Bail bond

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In the 18th and 19th centuries, compulsory bail was a means of restricting press freedom in Germany . It was abolished in 1871 when the German Empire was founded.

Every periodically published publication had to deposit a sum of money with the official coffers before it appeared for the first time, which as a rule was graded according to the periodicity and circulation and in some cases reached considerable heights. The Federal Press Act stipulated 5000 Prussian thalers courant or 8000 Rhenish guilders as a guideline - not as a maximum value , whereby 5000 thalers corresponded to four times the amount of the annual maintenance of the Prussian press station in Frankfurt.

In most of the federal states of the German Confederation, the introduction of a deposit was already laid down in the first press regulations and laws, thereby depriving most of the smaller and medium-sized newspapers, which often only had a small budget, of the financial ground from under their feet. The idea behind it was that only solvent publishers had the opportunity to publish political daily newspapers, since it was assumed that this group of people was more inclined to preserve the state out of their own financial interests than the financially poorer average. The bail was responsible for all fines and legal costs incurred in legal proceedings of a criminal and civil nature. In some countries, the courts were also able to directly identify the forfeiture of bail.

The political character of this regulation can be seen from the provision that only newspapers with political content were covered by the bond system. Newspapers of a religious, scientific, family character or advertising papers, as well as official news or official newspapers, were exempt from the bail, whereby the police authorities were responsible for the classification according to the political or social tendencies of a newspaper.

Calculation example

The Kladderadatsch cost 1 ½ silver groschen in 1854 and was thus the average of German daily newspapers. Thirty silver groschen made one taler. The deposit thus corresponded to the turnover of a circulation of 100,000 copies or, with a daily circulation of 25,000 copies sold, of four copies.