Gazette de Cologne
The Gazette de Cologne (French; translated: newspaper of Cologne) was a French-language newspaper published in Cologne from 1734 to 1810 with an anti- Prussian political orientation. In the first decades of its existence, the paper consisted of four pages and was sold twice a week. The Gazette de Cologne was a publication that received attention in the courts of the European royal houses.
timeline
The proposal by Johann Ignaz Roderique
The historian Johann Ignaz Roderique was the founder and inextricably linked to the great success of the first twenty years . Roderique knew the newspaper system in Europe, especially the publications of French, Protestant emigrants from Holland (such as the Gazette d 'Amsterdam or the Gazette d'Utrecht ) and the Protestant and Prussian oriented gazettes from Hamburg. As a Catholic and a Jesuit, he wanted to offer them a political and religious counterweight. Above all, however, commercial interests drove him. His salary as a professor at the University of Cologne was too low for him to make a living. In his application to the Cologne Council for approval of his newspaper in 1734, he put the French newspapers of the region in the foreground as an argument:
“The French newspapers printed in Holland, with which Germany is, as it were, inundated, never give the slightest report of their own, nor of English matters, and are therefore defective in two main parts. Most of all, however, it is to be disapproved of with the greatest justification and the greatest indignation that the holy Catholic religion is taken along in the most sensitive way at every opportunity. [Therefore] there is no doubt in the slightest that a French newspaper coming to light with your grace high privilegio will be well received, serve this free imperial city to glory and splendeur and more than a citizen's benefit, as well as the Catholic religion prosper for the best would."
Imperial approval
Not only the council of the Catholic city of Cologne gladly granted this approval, also Emperor Karl VI. , an Austrian Catholic, granted a "privilege". This privilege not only included the printing license, but also relieved Roderique of censorship. He could write what he wanted as long as he didn't offend His Majesty. At the end of 1734 the Gazette de Cologne avec privilege de sa majesté imperiale was published for the annual subscription price of 4 Reichstalers, every Tuesday and Friday, with four pages, the fourth of which often contained an “Avertissement” at the end, such as an advertisement for the “Libraire à Amsterdam” , J. Ryckhof le Fils “. A “Suplement à la Gazette de Cologne” was often added on two pages. The newspaper was roughly the size of DIN A5 and followed a strict pattern of reports from the European and Asian (especially Turkey) centers of power. The Friday edition of March 15, 1743 includes the following sections:
- Russie (De S. Petersbourg, le 20 Fevrier) [almost a month before publication]
- Suede (De Stockholm, le 1r Mars)
- Italy (De Venise, le 5 Mars)
- France (De Versailles, le 7 Mars)
- France (De Paris, le 8 Mars)
- Pays-Bas (De Bruxelles, le 11 Mars)
- Allemagne (De Deckendorff, le 11 Mars)
- Allemagne (De Dusseldorf, le 12 Mars)
- Allemagne (De Cologne, le 14 Mars) [one day before publication]
War reporting
The Gazette de Cologne received the most widespread use and the greatest attention during the First Silesian War 1740–1748 between Prussia and Austria. She lobbied so clearly on the Austrian side that the Prussian king Friedrich II. Johann Ignaz Roderique had a warning against Jacob Friedrich von Rohde, who was a member of the Rhenish-Westphalian district assembly for Prussia. The publisher insisted on his independence, whereupon the king, through von Rohde, made a strong Cologne citizen pay to beat up Roderique on April 13, 1741 on the street. In the files, the attack read: "a beating". The king had bid 100 ducats for the action, the racket only cost 50. Roderique then apologized, but hardly changed the course of his newspaper, so that Friedrich threatened the stubborn “Gazettier” with investing the remaining 50 ducats. Roderique again vowed to get better. His anger with the Gazette de Cologne even inspired the king to write a poem that he presented to his General Friedrich Siegmund von Bredow :
- A Cologne vivait un fripier de nouvelles,
- Singe de l'Aretin, grand faiseur de libelles,
- Sa plume ètait vendue es se écrite mordants
- Lançaient contre Louis leurs traits impertinents
In 1743 Roderique was so rich that he was able to build a villa for himself in Cologne with the income from the Gazette. His reputation as an expert on politics earned him the title of Austrian and Bavarian court counselor as well as an apostolic syndic. In the run-up to the peace negotiations in Aachen (October 18, 1748), the parties hostile to Prussia asked Roderique for an opinion on the political situation.
Fall of the newspaper
With the victory of Prussia and the death of Roderique in 1756, the Gazette de Cologne gradually lost its importance. First his nephew Caspar Anton Jacquemotte “de Roderique” took over, and after his death in 1765, his widow Maria Theresia Jacquemotte took over the newspaper. In 1906, the newspaper writer Ludwig Solomon named the 1780s as the final phase of the Gazette de Cologne in his History of the German Newspaper System, before it sank into insignificance. German libraries record the end of their publication in 1799. Solomon called the other sheets that appeared in Cologne in the 18th century "consistently unimportant". These included the Pfeiffersche Postzeitung , the Frankenbergschen Blätter , the Bäumchens-Zeitung (because the publisher lived in a house called "Zum Bäumchen"), the Historical Journal , the Mercurius , the Urgent World and State Messenger and the Kayserliche Reichs-Ober-Post- Official newspaper . The latter, however, is important, according to Solomon, "as today's Kölnische Zeitung developed from it" - the great Cologne newspaper of the 19th century.
The “Cologne Gazette”, which was frequently cited by the Anglo-Saxon press (such as the New York Times or the London Times ) in the 19th and early 20th centuries , apparently does not refer to the Gazette de Cologne, but the Kölnische Zeitung . Since April 14, 1807, it has been published as "Gazette Française de Cologne" by Theodor Franz Thiriart's publishing house . A "Gazette de Cologne" was first mentioned in the Times on August 3, 1840. This probably also refers to the Kölnische Zeitung.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Gazette de Cologne, March 15, 1743, p. 4
- ^ Ludwig Salomon: History of the German newspaper system. First volume. S. 147 ff., Oldenburg, Leipzig 1906
- ↑ Story twister , news forger
- ^ "Letters from Bessarabia, published in the Gazette de Cologne , speak of the march of large bodies of troops from Poland, followed by a considerable quantity of siege artillery," writes the Times. She quotes the edition of the presumably Kölnische Zeitung of July 10, 1840 over four paragraphs on foreign policy issues.