Uncle Sam, Publisher

Four blocks from Munich's Brown House, the crumbled cornerstone of Naziism, the U.S. Military Government runs Germany's biggest publishing plant. Once its giant presses spewed forth Hitler's venomous Voelkischer Beobachter; now they supply Germans with news of a democratic flavor. No force-feeding is needed: Die Neue Zeitung, a thrice-weekly paper; Heute, a picture magazine; Der Monat, a political monthly; and Neue Auslese, a cultural digest, all sell like piping-hot Kartoffelpuffer.

Die Neue Zeitung, the U.S. Military Government's prize package, is the New York Times of Germany. No paper has greater influence; only Die Welt (circ. 900,000), sponsored by the British military government, is bigger. The Zeitung subscribes to A.P., U.P., I. N.S. and Reuters, and most of its six oversized pages are devoted to news and thoughtful comment on world events; even a good Munich murder has to fight for space. Until the Russians banned Western zone publications last summer, the Zeitung sold 300,000 copies in the Soviet zone alone. Now its circulation (at 6-c- a copy) is 840,000 in the U.S., British and French zones.

Last week, Die Neue Zeitung got its fourth editor: greying Kendall Foss, 44, ex-TIME writer, Nieman Fellow and longtime foreign correspondent. Except for Editor Foss and a handful of other key men, the Zeitung is written by Germans in German.

When Hungarian-born Author Hans Habe (A Thousand Shall Fall), then a U.S. Army major, founded the paper in 1945, he hired the best non-Nazi German talent on the market. Some of the Zeitung's specialists make $750 a month. The paper can afford to pay well. It pays neither rent nor taxes, accepts no ads, and rakes in (along with its sister periodicals) $5,000,000 a year. But few U.S. newsmen, accustomed to the hustle of city rooms, would feel at home in the Zeitung. Every staffer above the rank of cub has his own office, where he dictates stories and headlines to his secretary. Editor Jack Fleischer, able predecessor of Ken Foss, tried to introduce U.S. methods to the Zeitung but didn't get far. The editor won the right to read the copy (it used to go direct from secretaries to composing room), but the paper still has no copy desk or rewrite men.

Though frankly pro-American, the Zeitung is free to criticize fumbles by U.S. officials, and occasionally does. Some of its biggest troubles are caused by American officials who are still hazy about the paper's status. Recently a U.S. Army officer informed the Zeitung that he was sending a man around to take away the telephone switchboard. It was orders, he said; German papers had to give up their Army communication equipment. "But we're not a German newspaper," Editor Fleischer protested. "Oh, yeah?" scoffed the officer. "With that name?"

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