German newspaper (1847-1850)

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First edition of the Deutsche Zeitung

The Deutsche Zeitung was a newspaper with a bourgeois- liberal orientation that existed from July 1, 1847 to the end of September 1850 . The programmatic focus of the paper on the whole of Germany was unusual, because Germany still consisted of individual states, even if the merger in the context of the March Revolution of 1848 was already indicated. The editor was Rudolf Lohbauer .

Publishing house and publication

The foundation of the Deutsche Zeitung was the result of a meeting of oppositional members of the Baden parliament on November 29, 1846 in Durlach . Friedrich Daniel Bassermann and Karl Mathy , who jointly ran the Bassermannsche Verlagbuchhandlung , then took care of building a network of correspondents from across the German Confederation . With a contract dated March 10, 1847, Carl Mittermaier , Georg Gottfried Gervinus , Ludwig Häusser and Mathy were appointed editors. The most influential editor of the newspaper was the Heidelberg historian Gervinus, after his resignation from the editorial board, Häusser assumed the leading role.

According to Bassermann's calculations, the newspaper should be profitable with a circulation of 3,000 or more, which was well above the usual circulation of newspapers in Baden, which at that time was a maximum of 1,000. The first edition appeared with a circulation of 1,500 copies, by the end of 1847 the newspaper had reached 3,000 copies, and in 1848 the circulation reached its peak with around 4,000 copies.

The Deutsche Zeitung initially appeared in Heidelberg in the Bassermannsche publishing house. Since Bassermann the as chairman of the constitutional committee Frankfurt national assembly intensified from May 1848 wanted to focus on politics, was the newspaper on August 1, 1848 12,000 guilders to the Leipzig Karl August Reimer (1801-1858), owner of the Frankfurt Weidmann's bookstore sold . From October 1, 1848, the newspaper was published in Frankfurt am Main .

After the crackdown on the revolutions of 1848/49 and the discrediting of moderate liberalism as part of the imperial constitution campaign , the newspaper, which was always loss-making, ceased its publication in 1850.

Meaning and political position

In the run-up to the March Revolution, the Deutsche Zeitung saw itself as the leading organ of enlightened bourgeois liberalism . The choice of the name should programmatically anticipate and promote the unification of Germany, the newspaper saw itself as a state-supporting organ of the as yet non-existent united liberal Germany. A total of 24 members of the Frankfurt National Assembly wrote for the Deutsche Zeitung .

The content, political orientation and style of the newspaper were strongly influenced by well-known and opinion-leading liberal personalities. The employees came mainly from the southern German moderate liberals, including many university professors and politicians such as Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann , Heinrich von Gagern , Theodor Reh , Friedrich Theodor Vischer and Gustav Höfken . Liberal personalities from all over Germany were bound to the newspaper through reporters and an honorary council, for example Hans Adolph Erdmann von Auerswald , Wilhelm Beseler , Georg Beseler , David Hansemann , Heinrich Karl Jaup , Albert Schott , Karl Wilhelm Wippermann and Maximilian Graf von Schwerin-Putzar .

The Deutsche Zeitung put this in its first edition as follows:

"[...] the idea for this paper was inspired by a lot of parliamentary men; among our closest patrons and friends are to be counted five sixths of statesmen and class deputies, and under the remaining sixths of names are to be read, who are known in the whole country neither as doctrinaire nor as undecided people. But the fact that half and third half of the editors happen to be professors could not possibly impose that suspicious character on a newspaper, the program of which a political tendency newspaper proclaims in the strictest delineation. "

As a result, the Deutsche Zeitung was from the outset more of an organ of the intellectual, politically educated bourgeoisie and therefore turned against radical and revolutionary positions such as those increasingly represented by Gustav Struve , Friedrich Hecker and Joseph Fickler . On the other hand, she supported the positions of the Heppenheim conference , the German Customs Union , the constitutional work of the Frankfurt National Assembly and was particularly close to the casino faction of the Paulskirche . The newspaper had a great influence on the higher educated classes across Germany, but from 1849 its importance was curtailed by the radicalization of the March Revolution in the course of the imperial constitution campaign and the impending defeat of the moderate forces, as it could not develop any mass impact with this newspaper concept.

The left - which had changed from ally of the liberals to its opponent due to the radicalization of its positions -, on the other hand, relied on a completely different newspaper concept, especially after Interior Minister Bekk relaxed the press laws in Baden on February 27, 1848. In most cases, individual journalists wrote leaflet-like newspapers with just a few pages, with a circulation of a maximum of 1,000 copies two to three times a week. For example, the Konstanzer Seeblätter had a maximum circulation of 700 copies. In view of the target group, who were often poorly literate, lacking in education and whose belief in authority towards printed matter was very high, the style, in contrast to the Deutsche Zeitung, was arguments in a simplistic way and in the conclusions it was aggressive and directed against the political opponent. Often the government, all wealthy ( "money bags" ) as well as civil servants and the nobility were denigrated and called for their physical destruction. These papers, including the Heidelberger Republik , the Mannheimer Abendzeitung and the Volksführer , were distributed to the most remote corners of the country via people's associations and thus reached a large number of farmers, artisans and workers.

Although the liberals, also dubbed as traitors to the people in these publications, defended themselves in the Deutsche Zeitung by describing the left as a mob preaching anarchy , but of course they did not reach any public. The fate of the Deutsche Zeitung is therefore also an example of the different publicity effects of the moderate liberals and the radical democrats during the high phase of the March Revolution.

Digitized

literature

  • Lothar Gall : Bourgeoisie in Germany , Munich 1989: Siedler, ISBN 3-88680-259-0
  • Wolfgang von Hippel: Revolution in the German Southwest. The Grand Duchy of Baden 1848/49 , (= writings on political regional studies of Baden-Württemberg, Vol. 26), Verlag Kohlhammer: Stuttgart 1998 (can also be obtained free of charge from the State Center for Political Education Baden-Württemberg), ISBN 3-17-014039-6
  • Ulrike von Hirschhausen : Liberalism and Nation. The Deutsche Zeitung 1847-1850 (= contributions to the history of parliamentarism and political parties, vol. 115), Droste Verlag: Düsseldorf, 1998, ISBN 3-7700-5215-3
  • Roland Hoede: The Heppenheimer Assembly of October 10, 1847 , Frankfurt am Main: Verlag W. Kramer, 1997, ISBN 3-7829-0471-0