Vossische Zeitung
- Miami seaside resort destroyed
- Second Stresemann–Briand meeting
- Florida
Miami’s destruction leads the page, alongside a conditional forecast of renewed Franco-German talks. A separate essay describes Florida’s appeal as an American holiday destination.
Image-checked selected first-page passages; partial reading, not the whole page or complete articles.
Translation
Miami seaside resort destroyed
A terrible hurricane struck Miami, the fashionable American resort in Florida, on Saturday night, causing immense devastation. According to the latest wireless report from Florida, 1,200 people have died and 6,000 have been injured. The damage itself is provisionally estimated at half a billion dollars. The destruction has left more than 100,000 people homeless.
Second Stresemann–Briand meeting
The Paris newspapers unanimously express the view that Briand and Stresemann will meet again shortly. Stresemann will in all likelihood travel to Paris for that purpose. The Excelsior claims to have learned from a Geneva source that, if the French cabinet ratifies the arrangements made between Briand and Stresemann at Thoiry next Tuesday, Stresemann will come to Paris as early as the beginning of October to continue the negotiations. If Stresemann cannot come, the two will meet at the next session of the League of Nations, to be held in Berlin in December.
Florida
Small wonder that this land, with its splendid, elongated coastline, became the playground and holiday retreat of the Union. Easier to reach than California, and situated in the more familiar latitudes to which the successful Yankee always most gladly returns—even if he has prospered by heeding the call “young man, go West”—Florida, and above all its leading seaside resorts, Miami and Palm Beach, has become the destination of Americans seeking rest and pleasure.
Context
A resort catastrophe with a widening reach
The headline’s emphasis on Miami as a resort made the hurricane legible to distant German readers through a familiar destination of American wealth and leisure. But the storm was not confined to that city. The US National Weather Service’s later reconstruction follows it across southern Florida and back to the northern Gulf Coast, where it struck near Pensacola on September 20. A celebrated holiday destination was the first focus of a disaster still moving across the region.
Franco-German talks after Locarno
Briand and Stresemann had signed the Locarno security treaty in October 1925. It guaranteed Germany’s frontiers with France and Belgium and provided for peaceful settlement of disputes; it came into force on September 14, 1926. The prospect of another meeting at Paris therefore belonged to a real change in post-war diplomacy. The newspaper’s attention to cabinet approval also shows the limits of personal diplomacy: understandings reached by two foreign ministers still had to secure governmental backing.
Florida as the successful American’s retreat
The Florida essay imagines a particular holidaymaker: someone who has already made a success of life and now wants rest. Its contrast with California distinguishes the westward search for opportunity from the return to a familiar place for pleasure. Read alongside the disaster report, this portrait explains what Miami and Palm Beach represented to the writer—a destination made valuable by accessibility, coastline and affluent visitors, whose image of ease was suddenly shattered.
Original
Seebad Miami zerstört
Eine furchtbare Wirbelsturmkatastrophe hat Sonnabend nacht das amerikanische Modebad Miami in Florida heimgesucht und ungeheure Verwüstungen angerichtet. Nach der letzten Funkmeldung aus Florida sind 1200 Personen umgekommen, 6000 wurden verwundet. Der Schaden selbst wird vorläufig auf eine halbe Milliarde Dollar geschätzt. Durch die Verwüstungen sind über 100 000 Menschen obdachlos geworden.
Zweite Begegnung Stresemann–Briand
Die Pariser Blätter geben übereinstimmend der Ansicht Ausdruck, daß binnen kurzem eine neue Zusammenkunft zwischen Briand und Stresemann stattfinden wird. Stresemann werde sich aller Voraussicht nach zu diesem Zweck nach Paris begeben. Der „Excelsior“ will aus Genfer Quelle erfahren haben, daß für den Fall, daß der französische Ministerrat am nächsten Dienstag die Abmachungen zwischen Briand und Stresemann in Thoiry ratifiziert, Stresemann schon zu Beginn des Oktobers nach Paris kommen werde, um die Verhandlungen fortzusetzen. Könne Stresemann nicht kommen, dann werde eine Zusammenkunft zwischen Briand und Stresemann auf der nächsten Tagung des Völkerbundes stattfinden, die im Dezember in Berlin abgehalten werde.
Florida
Kein Wunder, daß dieses Land mit seiner herrlichen langgestreckten Küste der Spiel- und Erholungsplatz der Union wurde. Leichter erreichbar als Kalifornien, in vertrauteren Breiten gelegen, zu denen der arrivierte Yankee doch immer wieder am liebsten zurückkehrt, wenn er auch dem Ruf „young man, go West“ mit Erfolg Gehör gegeben hat, ist Florida und vor allem seine Hauptbadeorte Miami und Palmbeach das Ziel erholungsbedürftiger und vergnügungssuchender amerikanischer Menschen geworden.