Sources
Distel, Barbara: Gerhard Frey, in: Wolfgang Benz (Hg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus, Bd. 2.2 (Personen), Berlin 2009, S. 252f.
Linke, Annette: Der Multimillionär Frey und die DVU. Fakten, Daten, Hintergründe, Essen 1994.
Gerhard Frey (18.2.1933 Cham – 19.2.2013 Gräfelfing)
Far-right publisher, journalist, and politician (DVU)
Gerhard Frey im Europawahlkampf in der Holstenhalle, Neumünster, 18.5.1989 | Karl-Bernd Karwasz/SZ Photo, 00325559
Stemming from a prosperous entrepreneurial family, Gerhard Frey did an internship at the Passauer Neue Presse after completing his studies in law and political sciences. In 1960, he completed his PhD in economic law at the University of Graz. Frey had already been writing for the Deutsche Soldaten-Zeitung since 1951, which had been founded that same year by former Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS officers. The newspaper was committed to extreme anti-communism and launched the idea of a German defense contribution. Having a chain of department stores from his parents, Frey was able to acquire half of the newspaper's shares in 1958 and all of them in 1960. From then on, he was publisher and editor-in-chief of the weekly, which he renamed Deutsche Soldaten-Zeitung und Nationalzeitung – later Deutsche Nationalzeitung or just National-Zeitung. The print run would at times reach 120,000 copies, but it was discontinued at the end of 2019 after a significant decline in circulation. Until the end, it was published by DSZ Verlag, which was founded by Frey, and adopted an extremely nationalistic, revisionist, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic stance.
Frey progressively expanded his company into a publishing empire through acquisitions and takeovers, which he managed from Munich-Pasing. Through him, Munich became a center of the right-wing to far-right media landscape.
In addition to his publishing activities, Frey established the 'German People's Union e.V.' (DVU) in 1971 as an opposition movement against the social-liberal Ostpolitik. Founded in 1987 with its headquarters in Pasing, the far-right DVU was under the authoritarian leadership of Frey, who also funded it, until 2009. It enjoyed significant success in Northern and Eastern Germany. It did not run in the Bavarian parliamentary elections. In 2010-2012, after Frey's withdrawal, it was absorbed into the NPD, with which it had previously collaborated. Frey himself was an NPD member from 1975 to 1979. Since Frey's death, his media empire has been run as a family-owned business by his successors.