Increasing cialization meant that in the second half of the eighteenth century noteveryone published out of lofty political and social concerns.. Interest in printed political informatio
Trang 13 Germany, –
Eckhart Hellmuth and Wolfgang Piereth
Translated by Angela Davies
From thes, the public sphere in Germany became increasingly cised Certain strata of German society became receptive to the idea of civilactivities undertaken for the common good, displayed a new sensitivity tocontemporary political and social conditions and their shortcomings, andwere more prepared to voice criticism Events such as the Seven YearsWar and the American War of Independence stimulated this develop-ment The dramatic occurences of the revolutionary and Napoleonic agegave it a further boost.In particular, the war with Napoleonic Francehad a profound impact on society, bringing with it occupation and hag-gling about territory, constant changes of ruler and a far-reaching reformpolicy which awakened and sharpened the political awareness of broadsections of the population.For example, the Confederation of the Rhinewas the ‘subject of debate in all the journals, during which, society wasquickly politicised’. These upheavals cleared the deckfor a debate onpolitical basics such as national identity, legal equality and politicalparticipation
politi-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 waseducation As a rule, they had studied at one of the enlightened univer-sities Familiarity with the contemporary and classical culture ensuredthe 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 tially of three sub-groups First, there were members of the professionswho had had an academic training, such as doctors, lawyers and apothe-caries Second, there were writers, artists and journalists And third, by far
essen-the largest constituent group of essen-the Gebildeten were members of essen-the civil
service In the widest sense this included, in addition to administrative
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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 thecentury For civil servants with an academic training this debate naturallyprovided 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 interpretingthe world by writing newspaper articles, academic studies, treatises andessays
As authors, editors and publishers the Gebildeten came together in
in-formal but highly influential ‘networks’ which to a large extent nated the unfolding market in information.This is the context in whichthe profession of journalism began to develop. In addition to numer-ous part-time ‘writers’, there were probably about a hundred full-timejournalists in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Germany.Their most important members included Christoph Martin Wielandand Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart During the wars of liberation,Joseph G ¨orres, in particular, made a name for himself with his journal,
domi-the Rheinische Merkur (Rhineish Mercury) (–) Increasing cialization meant that in the second half of the eighteenth century noteveryone published out of lofty political and social concerns Journalistsoften sought to make money and further their careers by securing largesales for their publications, or by writing their way into a job with thestate by publishing pro-government articles.
commer-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 ‘theirignorance 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 andoften illiterate masses rose in leaps and bounds at certain times during theeighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.The clergy, teachers and publandlords tookan active part by reading political material aloud, and thushelped to politicise the public at large In, the Helmstedt professorJohann Nikolaus Bischoff noted: ‘In short, everyone is eager for the mostrecent news of world events, from the Regent, who receives it at first handfrom his envoys and messengers, down to the countryman, who hearsthe newspaper read by his political schoolmaster every Sunday in the
pub.’Nothing had changed in the run-up to the wars of liberation, asthis announcement from Rosenheim in Bavaria, dated July, shows:
‘Everyone is drinking and arguing to their hearts’ content; the numerous
Trang 3clergy 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 closelytied to changes in reading behaviour In the last third of the eighteenthcentury, a maximum of per cent of the million inhabitants of theGerman 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 volution’ may be controversial,there is no doubt that from the secondhalf of the eighteenth century the reading public, especially among themiddle 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 thetransition from ‘intensive’ to ‘extensive’ reading.In the early eighteenthcentury, the repetitious reading of, for example, devotional literature, haddominated; now people read more widely The purpose of reading was nolonger just to confirm and consolidate a canon of traditional beliefs andmaxims; rather, the aim was to open up a new view of the world Readingnow frequently went beyond the private sphere and became an occa-sion for communication within society.This could happen in circles offriends, but its main setting was in the context of the rapidly expandingreading societies, which were even spreading into rural areas. Thesereading societies had two functions: first, they provided access to a stock
re-of books which, as a rule, went far beyond the holdings re-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 Churchand state authorities What was read can be roughly grouped into fourcategories: books, journals, newspapers and pamphlets All of them profi-ted from the fact that changes in reading behaviour led to a boom in theliterary market from the late eighteenth century
During the second half of the eighteenth century, the bookmarketwas 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 tohave ‘increased by a quarter’ between and .There is anotherindicator that fundamental changes had been taking place on the Germanbookmarket from about :learned books in Latin were largelybeing displaced by books written for the educated general reader Theywere written in German, and mostly contained practical information, orwere entertaining Whereas in, per cent of all new publications
at the Leipzig and Frankfurt book fairs had been in Latin, by this
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percentage had almost halved (. per cent), and by it had shrunk
to a mere. per cent Also striking is that the significance of theologicalworks decreased constantly In, a quarter of the books on offer atthe fairs had been theological or religious in content; in, the figurewas 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, inparticular, evoked a lasting response in readers
The second half of the eighteenth century, however, was not only theage 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 inthe German-language area, but after this market developed its owndynamic. 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 Theseare remarkable figures, even if we take into account that quite a few wereshort-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 wasfinancially viable if it could sell more than copies.When consider-ing these – on the whole – modest figures, however, we must rememberthat individual copies were, as a rule, read by several people In addi-tion, the effectiveness of these journals was increased even further by thefact 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 dinarily diverse Thus there were many specialist journals on subjectssuch as theology, philosophy, law, medicine, education, natural sciences,economics, music, architecture and military science Their readershipswere drawn from those ‘experts’ in both the state apparatus and the freeprofessions whose numbers had increased in the late eighteenth cen-tury Publishers also discovered other specialist markets, such as women’sjournals and fashion journals As Bertuch’s Journal des Luxus und der
extraor-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
Trang 5Berlin publisher Friedrich Nicolai, initially stood out In addition tospecialist organs of this nature, which had a relatively clear profile, therewere also journals that covered a broad spectrum of subjects These in-cluded the moral weeklies,which played a key role in broadening thereading 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 jects addressed included, among other things, questions of upbringingand education, the home, social conduct, aesthetics, literature and lan-guage The general magazine, however, dominated the journal landscape
sub-in the second half of the eighteenth century The popularity of this genrewas attributable not least to the fact that it treated a remarkable range ofsubjects 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 poetryand moralizing – served both the readers and the common weal’. Theencyclopaedic character of the age was expressed here in trivialised form
The real target readership 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 andofficial proclamations But by the second half of the eighteenth centurythey 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 teenth century they spread throughout all the German states, and there
eigh-is evidence that they were publeigh-ished in at least cities The averageweekly print-run was between and , copies, but there were somemuch 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 ignoredthe borders of the small states and territories’.
A political press in the real sense did not emerge until after In thelast three decades of the eighteenth century there were several dozen jour-nals which dealt intensively with political topics During thes alone,twenty-four of these historical-political journals came on to the market; the
Trang 6 Eckhart Hellmuth and Wolfgang Piereth
following decade saw another twenty-five more titles of this sort.A ber of these journals had constantly rising circulation figures, which showsthat they evoked a considerable response among the public The most
num-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 includedthe 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 byJoachim Erich Biester and Friedrich Gedicke. Its authors includedPrussia’s leading intellectuals, among them Immanuel Kant and MosesMendelssohn Thes 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 Frenchcourt of appeal Andreas Georg Friedrich Rebmann. As a rule, theeditors played a central part in these historical-political journals Theyoften wrote a substantial proportion of the contents themselves, and thussignificantly influenced their political profile
In order to attract readers, the historical-political journals, like thegeneral journals, also carried travel reports, bookreviews and anecdotaland biographical information.But their main concern was domestic andforeign politics They inundated their readers with a flood of informationabout government campaigns of various sorts, economics, commerce andmilitary undertakings Frequently, statistical information also formed animportant part of their contents Thus, they published figures on thebudgets of individual states and territories, on the military potential of theEuropean 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, politicalact which was intended to breakthrough the secrecy with which absolutistregimes surrounded themselves, to generate a basis of fact for publicdebate.
Facts, however, were only one side of the coin; political reflection wasthe other Events such as the American War of Independence, the FrenchRevolution, 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 andthe Napoleonic period In this process, two factors reinforced each other:
Trang 7first, 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 journals 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,
Trang 8 Eckhart Hellmuth and Wolfgang Piereth
indeed, the most important one as far as politics were concerned Duringthe 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 went through in response to the FrenchRevolution and subsequent events seems to have stimulated the Germannewspaper 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 Germandaily press sold considerably more than, copies per week: a figurewhich 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 eighteenthcentury: first, the contents of newspapers changed Austere lists of eventswere increasingly replaced by argument and reflection The FrenchRevolution, above all, had a politicising and polarising effect, forcingmany newspaper editors to adopt a position which in turn influenced thereading public. This points to the second important aspect, namely,the new forms of reception that had become established Parallel to thereading societies in which the educated urban upper classes assembled toread demanding material together, subscription clubs emerged amongthe urban and rural lower classes, giving their members cheaper access
to newspapers, which they purchased collectively This collective form ofconsumption was an expression of a growing curiosity and an increasedneed 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 organisereading circles in these places, which not only provided an opportunityfor communal reading, but also served as forums for discussion.All of
Trang 9these 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 timesper 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 thefirst third of the nineteenth century Prior to this, most newspapers didnot give articles headlines: only the place of origin and the date of theannouncement were mentioned In the early nineteenth century it be-came common to organise articles according to subject or geographicalheadings Political reportage formed the bulkof newspaper contents, andwar reports, court reports and official announcements and promulgationsclearly dominated By comparison with reporting on foreign affairs, do-mestic political news from the paper’s home territory and neighbouringstates of the Holy Roman Empire tooka backseat: first, because newsfrom France and England, for instance, was more easily available, andsecond, because there were political reasons why supra-regional newspa-pers in Germany had to be very careful when reporting the politics ofneighbouring German states.
Among the many newspapers that were published in the late teenth and early nineteenth centuries, a few stand out These include
eigh-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’scomparatively liberal press policy.It was read by people from all over theReich, 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 reportingwas 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 thenmoving to Ulm before settling in Augsburg in, the Allgemeine Zeitung
was the most influential organ of the German press in the first half of thenineteenth 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 thenewspaper was founded, and followed over the years under Cotta’sinfluence. This pragmatic and clever publisher was able to combinepolitical caution, economic benefit and a differentiated, but sometimessomewhat featureless, journalism. The Allgemeine Zeitung was one of
Trang 10 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 aseditor, but then the well-known historical-political writer and Baden pro-fessor Ernst Ludwig Posselt accepted the job Posselt received an annualsalary of, Gulden, plus half of the profit from every copy over ,sold.Cotta paid particular attention to building up a unique networkofcorrespondents, 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 increasedthe standing of his newspaper, but it also meant that it was occasionallysubjected to the state’s propaganda measures.
Finally, pamphlets were a fourth medium of the emerging publicsphere.They were easy to produce, if necessary clandestinely, and could
be distributed quickly and in a targeted way Especially at times of cal unrest, they represented a welcome means of communication because
politi-of their flexibility State propagandists used them for their press paigns, as did revolutionary journalists, who produced anonymous pam-phlets that were illegally distributed Napoleon, for example, always took
cam-a portcam-able printing press with him on his ccam-ampcam-aigns in order to cam-pany his military activities with up-to-date bulletins – a strategy that thePrussian generals adopted in the– wars of liberation.That periodsaw the peakof German pamphleteering, when the uncrowned king ofthe medium was Ernst Moritz Arndt, whose anti-Napoleonic pamphletswere published in print-runs of four to five, and sometimes even six,figures.
accom-The development of a political public which such print activity strates could not be ignored by the state authorities Indeed, they soon de-veloped comprehensive mechanisms to handle the press Yet the fragility
demon-of the late Enlightenment administrations, to which recent research hasdrawn our attention,was reflected in the manner and effectiveness withwhich the press was controlled.As Kiesel and M ¨unch note of Germancensorship as a whole:
It was based on a whole series of legal regulations; it was applied by numerouscensorship colleges and an army of censors; in sum, it was an immense andmonstrous institution, which could be understood only in terms of its historicalgenesis in a Germany that was territorially and confessionally fragmented afterthe Reformation.
The general legal frameworkfor censorship came from the legislation
of the Holy Roman Empire, whose roots went backinto the sixteenthcentury and whose leitmotif was the integrity of the religious, politicaland moral orders in their traditional form Both the Reich’s censorship
Trang 11is not surprising that the practice of censorship varied widely in differentterritories, and that next to states which attempted to maintain a rigidcensorship regime there were more liberal ones Authors in particularexploited this situation Thus, the bookmarket could be only partiallycontrolled, since if a publication was banned in one place, its author couldfind another Looking back to the late eighteenth century, the Hamburgbookseller Friedrich Perthes wrote to his Weimar colleague FriedrichJustin Bertusch in:
Germany always had the most complete freedom of the press, in fact and in deed,because anything that was banned in Prussia could be printed in W ¨urttemberg,anything that was banned in Hamburg could be printed ten steps away in Altona
No bookremained unprinted and undistributed.
Frederician Prussia – the state that is often seen as the model for harshregimes – particularly demonstrated how inefficient censorship could be
in the German territorial states of the eighteenth century FredericktheGreat undoubtedly had the will to bring the press under his control, andduring his-year reign, he passed forty-three censorship laws.Theselaws, however, were generally meaningless, for on the whole, Prussiancensorship in the second half of the eighteenth century was extremelychaotic. There was no central censorship authority Instead, numer-ous institutions, offices and individuals were involved in censoring thedifferent genres of contemporary literature Those who acted as censorswere not specialists, but pursued this activity in addition to their mainwork For long periods during the second half of the eighteenth century,the Prussian censorship system was based on close co-operation betweencensors, publishers and authors Moreover, roles were not clearly dis-tributed between these three groups:
Trang 12 Eckhart Hellmuth and Wolfgang Piereth
Many publishers were no mere businessmen, but were proud of their prestige inthe Republic of Letters and sometimes wrote books and edited journals them-selves Authors only rarely made a living by their pens; they were often civilservants or members of the clergy Last, but not least, censors were in most cases
hommes des lettres.
Given these circumstances, it is obvious that censorship under Frederickthe Great was not a particularly efficient instrument of repression, andoccasionally, censorship was more of a threat to the supporters of traditionthan to enlightened writers
This cosy arrangement between authors, publishers and the state seems
to have changed during the late s FrederickWilliam II, who hadsucceeded Frederickthe Great in and was an advocate of orthodoxProtestantism, made a number of attempts to eliminate the moderate, lib-eral climate that had previously dominated Prussia The measures he tookincluded introducing more stringent censorship regulations Yet attempts
at repression could still misfire. In any case, most German territoriesresponded to the French Revolution and to the more intense politicaldebate it inspired in Germany by passing tougher censorship regulationsearly in thes Thus, among others, Austria and W¨urttemberg intro-duced new censorship laws in, and Prussia tightened up its existingcensorship regulations during thes.Control of the press was placed
on an entirely new footing again by the French occupation, and the sition of the Napoleonic system of censorship and control of the press.
impo-In concrete terms this meant that loopholes in the German censorshipsystem were closed, while at the same time the French authorities madesure that the press in allied or subject German states toed the political line
dictated by the Moniteur. In conquered Prussia, for example, Frenchtroops marching into Berlin immediately began to monitor the press
The editors of the Vossische Zeitung and the Spenerscher Zeitung (Speners
Newspaper) were obliged to print French army bulletins, paeans of praise
for Napoleon and articles satirising Prussia’s military and its royalcouple A French-led office checked all newspapers before publication,and well-known public figures were put under surveillance.
Prussia was no exception Similar conditions existed in the otherGerman territories In Bavaria, a French ally, the government succes-sively tightened its control over the press from.This was in partthe result of French intervention, but some measures were a form ofpre-emptive obedience, designed to prevent Napoleon from intervening
in ways that would threaten Bavarian sovereignty The government alsoplaced more stress on its right to interpret what was ‘useful truth’ On
January , the editors of both ‘state newspapers’ were ordered not toprint any news that they had not received from the Minister of Foreign