Die Medialisierung der Geschichte (German Edition)

Selected publications

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Neighbouring Portugal only established a separate state censorship authority in addition to the Inquisition in , i. The campaign against censorship and for freedom of the press in Europe originated in England. This was due in part to the numerous sects which had formed in England during the course of the Reformation and which asserted their right to freely exercise their religion. John Milton's — [ ] Areopagitica of was the first great treatise of modern European history defending freedom of the press. It presented both individualistic and anthropological arguments human rights and collective sociological arguments societal benefits.

The first German translation was not published until after the Revolution of , in But even in England Milton's call for freedom of the press did not prove effective, at least not initially. Instead, the legislature assumed censorship duties itself for a period. It was not until , when the parliament allowed the Printing Act to lapse, that pre-publication censorship came to an end, and England had — to this extent at least — freedom of the press. Defendants who were found guilty in such cases faced a range of sanctions, and the means of post-publication censorship were employed.

The latter occurred — among other things — by means of economic measures such as the stamp duty, and by "buying" compliant journalists by means of subventions. Outside mainland Britain, it was the citizens of the British North American Colonies who were the first to achieve press freedom in the 18th century. In spite of all resistance, 32 the demand for a free press was reflected in the first constitution which the American states adopted after attaining their independence. In continental Europe , on the other hand, a radical break with absolutist monarchy was necessary.

In France, the control functions had become concentrated in the royal censorship authority during the 18th century. The number of censors had been increased; the names of censors have been established for the period between and This was tolerated because of the economic benefit. The French constitution which was adopted in codified this guarantee. However, the revolutionary leaders soon restricted freedom of expression and freedom of the press to their supporters, and pre-publication censorship was re-introduced in as a means of suppressing opponents.

The struggle for freedom of the press did not begin in Germany until the late 18th century. The oldest records for the use of the term Pressefreiheit are from the year However, the expression Freiheit der Presse is somewhat older. As this decree also applied to the dukedoms of Schleswig and Holstein , which were part of the Holy Roman Empire, this represented the first legal guarantee of press freedom in the German-speaking territories.

While this formal lifting of censorship remained an isolated case for some time, the application of censorship measures nonetheless became less stringent in many other places. This was the case in Hamburg , for example, where multiple newspapers were in publication simultaneously in the late 18th century. The French Revolution brought a reversal of press freedom in Germany. German society — particularly intellectual circles — took great interest in events in neighbouring France.

Consequently, German rulers feared the transfer of revolutionary ideas and methods, and they attempted to counteract this threat with new and stricter censorship laws. In Austria , Leopold II — issued a press decree in , which explicitly cited the relevant provisions of the decrees of the imperial diets from the 16th century. However, the reversion to a more stringent censorship policy in Germany could not silence the debate about press freedom , which had been conducted in print from the s. While the authorities initially only attempted to tighten up existing censorship, this resulted in increasing calls for freedom of expression and freedom of the press as a human right.

As soon as the danger posed by the French Revolution appeared to have abated, there were renewed attempts to liberalize censorship laws in individual German states.

Censorship and Freedom of the Press

However, the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte — saw the renewed introduction of more strict regulation of the press in Germany and elsewhere. Even before he officially reintroduced censorship in France in , he had developed forms of press control which were characterized by extreme centralization and strict penalties. However, Napoleon's influence varied from the German territories west of the Rhine which had been incorporated into Imperial France, to the affiliated states of the Confederation of the Rhine , and the other German states, which were officially independent.

The Moniteur was elevated to the status of French state newspaper and was declared the model which all other newspapers had to follow — even in the occupied German territories. The victory over Napoleon which had been attained in the Wars of Emancipation of — led to demands for greater political participation in the German-speaking territories. However, the implementation of this assurance was delayed. Two years passed before the Federal Assembly decided to commission a report on the regulations currently in force in the various federal states.

However, before it was possible to take practical action on the basis of these findings, another new phase of suppression of the press began. With growing concern, the rulers in Germany and particularly in Austria observed the campaign for emancipation and the manifestations of a German national consciousness, which were becoming increasingly overt. When the student Carl Ludwig Sand — stabbed August von Kotzebue — , the poet and Russian state consul, in early in Mannheim , it seemed to be time to act.

After confidential agreements had been reached between Prussia and Austria, and political pressure had been brought to bear on the smaller states, the Carlsbad Decrees were agreed in September The press law re-introduced universal pre-publication censorship for all printed texts under 20 sheets in size. Friedrich von Gentz — , an advisor of Clemens von Metternich — , provided the ideological justification for this with his fundamental critique of the freedom of the press in England.

If a periodical publication was banned, its editor was banned from publishing for five years. The individual states now had a duty towards the other states and towards the Confederation as a whole to ensure that the provisions were enforced in their territories. In the event that any state was not meeting its obligations in this regard, the implementation regulations provided — among other things — for the direct intervention of the Confederation.

This was intended to counteract difficulties which German particularism presented with regard to uniform censorship. While the university law was intended to pacify the universities, the investigation law permitted spying on writers suspected of subversion. As surviving reports demonstrate, this was a kind of forerunner of the Stasi headquarters of the 20th century. The Carlsbad Decrees, which were initially introduced on a temporary basis, were extended in , and were made more stringent by the "Ten Articles" agreed by the Federal Assembly in Vienna in Thus, nearly three decades of the history of the German Confederation were dominated by attempts to introduce and perfect the control of the press by the state authorities.

There were a number of attempts to return to the promises of the Final Act of and to call into question the legality of the Carlsbad Decrees. For example, in January , a liberal press law was introduced in Baden , which abolished the censorship of all printed texts. However, just a few months later a federal decree put an effective end to this Baden press law, and to the hopes of a general liberalization which it had given rise to. It was the March Revolution of which brought an end to state censorship in Germany, albeit only temporarily.

Already in , a federal decree had granted the member states the right to revise the laws regarding the press as they saw fit. In early March , the authorities did seek guarantees that press freedom would not be abused, but the emancipation of the press from the previous constraints could not be prevented in the subsequent weeks and months. Paul's Church in Frankfurt in December, and which were intended as part of a future constitution, contained a guarantee of press freedom in article IV, section However, these Fundamental Rights gained no more validity than the press law which was supposed to be introduced by the German Empire.

Their constitution, which also came about as a result of the Revolution of , guaranteed freedom of the press in article 45, and this guarantee was adopted unchanged into the federal constitution of Switzerland in These regulations no longer prescribed pre-publication censorship , but they continued to hamper and regulate the press by making printing subject to state concessions, by imposing a bailment requirement, as well as by imposing stamp duty and distribution restrictions.

However, this public sphere was ultimately only established in the German Empire after the German Unification in and four years earlier in Austria-Hungary by means of the Imperial Constitution. The German parliament was slow in agreeing the Imperial Press Law , which replaced the 27 state press laws and abolished restrictions on the freedom of the press based in state law.

Judicial and, in particular, police confiscation was limited to a small number of cases, which were defined by the law. However, special restrictions remained in force for the event of war, the threat of war, or internal upheavals, and these provided the chancellor Otto von Bismarck — with the means of restricting the Catholic press and the Social Democratic press during the Kulturkampf and after he had issued the Anti-Socialist Laws in the s.

During the blossoming of the press in England which began in , numerous new newspapers and other periodical publications came into existence. In these, the predominance of reports from abroad declined and domestic issues were increasingly discussed. Bitter political and personal feuds were conducted through the press, resulting in many court cases. Initially, judges state officials adjudicated on these matters.

Then, after the passing of the Libel Act in , these matters were adjudicated upon by independent juries. The freedom to report on parliament was initially also controversial, but it was granted in In France, there were frequent changes in the law regarding the press during the 19th century as a result of the frequent upheavals in the political order. As early as October of the same year, one such law made the publication of all texts longer than 20 pages subject to royal authorization, thereby subjecting them to pre-publication censorship once more.

A separate ordinance followed soon after, which contained detailed provisions. After the accession of the "Citizen King" Louis-Philippe — in , the Charte constitutionnelle of came back into effect, 55 though it did not remain so for long on this occasion either. In , a repressive censorship was extended to drawings, caricatures, the press, books and the theatre.

Furthermore, during the entire period of the July Monarchy, financial impositions on newspapers made life difficult for them. This system did not envisage freedom of the press, and a decree of February transferred control of the press to the owners of the printing patents. However, in September , under pressure from a growing opposition, the emperor finally agreed to abolish preventative censorship and to allow freedom to print.

Consequently, a new censorship decree was issued on March 18, Not until did the Third Republic receive its own press law, which guaranteed freedom of publication and lifted all restrictions on becoming a printer and which finally replaced the law of In the very changeable political climate of 19th-century France with its sudden changes in the laws regarding the press, the press developed slowly and in a disrupted fashion.

New publications were repeatedly established in an attempt to oppose censorship and to promote freedom of the press. One of the first organs to do this took the title Le Censeur "the censor". It was quickly suppressed, but it soon reappeared. Other publications had a similar fate. Among the new publications which attracted the attention of the censors in France in the s were the caricature newspapers La Caricature , Le Charivari. However, governments feared the danger emanating from France, and tended to make the existing control measures more strict instead, as happened for example in Milan.

New restrictions were particularly aimed at preventing the distribution of newspapers from abroad. Thus, as in the other French vassal states, freedom was introduced thanks to Napoleon, of all people. However, it was not long until the enthusiasm gave way to disillusionment. The French troops were temporarily expelled from northern Italy during the War of the Second Coalition before returning in He now initiated a political re-ordering of Italy , which resulted in the strict regime which governed Imperial France being applied in Italy as well, including in the area of press control. As a result of the Congress of Vienna of , the political circumstances which had prevailed prior to were re-established in northern Italy, thereby re-establishing the influence of the Habsburg Empire.

This also had an effect on the press. It was not until Italian Unification in that there was a radical break with the past. As unification was initiated by the Kingdom of Sardinia , the Sardinian constitution of became the constitution of the Kingdom of Italy. Article 28 stated that the press was free, but subject to legal provisions for the suppression of abuses of that freedom.

In Spain, there was also a growing tension during the 18th century between the censorship regime and Enlightenment aspirations, which became increasingly apparent there. In , Charles III — transferred responsibility for the censorship to the periodical press itself and granted greater publishing freedom in the process. Thus, freedom of the press was proclaimed for the first time in Spain during the struggle for independence against Napoleon, who had imposed an autocratic system on the country in with the Statute of Bayonne.

Article guaranteed to all Spaniards the right to write, print and publish without any prior permission or approval, subject of course to all restrictions and responsibilities arising from the laws of the land. After the end of the French occupation and the return of the absolutist monarchy, this constitution and other laws which had been issued in the interim were nullified. At the end of the 19th century, the centuries-long struggle against censorship and for freedom of the press seemed to have been won in large parts of Europe, at least in terms of the formal legal position, even if the limits of freedom were still contested in many cases, and conflicts repeatedly arose for political and moral reasons and as a result of the provisions of criminal law such as the provisions regarding lese-majesty in section 95 of the criminal law code of the German Empire.

It could not have been predicted at that stage that the 20th century would witness another radical reversal in press freedom as a result of the totalitarian movements which followed the First World War, but the war itself led to the re-establishment of military censorship and other control measures. In Germany, as stipulated in section 30 of the Imperial Press Law, freedom of the press was suspended after the declaration of war on August 1 , and the old Prussian law of pertaining to a state of emergency came back into force. In addition to military matters in the narrower sense, these items included other information regarding the economy, transportation, etc.

The censorship offices of the military authorities were responsible for enforcing these provisions. Acknowledging the necessity of the state to defend itself, and in the spirit of "internal political accord" innerer Burgfrieden , the opposition and the press in Germany accepted this censorship fairly readily. What was new was that the authorities were not content with the traditional pre-publication censorship, but also tried to exert direct influence over the content of the press reports.

An official press apparatus, which had proved relatively ineffective, had already been established and developed in Germany in the 19th century for this purpose. Similar measures were introduced by the Entente Powers. In France, freedom of the press was suspended by a decree of August 2, The prescribed censorship lasted until In Great Britain , the introduction of formal censorship would have contradicted the long tradition of freedom of the press.

Thus Britain did not have a censorship law even during the First World War. The representatives of the organized press had at least promised not to publish military secrets in , and to get authorization before publishing information which might be security-relevant. Thus, a self-censorship of the press existed in practice in the United Kingdom during the war. After the outbreak of war, the British government immediately took control of the telegraph network, the cable connections, and the radio stations, and thus gained control of the flow of information which these technological advances had given rise to.

Additionally, the state Press Bureau was upgraded to a control centre for the government's information policy with regard to the press. Parliament also passed a series of laws which forbid the dissemination of false information, the passing of military secrets to the enemy, and the promotion of discontent. Newspapers were indeed prosecuted and temporarily suppressed for contravening these provisions, but this did not last long. Thus, the British press retained its freedom during the war and was even able to voice criticism of the military and the government. In any case, the press's cooperation with the Press Bureau made preventative measures unnecessary.

After the end of the war, the abdication of Emperor Wilhelm II — resulted in a radical change in the political system in Germany. The constitution adopted on August 11, , formed the basis for the Weimar Republic.

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Article guaranteed freedom of opinion "innerhalb der Schranken der allgemeinen Gesetze". In , the German parliament made use of this latitude by passing a Lichtspielgesetz film law , which stipulated that movies which were to be shown in public had to be authorized by the official inspection centres. The showing of films in public had become a common occurrence since the late 19th century, and in Germany — but also elsewhere in Europe — these events had been monitored by the local police similar to theatre censorship.

However, the proliferation of cinemas demanded a centralization of measures regarding the medium. In Germany, article 48 of the Weimar constitution, which gave the president quasi-dictatorial powers, proved problematic. In the event of serious breaches of public order and threats to public safety, he was able to temporarily suspend fundamental rights such as article on freedom of opinion by emergency decree.

The Weimar constitution did not expressly guarantee freedom of the press , which was viewed by the press and its supporters as a big disadvantage. The Imperial Press Law from before the First World War still remained in force, and technical considerations dictated that radio, which emerged from the s, had to be placed under state control from the beginning. To prevent extremists on the left Communists and the right National Socialists from destroying the political order of the Weimar Republic, the Republikschutzgesetze "laws for the protection of the republic" were passed in and In Prussia alone, newspapers were suppressed in the course of one year.

Some of them were suppressed for just a few days, while others were shut down for up to eight weeks. After the National Socialists "seized" power on January 30, , a tight system of control encompassing all media gradually emerged which was unprecedented in Germany.

Origins and Beginnings of Censorship in Germany

First of all, the communist and social democratic newspapers were eliminated by means of emergency decrees. The remaining liberal middle-class newspapers were then harassed financially.

The Schriftleitergesetz "Editor Law" restricted access to the profession of journalism. These legal measures were supplemented with organizational measures. For example, all journalists were compelled to join the Reichskulturkammer "Imperial Cultural Chamber" or one of its affiliated chambers. Similar conditions as in Germany existed in Italy and Spain at that time. The Italian state was subsequently transformed from a liberal regime to a dictatorship of the party and the leader.

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However, the gradual institutionalization of propaganda did not occur until the s, when the Italian regime followed the example of the Nazis in Germany. Right-wing forces also came to power in Spain at this time, and they defeated the supporters of the Republic in the Civil War of — Under General Francisco Franco — , an authoritarian political regime emerged, which survived for decades. It issued a law on censorship and the control of information as early as This law remained in force until Over the centuries, the Tsarist regime had maintained pre-publication controls in the absolutist tradition, though a gradual liberalization began after the death of Tsar Nicholas I — The central institution Glavlit was founded for this purpose in This was also the case in the other Soviet satellite states in eastern and south-eastern Europe.

Charte constitutionnelle du 4 juin , online: Deutsches Historisches Museum et al. Die Verfassung der Weimarer Republik, in: Lebendiges Museum Online, Berlin et al.

Die Pressefreiheit in England, in: Pressefreiheit, Darmstadt , pp. Pressefreiheit und Zensur, edited and with an introduction by Iring Fetscher, Vienna Areopagitica, London , Reprint London , online: Protokolle der Metternich-Agenten, Cologne —, vol. The Censorship of Images in Reformation Germany, —, in: Censorship and the Visual Arts, Seattle et al. The Renewal of the Licensing Act in and its Lapse in , in: Transactions of the Bibliographical Society 33 , pp.

Bellanger, Claude et al. Bibliographie, Paris , online: Zensur in der UdSSR: Hinter den Kulissen des "Wahrheitsministeriums" —, Bochum Zensursysteme in Ostmitteleuropa er — er Jahre , Berlin Christine Haug et al. Geheimliteratur und Geheimbuchhandel in Europa im Jahrhundert, Wiesbaden , pp. Bundesverband Deutscher Zeitungsverleger e. Der Weg zur freien Presse: Oktober , Bonn The English Historical Review 69 , pp. Die Rechtseinrichtung der Zensur in der Reichsstadt Augsburg, in: Ludolf Pelizaeus et al.

Medien in geistlichen Gebieten Europas, Bern et al. Die Verbreitung von Diderots "Encyclopedie" oder: Wie verkauft man Wissen mit Gewinn? Too Mighty to be Free: Censorship and the Press in Britain and the Netherlands, Zutphen Journal of Contemporary History, 37 4. Betts, Paul The Nierentisch nemesis: Organic design as West German pop culture. German History, 19 2. Betts, Paul The authority of everyday objects: A cultural history of West German industrial design.

University of California Press. Westdeutschland in den 50er jahren. Politische medialisierung in der geschichte der bundesrepublik. Betts, Paul The politics of post-fascist aesthetics: West and East German design in the s. Bessel, Richard and Schumann, Dirk eds. Approaches to a cultural and social history of Europe during the s and s. Publications of the German Historical Institute. Cambridge University Press, pp.

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