Frankfurt scholarly advertisements

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The Frankfurt learned advertisements were a literary magazine that  appeared in Frankfurt am Main from 1772 to 1790 . It is considered to be an important organ of literary criticism in the period of the Sturm und Drang , especially in its first year. Your editors were initially Johann Heinrich Merck and Johann Georg Schlosser , later Karl Friedrich Bahrdt . Her reviewers included Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Johann Gottfried Herder . Around the year 1772 there was a dispute over the freedom of the press with the church and political authorities in Frankfurt, in which the editors were ultimately defeated.

history

In 1736 the Frankfurt bookseller and publisher Samuel Tobias Hocker founded the Frankfurter Gelehrtenzeitung , Frankfurt's first literary and scientific newspaper. He followed a suggestion from Christian Münden , the senior at the time in the Lutheran Ministry of Preachers .

In 1771, Hofrat Johann Conrad Deinet , who came from Waldeck, bought the newspaper, changed the name to Frankfurt scholarly advertisements and published it with a new program. Under the two new editors Merck and Schlosser, reviews appeared on a wide variety of topics, including law , history , philosophy , politics and theology . The individual reviews were not marked by name, but the result of intensive discussions between the authors, often revised by the editors. Among the reviewers of the 1772 and partly also 1773 class were Johann Gottfried Herder and Johann Wolfgang Goethe , in addition to Schlosser . Of the 396 contributions in the first year, between 30 and 60 were written by Goethe, and he is likely to have contributed to around 30 more.

The authors reviewed included Johann Georg Jacobi , Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock , Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Christoph Martin Wieland . The reviews were written in a very personal, often emotionalized and over-pointed style. The reviewers used the criticism to formulate their own aesthetic ideals. Thus Goethe says in a poetry review of 18 December 1772 importance of the non-smoothed and the wild beauty and understand nature as a destructive force , against which the individual has to contend with the means of art. Goethe himself later judged this phase in the daily and annual journals :

“In the meantime, bolder grips are being made into deeper humanity; there arises a passionate aversion to misleading, limited theories; one opposes the promotion of false patterns. All of this, and what follows from it, was felt deeply and true, but often expressed one-sidedly and unfairly ... The reviews in the Frankfurt Scholars advertisements from 1772 and 1773 give a complete understanding of the state of our society and personality at that time. An unconditional effort to break through all limitations is noticeable. "

Disputes about freedom of the press

Already after the third number there were complaints in January 1772. The then Frankfurt senior , Johann Jakob Plitt , took offense at the review of a speech by Jacobi about love for God . The reviewer had praised the “sensitive, simple, gentle and touching language” and demanded “that one should finally begin to banish all dogmatic, scholastic chaos, exegetical tinsel and oratorical pomp from the pulpits.” The Lutheran Ministry of Preachers saw one in this Attack on the Frankfurt clergy and invited the editor, Hofrat Deinet, to the consistory responsible for church discipline , especially since there had already been further complaints because of a polemical review of the sermons of a clergyman from Nordhausen in the fifth issue.

Deinet justified himself that it was not he, but various scholars whose names he did not know himself who were the authors of the reviews and "that such reviews, written only for scholars, should not be taken too sharply". On January 20, 1772, the Frankfurt book censorship deputation ordered that Deinet should name the authors and that “in future no such offensive and suggestive reviews of theological matters should be included in his scholars, including a decent revocation of both passages After Deinet's appeal , the matter was left to rest for the time being, and the learned advertisements continued to publish criticisms of theological writings.

There was a renewed dispute with the censorship in July 1772. After a critical review by the theologian Karl Friedrich Bahrdt on a paper by Hamburg's chief pastor Johann Melchior Goeze , Editing reflections on the life of Jesus on earth for every day of the year , the council itself went against yours. One felt obliged to Goeze, who in the previous year had defended the strict procedure of the Lutheran city ​​of Frankfurt against the Calvinists and had received a gift of 12 ducats for  this.  Goeze then dedicated the reviewed work on the life of Jesus to the Frankfurt Council.

The book deputation summoned Deinet again and decided on August 22nd to “condemn him to a sentence of 20 Reichsthaler for his repeated offense ”. Deinet protested and was given four weeks to submit a defense. During this period there were new complaints against the advertisements after a review of Balthasar Münter's conversion story of Count Johann Friedrich Struensee , which probably also came from Bahrdt. The author had put forward the thesis that well-known free spirits such as Voltaire , Hume and Rousseau would have harmed morality and religion less than the strict faith Pascal .

In a petition to the City Council of Frankfurt, the Ministry of Preachers demanded that the director of these advertisements should be ordered to either completely or at least all expressions offensive to religion that are annoying to the Christian-minded reader and what we are about have already heard many complaints from strangers and locals to contain. The council then ordered on September 15 that Deinet would no longer be allowed to print any theological articles that had not previously been viewed and approved by a censor to be named by the ministry and paid for by Deinet.

Deinet contradicted on September 17th on the grounds that as a Reformed Christian he could not possibly submit to the Lutheran ministry, and published a self-defense by the reviewer of the Struenseean conversion story in the number LXXVI of September 22nd. Thereupon Senior Plitt lodged a complaint again, and on September 24th the Deinet council stopped again to comply with the resolution of September 15th, avoiding a further 100 Reichstalern fine.

On October 6, 1772, Goethe wrote to Johann Christian Kestner in Wetzlar : “Our spectacles with the priest are getting bigger every day. They are prostituting themselves more and more and we argue about it. ”In the meantime, as Deinet's lawyer at the council, he had extended the deadline and announced a letter of defense. This 31-page letter dated October 15, 1772, designed by Schlosser, rejected the allegations against Deinet and the advertisements in a highly ironic tone. Attacking Pascal is not a crime, he is not an apostle and the venerable Lutheran ministry certainly does not approve of everything that this Roman Catholic writer says.

On October 22nd, the council confirmed its previous decisions, including the penalty of 100 Reichsthalers, and asked the law faculty at Leipzig University for an opinion on the matter. The procedure thus dragged on, especially since the law faculty in Leipzig decided to also deal with the matter with their colleagues from the theological faculty. In the meantime, with the year 1773, the previous editors Merck and Schlosser had left, and Bahrdt had taken over the sole editing of the advertisements. On April 7, 1773, the previous Senior Plitt died, and his successor Mosche showed no interest in continuing the dispute. After some back and forth, the council forced Deinet on February 10, 1774 to pay the first fine of 20 Reichstalers within eight days at the instigation of the council; in the other complaint, operated by the Ministry of Preachers, the council finally decided on February 9, 1776, that deinet the sub-rubro judicial court because of the printed writings. Acts etc. to completely remit punishment from the leniency of the authorities.

Deinet had thus ultimately lost the process and the struggle for freedom of the press, but got off lightly on the path of mercy. The Ministry of Preachers had received much ridicule for his clumsy demeanor, and Bahrdt continued to publish theological reviews, ignoring the prohibition imposed on him.

After Bahrdt had also left as editor, the advertisements appeared under different management until 1790, without ever achieving a similar public perception as in 1772.

literature

  • Hermann Bräuning-Oktavio , editor and employee of the Frankfurt Scholars Ads 1772 , Niemeyer, Tübingen 1966
  • Hermann Dechent , The disputes of the Frankfurt clergy with the Frankfurt scholars advertisements in 1772 , in: Goethe-Jahrbuch 1889 , Frankfurt am Main 1889, p. 169ff. Printed in Jürgen Telschow (Ed.), I still saw them, the old days. Contributions to Frankfurt church history , series of publications of the Evangelical Regional Association Frankfurt am Main No. 11 (1985), ISBN 3-922179-10-X , pp. 139–159
  • Johann Heinrich Merck, Frankfurt learned advertisements from 1772 , reprint with a foreword by Hermann Bräuning-Oktavio and a concordance to Bernhard Seuffert's reprint edition 1883, Bern, 1970. ISBN 978-3-261-00500-7

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Berlin edition. Poetic Works [Volume 1–16], Volume 16 , Berlin 1960 ff, pp. 8–9.
  2. ↑ Protocol of the Predigerconvents I, 72 of January 22, 1772, quoted from Dechent, Goethe-Jahrbuch 1889 , p. 169ff.
  3. ↑ a b c d Dechent, Goethe-Jahrbuch 1889 , p. 169ff.
  4. ↑ Discussed in No. LVIII of July 21, 1772
  5. ^ Johann Melchior Goeze, The just cause of the Evangelical Lutheran Church etc. , Hamburg with Johann Christian Brandt 1771
  6. ↑ Discussed in No. LXXII of September 8, 1772
  7. ^ Goethe, Weimar edition. IV, Volume 2, No. 99, p. 29