Keywords: miscellany; correspondence reports; anthology; female authorship; J. F. Cotta; Napoleon

In January of 1803, a new monthly journal entitled Französische Miscellen (French miscellanies, 1803–1806) appeared with the Cotta publishing house. It reported on political developments, daily life, the arts, culture, and fashion in post-revolutionary France. The editor-in-chief and principal contributor to Französische Miscellen was twenty-year-old Helmina von Hastfer (1783–1856), the granddaughter of Germany's first poet laureate, Anna Luise Karsch. She had secured the editorship through a friend's recommendation and Cotta offered her this paid position after reading a selection of Helmina's texts. With this editorship, Helmina embarked on a literary career spanning numerous volumes of poetry, novels, libretti, two travel guides, cultural articles in various journals, two memoirs, and several editions of her mother's and grandmother's poetry.

Französische Miscellen was the companion journal to Englische Miscellen (English miscellanies, 1800–06), edited by Johann Christian Hüttner in London. The two journals were Cotta's response to Bertuch's journal London und Paris (1798–1815), which in turn was modeled on Louis-Sébastien Mercier's twelve-volume Le Tableau de Paris (1781– 1788). The mission statement for Französische Miscellen translated here states that Helmina intended to educate a mixed-gender audience of educated and politically minded readers—the upwardly mobile and politically concerned middle classes—about the importance of Paris as the most modern city of the nineteenth century. Consequently, the most striking feature of Französische Miscellen were the many vignettes of urban life written by the editor herself.

Keywords: penny literature; magazine; illustration; industrialization; nationalism; cultural competition; attention economy; flood of print; Allgemeine Zeitung

Like many writers of his generation, Karl Gutzkow (1811–1878) was variously occupied: novelist, dramatist, critic, journalist, and editor. He was also exceptionally prolific. Whereas Heine was “meticulous” and “constantly revising,” Gutzkow “seems to have written faster than most people can read.” By the age of twenty-six, he had already founded no fewer than four periodicals and published the socially scandalous novel Wally, die Zweiflerin (Wally, the skeptic, 1835) for which he was imprisoned. As a critic, his writing was provocative and, at times, exaggerated, heated, and uncompromising. Gutzkow characterized himself a “fighter” and embraced the perception that “he wrote down the first thing that came into his head” as a sign of his candor. Contemporaries noted his vast critical reach: “no phenomenon passes by unnoticed or undiscussed.” Some also revered his doggedness, comparing him to a “lurking” predator who “destroys … now a calf of stupidity, now a snooty giraffe of ostentation … in our literary forest overpopulated with monkeys and parrots.” In “Penny Literature,” Gutzkow attacks the cheapening of cultural taste via illustrated periodicals and the failings of cultural journalism to influence purchasing and reading habits.

Keywords: review essay; press review; literary market; entertainment (Unterhaltung); conversation; satire; international comparison; ethnographic Writing

The journalistic activities of Wilhelm Hauff (1802–1827) have not received much critical attention. In literary studies, Hauff is best known for his fairytales, novellas, and satirical novels—and for the astonishing popularity that his prose works instantaneously gained, earning him the backhanded compliment of being a true Erfolgsschriftsteller (popular author)—and the label stuck. Hauff's journalism merits a closer look, however. Although his journalistic writings only account for a fraction of his oeuvre—his collected works (Sämtliche Werke) gather a meager fourteen articles under this rubric—they contain astute and pointed observations about the German publishing landscape of the 1820s, a landscape shaped by the complicated interplay of a growing periodical press, stifling influences such as political repression (especially after the Carlsbad Decrees), and the dynamics of high fluctuation. Hauff's journalistic writings provide welcome orientation in this complex media scene, as they illuminate established journalistic practices yet also critique new developments and emerging trends.

Apparently, entering the realm of journalism came easy to Hauff; if we are to believe an early source, a number of the most renowned literary journals invited him to contribute and even name his price after the publication of his first major work, the satirical novel Mittheilungen aus den Memoiren des Satan (From the memoirs of Satan), in August 1825.

We may begin this journal [Blatt] with a truth no more certain than that the publication will at some point come to an end, assuming it outlasts the Morning Chronicle.

Hence the need for a good valediction that bids our readers a gentle farewell; by preemptively composing and reciting the journal's final cadence, I’ll be doing a favor to the interested reader who has the journal in his hands but who will not experience said cadence during his lifetime; as with the manuscripts of Herculaneum, I will roll out the end first. The end of the work is where the cadence or conclusion is naturally repeated and reprinted; exactly as the snake of eternity, head and tail grip and bite nicely into each other.

Would that God decree that humanity imitate me and consider the end earlier than at the end, and place, like the Spanish, question and exclamation marks at the beginning of their (historical) periods, rather than considering them after the fact in bewilderment, as the Germans now do!!

In the name of the honorable men and women contributing to this journal and thus also in my own name, I might perhaps draft the epilogue in the following fashion:

Keywords: technology; daily paper; seriality; war; cultural competition; media history; Berlin

Incoming! Like the rumble of cannon-fire in the distance, Heinrich von Kleist's “Proposal for a Projectile Post” signals the approach of powerful historical forces, capable of upending the lifeworld and overturning the established order. For German media historians, Kleist's whimsical entry, published under the rubric “Useful Inventions” in his self-edited (and largely self-authored) Berliner Abendblätter (Berlin evening pages, 1810–1811) in October of 1810, is of importance as one of the earliest popular-intellectual engagements with two new telecommunications technologies: rocket mail and the electric telegraph. Over the course of a single—characteristically hypotactic and thus decidedly untelegraphic— sentence, Kleist relates to his readers the news of Samuel Thomas von Soemmering's recent demonstration of a working electrochemical telegraph to the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, along with its implications for advancing the “art of distant writing” (Fernschreibekunst) or tele-graphy. Soon, “provided only that the necessary apparatus is in place,” one will be able to converse with friends in the Antipodes as if they were standing in the same room. Certain limitations of this new apparatus, however, lead Kleist to propose in response a no less novel telecommunications network: a series of mortar and howitzer stations sprinkled across the Prussian countryside, capable of rapidly shooting back and forth shells loaded not with explosives but with letters and packages. Such a network would have the double advantage of producing a “tenfold gain in time” while still allowing for the transmission of parcels, packages, and longer documents.

Keywords: almanac; miscellany; calendar stories; popular press; Carlsbad Decrees; the Rhineland

Johann Peter Hebel's (1760–1826) preface to the 1819 issue of Der rheinländische Hausfreund oder neuer Kalender auf das Jahr1819 mit lehrreichen Nachrichten und lustigen Erzählungen (The rhenish family friend, or new calendar for the year 1819 with instructive reports and humorous stories) simultaneously marks a moment of closure for the calendar he had edited for over a decade: the final time it was released under his editorial management. After taking over the editorship of the Badischer Landkalender (Almanac of the land Baden) in 1807, Hebel renamed and refashioned it into a publication of enormous popular success, centered around the ingenious persona of the “Rhenish family friend”—a chatty, quirky storyteller and intimate companion dedicated to listening and speaking to his readers. The Hausfreund added multiple innovations to a rapidly changing calendar market. As opposed to the officially sanctioned and therefore politically quietist “privilegierte” (privileged) calendars from the previous century, the Hausfreund placed the readers’ interest and curiosity in the rhetorical front seat. Its expanded narrative section, containing a vast repertoire of anecdotes, stories, and riddles, also created spaces for political reflection without directly presenting it as such. Hebel's journalistic program, which, in Walter Benjamin's formulation, “f [ou]nd room for the whole universe inside the village economy,” is deployed via miniature forms and built around the anecdotal and the incidental—a recipe that applies to the 1819 preface as well.

Everything in this world is mortal and that is lucky. If, for example, people were immortal, then no one could be an inheritance scammer—and that would be unfortunate. As the saying goes, for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return—and that is lucky. If nothing returned to dust, journals would have to live forever—and that would be unfortunate. But whether journals are as good as the Spree Observer [Spreebeobachter] or as bad as the Comet [Komet], everyone will agree that they must all die eventually, either because the editor becomes dull or because they run out of subscribers!—Now, since journals are also people, they also require burial, but until now, there was no graveyard to bury them. Blessed be then this happy idea that has occurred to me, blessed be this very promising venture that will fill my purse! My Don Quixote shall be the graveyard of journals. Every deceased journal will be buried and epitaphed in mine, and its last subscribers will pay the burial expenses.

A new German Journal in Paris!—a voluminous [inhaltschwer] word! We are prepared to have many questions posed to us in response to this announcement, to hear many reservations expressed, to find many judgments passed, in advance and after the fact, and to hear many prophesies resound;—we are prepared to have our undertaking viewed through yellow, green, blue, red, and black glasses, to have our intention misinterpreted, to have our actions and inactions pettily scribbled about … Nonetheless! We are prepared! And we thereby follow the old adage: “do right and fear no one!”

Here we could begin like so many journal announcements and prospectuses and speak of the “need that becomes more apparent every day” for a German paper in Paris, we could muster a series of famous and unknown writers and promise their participation or lack thereof; we could justify the usefulness and purpose of our undertaking with innumerable good reasons; but we will not. Our program, our tendency, our founding resonates in the title of the paper, in the one single, portentous word: “Forward!” “Forward” is the watchword of our time, “Forward” the battle cry of individuals as well as peoples; “Forward” is the word in politics, “Forward” in society, “Forward” in science, “Forward” in music, literature, art, commerce, and industry. We wish to remain loyal to this slogan.

Keywords: law; book review; editorial attribution; anonymity; Young Germany; Julius Campe

Articles of a Censorship Code” (1837) might be a one-of-a-kind document: a pro-censorship statement by a member of Young Germany. The text appeared in Beurmann's Telegraph, a Frankfurtbased journal Karl Gutzkow anonymously edited under his friend Eduard Beurmann's name. It was a delicate time for the twenty-six-year-old Gutzkow. He had just been cited in a decree that banned him and other Young German writers from publishing in the German Confederation and he spent two months in a Mannheim jail as a result. While several Young German writers publicly expressed regret for their rhetorical extravagance to regain the right to publish, none but Gutzkow went so far as to actually write in support of censorship, indeed to draft a whole censorship code.

We might, however, read more resignation in Gutzkow's proposal than an all-out reversal of his convictions about press freedom, as Brandes suggests. As “shameful” as we may find his flip-flopping, Gutzkow, as a precarious, banned, and recently jailed writer, is trying to make the best out of a bad situation. Gutzkow was not alone in adapting to state censorship: the other Young German writers continued to work under the ban by exploiting ambiguities in the law, publishing anonymously, befriending the censors, or simply risking it and publishing despite the ban. As Brophy writes, the ban on Young Germany was not a “death sentence,” despite its reputation.

Keywords: women's rights; feminism; public discourse; émigré press; Berlin

Louise Franziska Aston (1814–1871) was one of the Vormärz era's most radical women writers. During the 1840s, she published novels and poetry collections, and during the Revolution of 1848, she briefly edited a political journal entitled Der Freischärler (The partisan). She attracted significant attention after leaving her English husband Samuel Aston in 1844 and later moving with her daughter Jenny Louise from Sulechów to Berlin, the place she felt provided the only suitable environment to advance her writing career. In Berlin, Aston lived with the poet Rudolf Gottschall for a while, and she moved in the same circles as Young Hegelian philosophers Bruno and Edgar Bauer and Max Stirner. Aston was said to wear men's clothing and smoke cigars, calling herself “Louis.” An advocate for democracy and women's rights, she became known for her love affairs outside of marriage.

Aston, whom journalists referred to as “die Emancipirte” (“the emancipated woman”) or “die Mistreß” (“the mistress”) became a frequent target in German newspapers. The press reported about her “scandalous” and “frivolous” behavior. Among these papers was the Illustrirte Zeitung (Illustrated newspaper, 1843–1944), the first German illustrated magazine, published by Verlag J. J. Weber in the city of Leipzig, a major publishing center. The Illustrirte, along with publishing an image of “Madame Aston,” criticized “the most famous among all of these Amazons, or emancipated women as they perhaps prefer to be called” for having inspired other women to wear trousers and embrace her unconventional ideas (figure 26.1).

§ 1

Press freedom is the normal state of literature, censorship is an exception. An individual among the rulers in Germany may desire the abolition of censorship, but he cannot abolish it by himself. Let us see what progress the restoration of mutual trust, what progress literary opinion about public affairs makes in a few years. Then can one perhaps again speak of press freedom.

I. Of censorship as a state institution.

§ 2

Because censorship is an exception and should be wielded in society's interest, not literature’s, and because, according to the will of the state, censorship intends neither to abolish literature nor to restrict the organic freedom of literature to the greatest extent possible, it must be one of the most accommodating, compliant, and yielding institutions of the state. It should never abuse power at the expense of justice.

§ 3

Censorship is an accessory, that is, it exercises no absolute binding authority over literature and belongs to it as closely as, for example, the owner of a small easement attached to a house who may not object when the entire house is sold. That is to say: censorship must accommodate the press, and not the other way around, in the sense, namely, that the press does not resist censorship, but does not view censorship of its own accord as something organically necessary.

Keywords: obituary; Allgemeine Zeitung; Science of Judaism; historiography

The piece by Heine translated here—the Nekrolog (obituary) for Ludwig Marcus (here called the Denkworte (Remembrances), and originally printed in the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung (May 2 and 3, 1844)—has a unique style, purpose, and history. These types of public remembrance first appeared as stand-alone publications (e.g., a Flugblatt or leaflet) in the sixteenth century and often had a religious purpose, such as eulogizing important figures, like Melanchthon. During and after the Enlightenment, Nekrologe became more prevalent in German newspapers and were used to do more than just praise the deceased's contributions and criticize religious opponents; they could be used to fulfill more political and propagandistic objectives—as happened after August von Kotzebue's death. As such, Ralf Georg Bogner believes that these writings tell us less about those being eulogized than about the writer and the period itself. As he states: “The deceased's life and work mutate into a suitable exemplary or contradictory projection field for the personal poetic, political, or religious interests of the Necrologist. To a certain extent, every Nachruf [another term for Nekrolog] author thematized themselves, their era, and the utopia of the future.” As such, when you read Heine's musings about Marcus, you should critically evaluate the motives behind such a wide-ranging and extensive undertaking (about five thousand words!) about a relatively obscure figure.

I recently made the hopeful remark that one can expect a world literature to emerge in the nearest future given the dynamism of the current age and the great improvement in the means of communication. This remark was well received by our western neighbors, who will certainly make a significant contribution to such a literature, and they have commented as follows in Le Globe. Volume. V. No. 91.

“Indeed, every nation, when its turn comes, feels that attraction that draws them toward one another like the attractive force of physical bodies, and that will sequentially unite in universal harmony all the peoples that make up the human race. Of course, the effort of scholars to communicate and place their works in sequence with each other is by no means new, and the Latin language once served this purpose admirably. But as great as these efforts were, the barriers by which peoples were separated also created divisions among them and harmed their intellectual interaction. Indeed, the instrument they used was only suitable for a certain sequence of ideas, so that they touched each other, so to speak, only through the intellect, and not through the heart and poetry.

Keywords: prospectus; review journals; press freedom; Romantic science; Naturphilosophie; Bildung; encyclopedia; scientific institutions; Carlsbad Decrees

Lorenz Oken (1779–1851) was an influential medical scientist and late-Romantic proponent of Romantic Naturphilosophie (natural philosophy). In addition to his scholarly publications, he prominently served as an editor for the journal Isis, oder enzyklopädische Zeitung (Isis, or encyclopedic journal, 1817–1848), which was the first transdisciplinary German-language academic journal dedicated to the publication of scientific, medical, technological, economic, art-related, and historical topics, and profoundly influenced the formation of German scholarly and scientific culture in the first half of the nineteenth century. Claudia Taszus describes Isis as “the central organ for knowledge and idea exchange in the [German-speaking] natural sciences at the time […] within national and international journalistic networks,” and a list of contributors to Isis comprises an array of prominent writers, including Alexander von Humboldt, Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland, Madame de Staël, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Georges Cuvier, and Johannes Müller.

In the selected translation from Isis, Oken evaluates the situation for review journals, outlines the characteristics of the ideal reviewer, and describes the conditions needed to produce reviews that contribute to scientific progress and the establishment of institutionalized science. Like the contemporaneous Allgemeine Literaturzeitung (1785–1849), the term “Litteratur” in Oken's title refers chiefly to scholarly publications, and his article specifically focuses on review journals. Advocating an encyclopedic journal that both presents a foundational perspective and contributes to the institutionalization of science, the article additionally showcases the characteristic “strata” of allusions typical of Romantic texts.

Now that all newspapers begin the second half of their yearly run with resolutions to improve, we do not consider it unseemly to address some well-intentioned words from our paper to others. Because Germany has finally attained a history again, since it has become a single people, a single will, and a public opinion, it will surely also come to pass that Germany will be granted newspapers that are more than a meager, dull, and feeble record of events. When a people participates in the common good; when it seeks to understand events; when, through deeds and sacrifices, it has proved itself worthy of gaining a voice and influence in public affairs; then a need arises for papers that bring the pressing and urgent topics in all minds to public discussion; papers that know how to read the heart of the nation; that are able to defend its interests fearlessly; and that, at the same time, know how to clarify to the masses what they themselves dimly and unconsciously feel and express it clearly for them. This is what is happening with the Germans now, the newspapers should understand that; they should prove themselves worthy of being respected and recognized by the people as their spokespersons, and, if they do, they will preside over an honorable and blessed office. The governments should recognize this as well, no false fear should induce them to interfere with this wholesome intellectual movement within their peoples; no anxiously fearful censor should hinder the general circulation of ideas.

Preserving the service and achievements of a German political writer in living memory remains a task that, however necessary and useful it may be, must contend with the greatest of obstacles from all sides. In the present case, this observation is particularly apparent in all its magnitude. This author, had he written in France or England, would be read by all who are more or less closely concerned with public affairs […] yet he is forgotten among the Germans the moment the strength, brilliance, or barb of his quill ceased to spur his countrymen to direct action. Now he is only read and considered by a few; his works are scattered or lie buried like the lowliest paupers in the cemeteries of our journalism. A new age takes its place above them. The sparks, bright or dull, that glitter around it just bury the old and new graves of fame deeper and deeper with the ashes that they scatter, unnoticed.—This is the shared fate of all political authors in Germany! […]

Our national literature is also complicit in almost completely ignoring Germany's politicians. Our literary bibliographies typically feature a few pitiful notes followed by the remark: “We have no political authors, no orators who could compete with the famous names of antiquity or foreign nations.”