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Hundreds of employees of the Ullstein publishing house crowd in the hall of the Clou concert hall on Zimmerstrasse - with 4,000 seats, the largest entertainment venue in the city of Berlin.
But workers, employees and journalists are not in the mood for pleasure.
For three days, all the editorial offices and offices of the liberal media company have been occupied by armed left-wing extremists.
Nobody knows when newspapers will be able to appear again.
Not even Rudolf Ullstein, who runs the company with his four brothers.
On January 5, 1919, a Sunday, he hurried to the publishing house and tried to talk to the occupiers.
“But all negotiations with these people were in vain,” Rudolf Ullstein had to admit to the employees.
Armed men keep the Ullstein house occupied
Source: Axel Springer company archive
They respond to the occupation with an unusual political statement.
In a text that was distributed as a leaflet on January 9, 1919, the “Ullsteiners” expressed their displeasure.
From the editor-in-chief to the messenger, the workforce agrees: This violent action not only causes economic damage, but also prevents the free speech.
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At this point in time, Germany had seen rapid weeks.
After sailors in Kiel protested at the beginning of November 1918 against being burned in the last days of the war, the monarchy was overthrown, democratic freedoms guaranteed, women's suffrage, an eight-hour day and the company collective bargaining partnership were introduced.
A transitional government led by the SPD and its split-off, the Independent Social Democrats (USPD), also sought to hold the country's first free elections in mid-January 1919.
Even the workers 'and soldiers' councils, a self-governing structure based on the Russian model, were in favor of a parliamentary democracy.
Ullstein-Verlag welcomed this too.
As early as November 13, 1918, Georg Bernhard, editor-in-chief of the “Vossische Zeitung”, praised the “firm legal guarantees for freedom of expression” in an editorial: his newspaper had thus regained “the freedom to proclaim its convictions”.
The two leaders of the Spartakusbund, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, took the lead in the uprising
Source: picture-alliance / dpa
But this development was not at all to the taste of left radicals, above all the Spartacus group around Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who were striving for a socialist society.
From the first day of the revolution on, they had negated, downplayed and fought the reforms that had been initiated - and they did so more and more bluntly with the will to instigate a civil war.
This was evident from the slogan “To arms!” And the demand for the overthrow of Friedrich Ebert's government.
All that was missing was one occasion.
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And this was offered at the beginning of January 1919 by the dismissal of Berlin's police chief Emil Eichhorn.
The USPD man openly called for all leftists to join the Spartacus movement.
A grotesque situation: the government employee supported a group that wanted to overthrow that government.
Eichhorn should go.
Newspapers served as barricades.
The free press was worth nothing more to the Spartacists
Source: picture alliance / Heritage Images
Eichhorn's party protested against the expulsion, the Spartakists joined in and sent out armed troops.
One goal: the Berlin newspaper district.
The SPD newspaper "Vorwärts" was occupied first, then the publishing houses of Ullstein, Mosse and Scherl.
Street barricades made of paper rolls were erected.
From then on, even approaching the buildings was life-threatening.
What the Ullstein employees thought of it could be found in their leaflet.
“More than 5500 workers and employees of our company and their families, manual workers and intellectual workers have been pushed out of their work by this violent coup!” The “Ullsteiners”, including workers who were politically left-wing, distanced themselves from the “reprehensible” Politics of the Spartacus people and the attacks they committed on our workplaces ”.
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It is about more than the weal and woe of the proletarians - namely the fundamental maintenance of freedom of expression and freedom of work.
But both are suppressed by armed men.
How could a small number of people want to impose their will on a whole city, even a whole country, ask the “Ullsteiners” and in the end confessed defiantly: “We fight for our bread.
We fight for our freedom.
We fight for our honor and our human rights. "
Left-wing extremists brought the Berlin newspaper district under their control with armed troops
Source: picture alliance / Heritage Images
It took a week for the haunted newspaper district to end.
After bloody fighting with government troops and voluntary corps, the occupiers left, were arrested or were dead - including 16 and 17-year-olds.
Adventurer.
On January 13, 1919, the “Vossische Zeitung” recalled the events on a full page under the headline “The Fate of the Ullstein House” and reprinted the workforce's appeal.
The "Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung" published a special issue on the "Berlin Storm Days".
It was described in what condition the publishing house was found after the liberation: destroyed furniture, stolen typewriters, weapons left behind and half-full plates on the table in the canteen.
The text bitingly commented on the barricades made of books, magazines and newspapers in front of the windows: This is probably the only use that these "intellectual expropriators" could make of such things.
The report of the "Vossische Zeitung" on the consequences of the occupation
Source: Axel Springer company archive
In his editorial, editor-in-chief Bernhard clearly named the left-wing extremists as the culprits for the bloodshed.
The Berlin population is only too aware of “whoever started installing machine guns in the windows of the residential streets”.
The shooting "as an exercise in the proletarian class struggle on Berlin streets" had also originated from them.
With the means of violence "the public opinion should be falsified".
Bernhard saw the rumors from the days around the turn of the year 1918/19 confirmed.
Accordingly, the extreme left wanted to occupy the newspaper district in order to paralyze those bourgeois and social democratic papers that supported the democratic path towards a national assembly.
The first massive attempt during the revolution of 1918/19 to stop the young democracy by force of arms failed.
Not least because of the clear stance of the “Ullsteiners” who stood up for their jobs and the preservation of freedom of expression.
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This article was first published in 2019.