Germany, 1760-1815

3 Germany, – Eckhart Hellmuth and Wolfgang Piereth Translated by Angela Davies From the s, the public sphere in Germany became increasingly politi- cised. Certain strata of Germansociety became receptive to the ideaof civil activities under taken for the common good, displayed a new sensitivity to contemporary political and social conditions and their shortcomings, and were more prepared to v oice criticism. Events such as the Seven Years War and the American War of Independence stimulated this develop- ment. The dramatic occurences of the revolutionary and Napoleonic age gave it a further boost.  In particular, the war with Napoleonic France had a profound impact on society, bringing with it occupation and hag- gling about territory, constant changes of ruler and a far-reaching reform policy which awakened and sharpened the political awareness of broad sections of the population.  For example, the Confederation of the Rhine was the ‘subject of debate in all the journals, during which, society was quickly politicised’.  These upheavals cleared the deckfor a debate on political basics such as national identity, legal equality and political participation. This newly created public was to a large extent the domain of the enlightened intelligentsia, the Gebildeten, at least in the later eighteenth century. This group was highly diverse in terms of origin, profession, type and level of income.  What unified the Gebildeten as a group was education. As a rule, they had studied at one of the enlightened univer- sities. Familiarity with the contemporary and classical culture ensured the homogeneity of this group. Since education, not property or social background, defined the Gebildeten, in principle it was an open group. At the same time, it was highly elitist, as it comprised only about  per cent of the total population. Although the Gebildeten group was middle- class at heart, it also crossed over into the nobility. It consisted essen- tially of three sub-groups. First, there were members of the professions who had had an academic training, such as doctors, lawyers and apothe- caries. Second, there were writers, artists and journalists. And third, by far the largest constituent group of the Gebildeten were members of the civil service. In the widest sense this included, in addition to administrative   Eckhart Hellmuth and Wolfgang Piereth officials and the judiciary, professors and, in the Protestant territories, the clergy and teachers. These servants of the state tookpart in the pub- lic discussion about state, society and the law which began from about  and became much more widespread during the last quarter of the century. For civil servants with an academic training this debate naturally provided an intellectual challenge, especially as academic and literary ac- tivity offered a high degree of prestige. Thus, in addition to their pro- fessional duties, officials devoted themselves to the taskof interpreting the world by writing newspaper articles, academic studies, treatises and essays. As authors, editors and publishers the Gebildeten came together in in- formal but highly influential ‘networks’ which to a large extent domi- nated the unfolding market in information.  This is the context in which the profession of journalism began to develop.  In addition to numer- ous part-time ‘wr iters ’,  there were probably about a hundred full-time journalists in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Germany.  Their most important members included Christoph Martin Wieland and Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart. During the wars of liberation, Joseph G ¨orres, in particular, made a name for himself with his journal, the Rheinische Merkur (Rhineish Mercury)(–). Increasing commer- cializa tion meant that in the second half of the eighteenth century not everyone published out of lofty political and social concerns. Journalists often sought to make money and further their careers by secur ing large sales for their publications, or by writing their way into a job with the state by publishing pro-government articles.  The Gebildeten saw themselves as an authority entitled to judge, as ‘the mouth of the people and the ear of the prince’.  At the same time, they sharply separated themselves from the masses, who, because of ‘their ignorance and roughness’, could have no part in shaping public opinion.  Yet we must not forget that there were also ‘plebeian’ circles of commu- nication. Interest in printed political information among the broad and often illiterate masses rose in leaps and bounds at certain times during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.  The clergy, teachers and pub landlords tookan active part by reading political material aloud, and thus helped to politicise the public at large. In , the Helmstedt professor Johann Nikolaus Bischoff noted: ‘In short, everyone is eager for the most recent news of world events, from the Regent, who receives it at first hand from his envoys and messengers, down to the countryman, who hears the .newspaper read by his political schoolmaster every Sunday in the pub.’  Nothing had changed in the run-up to the wars of liberation, as this announcement from Rosenheim in Bavaria, dated July , shows: ‘Everyone is drinking and arguing to their hearts’ content; the numerous Germany – clergy there, apart from the dean, who is a most noble man, are working on the audience in their usual way.’  The development of a ‘modern’ public sphere in Germany was closely tied to changes in reading behaviour. In the last third of the eighteenth century, a maximum of  per cent of the  million inhabitants of the German Reich could read; by the end of the century, this figure had risen to about  per cent.  While Rolf Engelsing’s concept of the ‘reading re- volution’ may be controversial,  there is no doubt that from the second half of the eighteenth century the reading public, especially among the middle classes, expanded considerably. People spoke of a ‘reading addic- tion’ and a ‘mania for reading’, which filled contemporaries with amaze- ment and soon with real concern.  This change has been described as the transition from ‘intensive’ to ‘extensive’ reading.  In the early eighteenth century, the repetitious reading of, for example, devotional literature, had dominated; now people read more widely. The purpose of reading was no longer just to confirm and consolidate a canon of traditional beliefs and maxims; rather, the aim was to open up a new view of the world. Reading now frequently went beyond the private sphere and became an occa- sion for communication within society.  This could happen in circles of friends, but its main setting was in the context of the rapidly expanding reading societies, which were even spreading into rural areas.  These reading societies had two functions: first, they provided access to a stock of books which, as a rule, went far beyond the holdings of private libraries. And second, they served as a forum for debate about what had been read. This ‘extensive’ reading by the educated classes fundamentally under- mined the monopoly of interpretation previously enjoyed by the Church and state authorities. What was read can be roughly grouped into four categories: books, journals, newspapers and pamphlets. All of them profi- ted from the fact that changes in reading behaviour led to a boom in the literary market from the late eighteenth century. During the second half of the eighteenth century, the bookmarket was clearly going through an upswing. The total production of German- language books between  and  is estimated at about , titles. About two-thirds of these were probably published after .  Correspondingly, the number of bookshops in Germany is thought to have ‘increased by a quarter’ between  and .  There is another indicator that fundamental changes had been taking place on the German bookmarket from about :  learned books in Latin were largely being displaced by books written for the educated general reader. They were written in German, and mostly contained practical information, or were entertaining. Whereas in ,  per cent of all new publications at the Leipzig and Frankfurt book fairs had been in Latin, by  this  Eckhart Hellmuth and Wolfgang Piereth percentage had almost halved (. per cent), and by  it had shrunk to a mere . per cent. Also striking is that the significance of theological works decreased constantly. In , a quarter of the books on offer at the fairs had been theological or religious in content; in , the figure was about . per cent. While legal and medical books kept their share of the market, other areas, such as geography, pedagogy, natural science, politics and philosophy registered a clear increase. The largest growth, however, was in the sphere of belles-lettres, that is, novels, poetry and drama. In , these genres had had a market share of just under  per cent; in  the figure had risen to . per cent. The novel, in particular, evoked a lasting response in readers. The second half of the eighteenth century, however, was not only the age of the book, it was also the age of the journal. The journal is consid- ered, with good reason, as the medium of the Enlightenment par excellence. Until the middle of the century, about  journals had been published in the German-language area, but after  this market developed its own dynamic.  Almost , new titles appeared between  and , the greatest growth rates being achieved towards the end of the century. Between  and  alone, , new journals were published. These are remarkable figures, even if we take into account that quite a few were short-lived and did not survive after the first few issues. Consequently, only a limited number of journals could build up a steady readership. The size of print-runs varied. Normally, they would have been around ,; print-runs over , were a rare exception, yet a journal was financially viable if it could sell more than  copies.  When consider- ing these – on the whole – modest figures, however, we must remember that individual copies were, as a rule, read by several people. In addi- tion, the effectiveness of these journals was increased even further by the fact that they frequently formed a key part of the holdings of the libraries of contemporary reading societies. The landscape of journals that emerged in this period was extraor- dinarily diverse. Thus there were many specialist journals on subjects such as theology, philosophy, law, medicine, education, natural sciences, economics, music, architecture and military science. Their readerships were drawn from those ‘experts’ in both the state apparatus and the free professions whose numbers had increased in the late eighteenth cen- tury. Publishers also discovered other specialist markets, such as women’s journals  and fashion journals. As Bertuch’s Journal des Luxus und der Moden ( Journal of Luxury and Fashion) showed, these publications could be highly lucrative.  And finally, there were journals that concentrated on contemporary literature. Among these general reviewing organs, the Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek (General German Library), edited by the Germany – Berlin publisher Friedrich Nicolai, initially stood out. In addition to specialist organs of this nature, which had a relatively clear profile, there were also journals that covered a broad spectrum of subjects. These in- cluded the moral weeklies,  which played a key role in broadening the reading public in the German-language area. Between  and , around  journals in this genre were published. Their content centred on developing a new understanding of ‘virtue’, and the spectrum of sub- jects addressed included, among other things, questions of upbringing and education, the home, social conduct, aesthetics, literature and lan- guage. The general magazine, however, dominated the journal landscape in the second half of the eighteenth century. The popularity of this genre was attributable not least to the fact that i t treated a remarkable range of subjects. It ‘regaled readers with information on discoveries, inventions, nature, history, statistics, practical matters, and occasional medical ad- vice, all of which – interspersed where appropriate with a little poetry and moralizing – served both the readers and the common weal’.  The encyclopaedic character of the age was expressed here in trivialised form. The real target reader ship of the general magazines was the Gebildeten. But there were also many journals of this sort that aspired to instruct the ‘common man’. The Intelligenzbl¨atter (advertisers, or information sheets) represented a unique form of journal.  At first they printed mainly announcements and official proclamations. But by the second half of the eighteenth century they often also had a sizeable editorial section which contained contribu- tions in a popular enlightened vein, literary essays, or pieces on the com- mon good, which placed them in the vicinity of the moral weeklies. While the Intelligenzbl¨atter were often close to the state, or even state-owned, a substantial number were based on private initiatives. During the eigh- teenth century they spread throughout all the German states, and there is evidence that they were published in at least  cities. The average weekly print-run was between  and , copies, but there were some much higher figures. Around  the two Intelligenzbl¨atter published in Hamburg – a stronghold of the German press – had circulations of , and , respectively. In rural areas, in particular, the Intelligenzblatt might be the only published organ of the press. Holger B ¨oning has there- fore justifiably pointed out that Intelligenzbl¨atter contributed to connecting ‘the local, regionally limited publics into a national public that ignored the borders of the small states and territories’.  A political press in the real sense did not emerge until after . In the last three decades of the eighteenth century there were several dozen jour- nals which dealt intensively with political topics. During the s alone, twenty-four of these historical-political journals came on to the market; the  Eckhart Hellmuth and Wolfgang Piereth following decade saw another twenty-five more titles of this sort.  A num- ber of these journals had constantly rising circulation figures, which shows that they evoked a considerable response among the public. The most prominent included Schl ¨ozer’s Staatsanzeigen (State Advertiser), Friedrich Karl von Moser’s Patriotisches Archiv (Patriotic Archive), Schubart’s Deutsche Chronik (German Chronicle)and Archenholz’s Minerva,which was published in  with a print-run of ,, and whose authors included the well-known journalists Friedrich (von) Gentz and Ernst Moritz Arndt. One of the most important organs of the late Enlightenment in Germany was the Berlinische Monatsschrift (Berlin Monthly)(–), edited by Joachim Erich Biester and Friedrich Gedicke.  Its authors included Prussia’s leading intellectuals, among them Immanuel Kant and Moses Mendelssohn. The s also witnessed the founding of journals which openly sympathised with the French Revolution, such as Das Neue Graue Ungeheuer (The New Grey Monster)(–) and Die Geissel (The Whip) (–), which was edited by the lawyer and later judge in the French court of appeal Andreas Georg Friedrich Rebmann.  As a rule, the editors played a central part in these historical-political journals. They often wrote a substantial proportion of the contents themselves, and thus significantly influenced their political profile. In order to attract readers, the histor ical-political journals, like the general journals, also carried travel reports, bookreviews and anecdotal and biographical information.  But their main concern was domestic and foreign politics. They inundated their readers with a flood of information about government campaigns of various sorts, economics, commerce and military undertakings. Frequently, statistical information also formed an important part of their contents. Thus, they published figures on the budgets of individual states and territories, on the military potential of the European powers, birth and death rates, and import and export figures. By publishing data of this sort, the editors of political journals were trying to still the enormous public hunger for information. There was more, however, to this obsession with statistics. It was also a deliberate, political act which was intended to breakthrough the secrecy with which absolutist regimes surrounded themselves, to generate a basis of fact for public debate.  Facts, however, were only one side of the coin; political reflection was the other. Events such as the American War of Independence, the French Revolution, and the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire necessarily pro- voked an examination of fundamental constitutional issues. As a result, ideas such as popular sovereignty, the rights of man and the social con- tract were taken up by political journals during the Enlightenment and the Napoleonic period. In this process, two factors reinforced each other: Germany – first, political literature became less academic, overstepping ‘the bounds of its subject in the direction of political journalism’;  and second, these themes became popular because their significance increasingly made them spill over into non-specialist organs.  Added to this was the nitty-gritty of everyday politics: plans to reform the education system, the debate on the guilds, the problem of serfdom, reflections on the criminal justice system, thoughts on poor relief and suggestions for improving industry and agriculture. However, it was not only these overtly political journals that pushed for- ward the process of politicisation. Enlightened journals in general had the same effect. Thus, literary magazines such as Wieland’s Teutscher Merkur (German Mercury) increasingly discussed political subjects. An attempt has been made to analyse the topics dealt with by the most important German journals of the late eighteenth century.  The results of this project, based on a computer analysis of , articles in about  periodicals published between  and , are as follows: . per cent were on the natural sciences; . per cent on contemporary society;  per cent on medicine; . per cent on the arts and humanities; . per cent on economics; . per cent on theology and religion; . per cent on politics;  per cent on law and jurisprudence; . per cent on philosophy; . per cent on education and schooling; and . per cent on history. Of course, such general categories are problematic. Nor do these figures show how the relative importance of individual topic areas changed dur- ing the second half of the century. But it is quite clear that politics, society, law and economics played an important part in the discourse of German enlightened society. Originally, then, journals had concentrated on giving their readers facts, and had provided the raw material for political discourse. Increas- ingly, however, writers become more willing to take sides. The most ob- vious expression of this change was that controversies began between individual jour nals. According to B ¨odeker: The transition of the journal from its role as provider of material for political discourse to that of simultaneous bearer and representative of that discourse took place primarily in the latter third of the eighteenth century. At this time the press grew into its new function as an institution of public reflection and representative of public opinion. Journalists, and almost every learned German, spent at least some of their time writing for journals, on affairs they considered to be of public import and which they felt would be occupying the thoughts of others like them.  Like journals, newspapers had a long history in Germany, having de- veloped out of the so-called Messrelationen around . In the period under discussion here, they were therefore a firmly established medium,  Eckhart Hellmuth and Wolfgang Piereth indeed, the most important one as far as politics were concerned. During the eighteenth century, their numbers tripled. With its  newspapers, Germany was ‘the country with the most newspapers in the world’.  Most of them probably had an average circulation of around  to , although some boasted much higher figures. As early as  the Reichspostreuter (Imperial Postal Messenger), published in Altona, had a cir- culation of ,, while between  and  that of the Real-Zeitung (Fact sheet) from Erlangen was as high as ,. The rapid burst of politi- cisation which German society w ent through in response to the French Revolution and subsequent events seems to have stimulated the German newspaper market. In any case, by the end of the eighteenth century, a number of newspapers had achieved considerable circulation figures. Thus the Neuwieder Zeitung (Neuwied News) had , subscribers in ; the Augsburg Ordinari Post-Zeitung (General Postal News) had about , readers in ; and the Berlin Vossische Zeitung (Vosses Newspaper) had a circulation of , in .  By far the largest figures, how- ever, were achieved by the Hamburgische Unpartheyische Correspondent (Hamburg Impartial Correspondent), which published no fewer than , copies at the turn of the nineteenth century, before Hamburg was occu- pied by French troops: a number of sources even suggest the extraordi- nary figure of over ,.  Estimates indicate that by  the German daily press sold considerably more than , copies per week: a figure which could be matched by no other contemporary printed material ex- cept the Bible and devotional literature.  Two factors were involved in newspapers becoming a ‘mass’ medium in the German-language area during the second half of the eighteenth century: first, the contents of newspapers changed. Austere lists of events were increasingly replaced by argument and reflection. The French Revolution, above all, had a politicising and polarising effect, forcing many newspaper editors to adopt a position which in turn influenced the reading public.  This points to the second important aspect, namely, the new forms of reception that had become established. Parallel to the reading societies in which the educated urban upper classes assembled to read demanding material together, subscription clubs emerged among the urban and rural lower classes, giving their members cheaper access to newspapers, which they purchased collectively. This collective form of consumption was an expression of a growing curiosity and an increased need for entertainment among circles outside the enlightened elite. In ad- dition to subscription clubs, pubs, coffee houses and taverns were places in which newspapers were read. Often teachers or clergy would organise reading circles in these places, which not only provided an opportunity for communal reading, but also served as forums for discussion.  All of Germany – these institutions frequently involved illiterate people, who gained access to the contents of newspapers when others read them aloud. In the eighteenth century, most newspapers came out two to four times per week. As a rule, they consisted of four to eight quarto pages, printed in one or two columns. Daily newspapers were not the norm until the first third of the nineteenth century. Prior to this, most newspapers did not give articles headlines: only the place of origin and the date of the announcement were mentioned. In the early nineteenth century it be- came common to organise articles according to subject or geographical headings. Political reportage formed the bulkof newspaper contents, and war reports, court reports and official announcements and promulgations clearly dominated. By comparison with reporting on foreign affairs, do- mestic political news from the paper’s home territory and neighbouring states of the Holy Roman Empire tooka backseat: first, because news from France and England, for instance, was more easily available, and second, because there were political reasons why supra-regional newspa- pers in Germany had to be very careful when reporting the politics of neighbour ing German states.  Among the many newspapers that were published in the late eigh- teenth and early nineteenth centuries, a few stand out. These include the above-mentioned Sta[a]ts- und Gelehrte Zeitung des Hamburgischen Unpartheyischen Correspondenten, commonly known as the Hamburgische Correspondent.  Published since , the paper profited from Hamburg’s comparatively liberal press policy.  It was read by people from all over the Reich, and even from abroad, for example, Scandinavia. Contemporaries judged the Hamburgische Correspondent to be not only the biggest, but also the best newspaper at the turn of the century. By that time its reporting was already based on stories filed by its own correspondents.  The occu- pation of Hamburg by Napoleonic troops put an end to the Hamburgische Correspondent’s pioneering role as the most influential supra-regional newspaper in the German-language area. Its place was to some extent taken by the Allgemeine Zeitung (General News), founded by the publisher Johann Friedrich Cotta in .  Published first in Stuttgart and then moving to Ulm before settling in Augsburg in , the Allgemeine Zeitung was the most influential organ of the German press in the first half of the nineteenth century thanks to its comprehensive and balanced report- ing. At this time, it undeniably had a European range. ‘Completeness’, ‘truthfulness’ and ‘impartiality’ were its guidelines, laid down when the newspaper was founded, and followed over the years under Cotta’s influence.  This pragmatic and clever publisher was able to combine political caution, economic benefit and a differentiated, but sometimes somewhat featureless, journalism.  The Allgemeine Zeitung was one of  Eckhart Hellmuth and Wolfgang Piereth the first newspapers to be produced by a full-time, professional editor. Initially, Cotta tried to engage the poet and historian Friedrich Schiller as editor, but then the well-known historical-political writer and Baden pro- fessor Ernst Ludwig Posselt accepted the job. Posselt received an annual salary of , Gulden, plus half of the profit from every copy over , sold.  Cotta paid particular attention to building up a unique networkof correspondents, which cost him , Gulden a year. He himself main- tained contacts with a wide range of influential, well-informed and high- ranking political decision-makers. This strategy undoubtedly increased the standing of his newspaper, but it also meant that it was occasionally subjected to the state’s propaganda measures.  Finally, pamphlets were a fourth medium of the emerging public sphere.  They were easy to produce, if necessary clandestinely, and could be distributed quickly and in a targeted way. Especially at times of politi- cal unrest, they represented a welcome means of communication because of their flexibility. State propagandists used them for their press cam- paigns, as did revolutionary journalists, who produced anonymous pam- phlets that were illegally distributed. Napoleon, for example, always took a portable printing press with him on his campaigns in order to accom- pany his military activities with up-to-date bulletins – a strategy that the Prussian generals adopted in the – wars of liberation.  That period saw the peakof German pamphleteering, when the uncrowned king of the medium was Ernst Moritz Arndt, whose anti-Napoleonic pamphlets were published in print-runs of four to five, and sometimes even six, figures.  The development of a political public which such print activity demon- strates could not be ignored by the state authorities. Indeed, they soon de- veloped comprehensive mechanisms to handle the press. Yet the fragility of the late Enlightenment administrations, to which recent research has drawn our attention,  was reflected in the manner and effectiveness with which the press was controlled.  As Kiesel and M ¨unch note of German censorship as a whole: It was based on a whole series of legal regulations; it was applied by numerous censorship colleges and an army of censors; in sum, it was an immense and monstrous institution, which could be understood only in terms of its historical genesis in a Germany that was territorially and confessionally fragmented after the Reformation.  The general legal frameworkfor censorship came from the legislation of the Holy Roman Empire, whose roots went backinto the sixteenth century and whose leitmotif was the integrity of the religious, political and moral orders in their traditional form. Both the Reich’s censorship [...]... Humiliation). Not until Napoleonic rule in Germany came to an end did the pressure of censorship on political journalism briefly lift The wars of liberation brought about ‘total confusion in large parts of Germany, and even caused orderly censorship to collapse’. The development of modern state propaganda in Germany following Napoleon’s defeat was still closely related to the Napoleonic model Napoleon’s... to pursue an offensive press policy, a public sphere was formed that, to a considerable extent, was the product of official action The ‘structural transformation of the public sphere’ that took place in Germany, therefore, was pushed on not only by the laws of commerce and consumption, but equally by the state and its agents NOTES ¨  See Holger Boning (ed.), Franz¨ sische Revolution und deutsche Offentlichkeit... (Munich, )  Eckhart Hellmuth and Wolfgang Piereth  Breil, Augsburger ‘Allgemeine Zeitung’, pp ff  Daniel Moran, Toward the Century of Words Johann Cotta and the Politics of the Public Sphere in Germany, – (Berkeley, CA, ); Retallack, ‘From pariah to professional?’, p ; Monika Neugebauer-Wolk, Revolution ¨ und Constitution Die Br¨ der Cotta Eine biographische Studie zum Zeitalter . 3 Germany, – Eckhart Hellmuth and Wolfgang Piereth Translated by Angela. thoughts of others like them.  Like journals, newspapers had a long history in Germany, having de- veloped out of the so-called Messrelationen around .