The DuMont Media Group in Cologne has become the first newspaper consortium to publish a historical account of its own activities in the Third Reich. The work is a portrait of a dark age for freedom of the press.

The study was written by historian Manfred Pohl and entitled M. DuMont Schauberg: A Newspaper Publisher's Fight for Independence Under the Nazi Dictatorship.

Commissioned by Dumont itself, the study was officially launched in Berlin on Monday, March 16.

The book focuses on the then head of the family-owned publishing company, Kurt Neven DuMont. The author Pohl concludes that DuMont, although a Nazi Party member as of 1937, did not actively support Hitler's regime and indeed tried to help employees threatened by Nazi oppression.