Imperial Book Commission

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The Imperial Book Commission , based in Frankfurt am Main, was an authority of the Holy Roman Empire to control printing and press. It originated in the 16th century and existed until the end of the empire in 1806. The control of the Frankfurt publishers and printers meant that many of them moved to Leipzig .

Framework

Gradually a control of the publishing and printing system developed in the empire. In 1521 pre-censorship was introduced and Martin Luther's writings were banned. The princes and cities were given the right to control publications. In the following years the law became an obligation. In 1530, the Reichstag in Augsburg gave the emperor overall supervision of printing. He was allowed to intervene should the estates fail to do their duty. In the beginning the emperors tried not to use the commission to promote the Catholic cause. It was important to Maximilian II, with the help of the commission, to obtain free copies of works with printing privileges for the imperial library.

The regulations were summarized in the Reich Police Ordinance of 1577. From 1653, regulations for regulating the press were also included in the imperial election surrenders. The conditions for the press were tightened again in the electoral surrender of Leopold II in 1790. After that, under the impact of the French Revolution, no writing could be tolerated that "is incompatible with the symbolic books of both religions and with good morals, or thereby promoting the overthrow of the present Constitution, or the disturbance of public calm. "

Emergence

The Frankfurt Book Fair had developed into a center of the book trade since the 16th century. This called the authorities control on the plan. There is evidence of an imperial book commissioner as early as 1567. A short time later, Emperor Maximilian II instructed the City Council of Frankfurt to ensure that printers and publishers observe imperial rights during the book fair. Regular checks and searches for objectionable works have taken place since 1579. The first permanent book commissioner was the fiscal department at the Reich Chamber of Commerce Johannes Vest. From 1597 to 1619 the clergyman Valentin Leucht officiated as papal and imperial book commissioner in Frankfurt. The booksellers were obliged to provide information about the works they were selling, to prove a printing permit and to deliver one copy of each work to the commission. While its activities were initially limited to the book fair, the commission later carried out its function during the rest of the time with the consent of the city. Since 1608 the commission was a permanent institution.

Competencies

The book commission was subordinate to the Reichshofrat . There were also close relationships with the Imperial Arch Chancellor, i.e. the Archbishop of Mainz, as well as the Reichstag and the Imperial Court of Justice tax. The rights and tasks of the commission were clearly never regulated. There was a dispute over competencies, in particular with the City Council of Frankfurt. Even if partially disputed, the tasks of the commission included: the control of the book stands during the book fair, the control of the list of printed books as well as the printing permission of the publishers. The commission also paid attention to the delivery of a deposit copy, which was sent to the Viennese court library . In addition, attempts were made to implement the imperial printing privileges. The commission had prohibited writings confiscated. However, there was no preliminary censorship of manuscripts, only a follow-up check of the printed works.

The problem was that the commission was essentially only able to assert itself in Frankfurt. It was often complained that other imperial estates were only inadequately supporting the work. Comparatively little was the responsibility of the commission for the control of political writings. The Reichshofrat was directly responsible for this.

The Frankfurt Commission was mainly devoted to religious or philosophical publications. With regard to the content, it was important that the commissioners were often open or secret papal book commissioners and therefore were active in the counter-Reformation sense. Many of the commissioners were also clergy. The commissioner Georg Friedrich Sperling was so extreme in religious terms that numerous booksellers left Frankfurt and settled in Leipzig. There the imperial book commission had no direct rights. The Saxon Book Commission exercised no content control, even if there were violations of imperial laws or sovereign instructions, but essentially limited itself to controlling the printing privileges. It was not least this milder censorship practice that led Leipzig to gain ground as a publishing location compared to Frankfurt. In Frankfurt, too, the Commission's measures were undermined and the imperial censorship was only partially effective in the long term.

The strictly Catholic orientation changed in part with the election surrender of Joseph I , in which it was determined that the Catholic side could no longer be favored. Nevertheless, except for the last commissioner Johann Konrad Deiner, who was appointed in 1780, all commissioners were Catholics. The last Catholic book commissioner was the auxiliary bishop of Worms, Franz Xaver Anton von Scheben († 1779). In the 18th century, control of the Enlightenment's writings became more important. In 1750, for example, the commission banned the writings of the radical enlightener Johann Christian Edelmann . A large crowd witnessed about 1,000 copies of his writings being burned.

literature

  • Rudolf Stöber: German press history. Stuttgart, 2005, pp. 105-108.
  • Ernst Fischer: The History of Censorship. In: Media Studies. A manual for the development of media and forms of communication. Volume 1, Berlin et al. 1999, p. 503.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joachim Whaley: The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and its Territories. Vol. 1. Darmstadt, 2014. p. 457.
  2. ^ Andreas Würgler: Media in the early modern times. Munich 2009, p. 24.
  3. ^ Ludwig Hoffmann: History of book censorship. Berlin 1819, p. 92.
  4. ↑ Christopher Clarke: Prussia. Rise and fall 1600–1947. Bonn 2007, p. 301.