Berner Tagwacht

Title: Berner Tagwacht

Canton: Bern

Available online: 4 January 1893 - 29 November 1997 (32,108 issues, 257,036 pages)

Bibliografic information (Helveticat): http://permalink.snl.ch/bib/sz001158851

Rights: private use

Segmentation level: article level

HLS: https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/fr/articles/030565/2012-07-30/

Description: The Berner Tagwacht was founded in 1892 by the Bern Workers' Union as the organ of the Social Democratic Party of the Canton of Bern. It was published from 1893 and was the successor to the newspaper Der Schweizerische Sozialdemokrat 1888-1892. The Tagwacht first appeared twice weekly, and from 1906 six times a week. It was one of the most important journalistic voices of the workers' movement and social democracy in Switzerland. Robert Grimm (1881-1958) was its editor-in-chief from 1909 to 1918, and he made it into the fighting newspaper of the left in Switzerland, while it also received international attention. In 1966 it merged with the Seeländer Volkszeitung, which had been published in Biel since 1920. Until 18 January 1952, the paper printed the main text in Fraktur (gothic) script. The Tagwacht always struggled with tight finances and was threatened with bankruptcy several times because it generated less advertising revenue than bourgeois newspapers. Therefore, from the 1970s onwards, it collaborated on the editorial side with other left-wing newspapers. At the end of 1997, it had to cease publication because of financial problems, after party newspapers in general had fallen into crisis. It then tried to survive as a weekly newspaper under the title Die Hauptstadt. This attempt failed after six months, in 1998.