[24] >> https://www.teli.de/teli100-100-jahre-wissenschaftsjournalismus-suchen-nach-einer-krone/ (June 30, 2025)

[25] The 90th anniversary in 2019 was celebrated at the Munich Press Club under the motto, inspired by the scientific debate: “Can civic competence compensate for the loss of trust in researchers and engineers?” >> https://www.teli.de/wissen-abgeschafft-kann-buergerkompetenz-den-vertrauensverlust-in-forscher-und-ingenieure-kompensieren/(June 30, 2025)

[26] See also >> http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0120-48232011000200007 (July 5, 2025) (in Spanish)

[27] Today it has been forgotten even by historians, but it is kept in memory, among other things, through the historical lectures on newspaper history by Otto B. Roegele at the LMU Munich and then Institute for Communication Studies (Newspaper Studies).