AZ celebrates 108 years
The Allgemeine Zeitung is celebrating its 108th birthday today.The newspapers was established on 22 July 1916 under the name “Der Kriegsbote” – almost a year after the capitulation of the German Schutztruppe at Khorab on 9 July 1915. It reported on the events of the First World War. After the former German colony of German South West Africa fell under the administration of the League of Nations, which had the country administered as a mandate territory by the then South African Union, the newspaper was renamed to its current name on 1 July, 1919.
In 1937, the newspaper was published by John Meinert Ltd. The newspaper, which appeared daily except Sundays, had a circulation of around 1 800 copies. It was read by Germans in Windhoek and the surrounding area. From 1939, the paper temporarily bore the title Deutscher Beobachter: Zeitung der Deutschen Südwestafrikas (German Observer: Newspaper of the Germans of South West Africa). In 1942, the paper changed back to its old name.
In 1978, Diether Lauenstein became the owner of the newspaper, dismissing the editor-in-chief of the time, Kurt Dahlmann, and radically changing the political direction. From the mid-1970s, under Dahlmann, the Allgemeine Zeitung advocated for a Namibia independent of South Africa and its apartheid policy and demanded universal and free voting rights for all Namibians. Lauenstein, on the other hand, tried rigorously to bring the newspaper onto a pro-apartheid and anti-independence course.
In 1991, the newspaper became part of the DMH publishing house, which was renamed Namibia Media Holdings (NMH) following a change of ownership after the country's independence. The last change in ownership led to the further name change of the publishing house to "Network Media Hub" from 1 July this year.
Today, the AZ is represented not only in print but also in all electronic media.