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It survived two horrific World Wars, the abdication of the last German Kaiser, and decades of the Cold War. Now, the Berlin-based Foreign Press Association has celebrated its 100th birthday in the German capital.
Created in Berlin on June 30, 1906, the Verein der Auslaendischen Presse in Deutschland, Europe’s oldest foreign Press organisation, has seen some of the greatest names in journalism among its ranks.
A founder-member was Paul Goldmann, a correspondent of the Vienna-based Neue Freie Presse, who remained with the VAP for close on 30 years until the Hitler era.
Newspaper city Berlin in the 1920s and 1930s was flooded with journalists, some with enormous egos. American correspondents, particularly, lived like kings in inflation-racked Germany in those days, when the dollar was worth a small fortune.
Foreign journalists again gravitated to Berlin after World War II, drawn by the bizarreness of a city militarily occupied by the four Allied powers — the US, Soviets, Britain and France.
One among them at the time the Berlin Wall went up in 1961 was Frederick Forsyth, then a Reuters news agency reporter. Soon he became world famous as the author of the best-selling novel, The Day of the Jackal.
The VAP’s history has had its fair share of historical ups and downs. Its darkest chapter came in early 1946 when Max Blokzijl, its chairman from 1931 to 1933, was executed for collaborating with the Nazis.
Today the VAP counts 420 foreign journalists from more than 60 countries among its members. They are kept busy reporting on the nation’s economic, political and cultural life, as well as its big sporting events, such as the current 2006 football World Cup which is being hosted by Germany.
The organisation’s current chairman is Dutch newsman Hans Verbeek.
Clive Freeman
