Intelligence comptoir

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Intelligence comptoir , information comptoir and address comptoir are terms of the 17th and 18th centuries for a general information office , which operates data collections in register books and passes them on to the interested public.

Intelligence is to be understood here in the Anglo-Saxon and French sense of the word as "knowledge", "message" and "information" and Comptoir as " office ".

Théopraste Renaudot's first bureau d'address opened in Paris in 1630 . Offices in London and Berlin followed, where the first address office was opened in 1689 , which also worked as a pawn shop . A questionnaire opened in Vienna in 1707 , which primarily acted as a sales agency .

These information offices also issued advertising papers, which often became their main activity and in some cases full-fledged newspapers.

By collecting personal data, the information offices were also able to perform the function of registration offices , so they often worked with the police and, like today's credit reporting agency , were also able to provide information on the financial circumstances and reputation of individuals.

Offices in Germany run under the name Intelligence Comptoir:

literature

Individual evidence

  1. Steffen Martus , Enlightenment: The German 18th Century - a picture of epochs , Rowohlt-Verlag; accessed in November 2016