Reading addiction

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Under the slogan of reading addiction was in the late 18th century , a debate about false in German-speaking reading and dangerous literature out.

term

The correct and incorrect reading debate is as old as reading itself, but it culminated in the last third of the 18th century. However, the term “reading addiction” (also called “reading anger”) was new. A very early evidence of this word was found in Rudolf Wilhelm Zobel's letters on the education of women in 1773. Later the term became an integral part of Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment writings. Joachim Heinrich Campe , an important representative of the Enlightenment movement, finally introduced him to his dictionary in 1809: "Reading addiction, the addiction, that is, the excessive, unregulated desire to read at the expense of other necessary activities, to have fun by reading books."

Reading in the 18th century

Until well into the 18th century, people from the lower nobility to the middle class mainly read newspapers, the calendar and religious literature. The reading of the religious scriptures was characterized by repeated reading of the same scriptures, often linked to certain holidays as scripture reading as part of the liturgy or for meditation . They have been passed on from one generation to the next; there was usually a certain awe of the books with their statements that were considered timeless. Reading was therefore more of a religious than a literary event.

Social change

While the social position of the nobility and the peasants tended to remain unchanged, there was a serious change in the bourgeoisie . The result was a layer that was primarily characterized by education. Education was initially a prerequisite for obtaining important offices, later it was given a new function , primarily as a demarcation from the nobility and as an opportunity for social advancement . However, there was the growing group of intellectuals of the educated middle class is not enough employment. So there was plenty of time and reason to question the system. During the emergence of the new Enlightenment movement, the printed word served more than ever as a means of communication, the expansion of moral and spiritual horizons, and became the ultimate carrier of culture. In addition to the financial requirement for the acquisition of books or membership in reading societies , the division of labor between men and women, which is typical for the new bourgeoisie, was an important condition for the development of a new reading audience. The woman, whose field of activity was mainly limited to domestic duties, increasingly developed into a consumer, which also included reading. Girls and women, who were very restricted in their development, were able to experience literary fantasies in novels that were denied them in real life. So it came about that fiction experienced an enormous boom. For the men, the professional situation of working outside the home gradually resulted in a separation of work and leisure time, in which they devoted themselves increasingly to reading non-fiction - such as political writings or the newspaper.

Exemplary reading

Exemplary reading, in which morality and teaching were of great importance, was a typical feature for reading well into the 18th century. In the course of the Enlightenment and the discovery of childhood as an independently defined area of ​​life, pedagogy took on a new role and led to new children's and youth literature that was supposed to provide moral education. This was called example literature, as it was often about stories that, packed in tension, told behavior from which the children should learn or take an example. For this reason, the novel was considered completely legitimate at the beginning of the 18th century according to Enlightenment ideals. The book was said to have a high degree of effect on the reader and was seen as an important part of education.

Gradually, however, not only did the reading audience change, the content of the literature also changed. A milestone in this context was the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , published in 1774 . This reading did not have any didactic intentions. But, as Goethe himself put it, there was still “the old prejudice [...], arising from the dignity of a printed book, that it must have a didactic purpose.” In fact, many young readers identified with the hero of the novel (man spoke contemporary of a "Werther fever" ), and the novel was accused of having triggered a wave of suicide .

From "intensive" to "extensive" reading

But there were not only enormous changes in terms of content, the way of reading also developed. A classic thesis of Rolf Engelsing was that there was a change from "intensive" to "extensive" reading, which prevailed well into the 18th century - a "reading revolution", as modern research calls it. This thesis is cited many times, but it is also heavily criticized. “Intensive” reading describes the intensive and repeated reading of a small selection of mostly religious books, as has been the norm up to now. At this point, towards the end of the 18th century, the “extensive” reading behavior emerged, which differed greatly from the old reading behavior due to the desire for new, varied reading for information and, above all, for private entertainment.

The book market

The reading audience was therefore increased mainly to include women. The bourgeois awareness that it would be economically worthwhile to respond to the emerging demand with an appropriate supply led to a remarkable expansion of the book market . The most significant changes in the book market in the 18th century, judging by Jentzsch's records, were the enormous decline in the proportion of religious literature and the great growth in the "fine arts" in general and in fiction in particular, measured against the total production of all published titles in German-language Room.

Number of newly published titles per year and percentage of total production (according to Jentzsch):

1740, absolute number 1740, share of total production in% 1770, absolute number 1770, share of total production in% 1800, absolute number 1800, share of total production in%
Total title production 755 100.0% 1144 100.0% 2569 100.0%
Religious literature 291 38.5% 280 24.5% 348 13.5%
Fine arts and science 44 5.8% 188 16.4% 551 21.4%

However, there was disagreement about the number of potential readers in German-speaking countries. Rudolf Schenda estimated the reading ability of the population at 15% in 1770, at 25% in 1800, until it reached 90% in 1900. According to Greven, however, fewer than 100,000 of them in the second half of the 18th century actually regularly devoted themselves to reading fiction. Even if one can say from today's point of view that the development was not as serious as it was described, one must note that the contemporaries probably had their own area of ​​experience in mind: the urban population, but only 10% of the total population mattered.

The Reading Addiction Debate

“As long as the world stands still, no phenomena have been so remarkable as the reading of novels in Germany and the revolution in France. These two extremes are fairly large at the same time as each other, and it is not entirely improbable that the novels have secretly made people and families unhappy as much as the terrible French Revolution did publicly. "

- Johann Georg Heinzmann : 1795

The reading addiction, which, if one believes the reports of contemporaries, had spread to a large part of the reading public from 1780 on, was the focus of the discussions of the literary public. There were numerous omissions about it in newspapers, pamphlets, and sermons. The reading addiction was suspect not only to the state and church authorities, but especially to the progressive Enlightenmentists. While the novel gained legitimacy in the 1840s and 50s, as it was used in the context of the Enlightenment as a means to convey morality and useful knowledge, in the last third of the century the same side polemicized against the frequent reading . The argument came from all possible directions: political, educational, dietetic, physiological, psychopathological and empirical soul-based. In keeping with Kant 's philosophy, the representatives of the Enlightenment now complained that reading was merely misused to prevent boredom. In addition, it helps to maintain the state of immaturity .

"Reading a book just to kill time is treason to mankind, because one humiliates a means which is intended for the attainment of higher ends."

- Bergk : The art of reading books

According to Campe, the central criticism lies in the motivation of reading, namely from "Desire [...] to enjoy the little book." Campe, who was a passionate writer against frequent reading, wrote in an essay that excessive reading provokes indifference to everything What has nothing to do with reading: You neglect household chores, you lose attention to the children and you would be physically weakened. As a consequence, this poses a threat to domestic peace. With Beneken, who used the technical terms of dietetics and medical terms, it is said that memory resembles the stomach. Excessive reading can no longer be digested well, an overcrowded memory leads to as many diseases as an overcrowded stomach. However, there are also voices that put the new term into perspective, for example a reviewer of the General Library for Schools and Education writes : "[It] is not all addiction that sometimes wants to be viewed for it."

Affected

As risk groups were mainly young people and women. Adult men were less likely to be affected, as they mainly devoted themselves to non-fiction and not to fiction, which stimulates the imagination. Many educational pamphlets were written in the 18th century not only to raise children, but also to educate women. Poeckel's statement that women should acquire knowledge to a certain extent, but not too much, because then they could “become a burden on human society”, ”is representative of many other writings in which reading regulations played a central role . Possible consequences are neglect of the household, breakdown of the family or neglect of the children.

“… You are rather created - oh, hear this venerable profession with grateful joy at its great dignity! - to become happy wives, educating mothers and wise heads of the inner household ... "

- Campe : Fatherly advice

The amount of reading was also heavily criticized, especially when it came to young people. Beneken argues on a psychopathological level. According to his observations, the youth is "lost - lost without salvation." Furthermore, he diagnoses "insurmountable indolence, gnawing and aversion to any real work [...] eternal distraction and incessant perplexity of the soul, which never fully grasp a truth, never a whole thought can hold fast. ”These are the inevitable consequences of reading addiction.

Many statements in the reading addiction debate parallel the debate about self-defilement or sexual pathology of the 18th century, in which masturbation was often defined as an illness that could even lead to death. For the pedagogue Christian Gotthilf Salzmann, masturbation and reading addiction were both among the “secret sins of youth.” Karl G. Bauer stated in his work About the means to give the sexual instinct a harmless direction (1787) that the “forced situation and the Lack of all physical movement when reading, in connection with the violent alternation of ideas and sensations [...] flabbiness, mucus, flatulence and constipation in the bowels, in a word hypochondria, which are known to both, namely the female sex, quite actually acts on the genitals, producing stagnation and corruption in the blood, irritating sharpness and tension in the nervous system, sickness and softness in the whole body. Reading, which was once considered a rarity, is now done by everyone, including those shifts that are not intended, says Bauer. This makes you lose control of your sexual urges. Roetger adds that there are enough books that could be called “literary brothels”. The constellation of nature and reading, as it often came about among young intellectuals, leads to self-defilement. Karl Phillip Moritz (1756–1793) also writes that he likes to read various poets in the open air: "This is where feelings arise that I am unable to describe".

Therapeutic approaches

Despite the many criticisms, there were hardly any serious therapeutic approaches or proposed solutions. Karl Phillip Moritz only reflected on what it would be like to read the same books again and again less, but instead. The pedagogue Johann Bernhard Basedow formulates a more concrete approach. He thinks we need to have an encyclopedia for readers. This would reduce the rampant reading of books by the youth, the morally harmful books would be read less, and parents or educators would have a guideline on which books to choose for their children. However, this idea never came to fruition. Finally, an approach to a solution came from the educational side through an ideal set of rules: the canonization of German classics. The German professor Karl Morgenstern (1770–1852) advised his students in a speech from 1805 that, apart from the literature that is important for their profession, they should only read the classics, because with this they would work towards the goal of “the human race to dignity, energy and to create beauty. "

Parallels to modern media criticism

In the context of the debate about the new addictions such as television, gambling and work addiction , authors often see parallels in publications on the topic of media to the phenomenon of the reading addiction debate , in which the gap between the volume of discourse and the actual media effect was remarkable.

If you take a look at the emerging criticism of media innovations such as cinema or television , you can see that the arguments are clearly similar. For example, the cinema was initially accused of stimulating the imagination too much; later it was said that it would destroy them. Under the heading of “cinema addiction”, “the stimulation of the senses and the excitement of the 'nerves'” by early cinema was criticized in the early 20th century. In particular, the critics turned against "the presence of women on the screen and in the cinema, and of course they demand the protection of children." The educated middle class was similarly negative in the 1950s against the new medium of television: television consumption, according to the criticism, lead to passivity and loss of reality, while reading is active and stimulates the mind. The fear of dulling children and adolescents, brutality, increased aggression, indolence and loss of reality were particularly in the foreground. Apparently these arguments are very similar to those used by critics of reading addiction in the 18th century. According to Hasso Spode , "every fundamental technical change in the production of fictionality [...] - as soon as its social dissemination is observed - generates defensive reactions on the part of the owners of the cultural capital now threatened with devaluation." . The dime novel became the "good" youth book and Kintopp for "cinema cinema" high cultural value - regarded among academics.

literature

  • Erich Schön: The loss of sensuality or the transformations of reading. Change of mentality around 1800. In: Reinhart Koselleck, Karlheinz Stierle (Ed.): Language and history. Volume 12, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 3-608-91439-0 .
  • Dominik von König: Reading addiction and reading anger. In: Herbert G. Göpfert (Ed.): Book and readers. Lectures at the first annual meeting of the Wolfenbüttel working group for the history of the book, May 13 and 14, 1976 . Hauswedell, Hamburg 1977, ISBN 3-7762-0149-5 (Lectures of the annual meeting of the Wolfenbüttel working group for the history of the book industry 1, 1976) ( Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel (ed.): Writings of the Wolfenbüttel working group for the history of the book industry 1).
  • Hasso Spode: TV addiction. A contribution to the history of media criticism. In: Eva Barlösius et al. (Ed.): Distanced entanglements. The ambivalent sociological researcher on her subject. Festschrift for Peter Gleichmann on his 65th birthday . Edition Sigma, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-89404-433-0 .
  • Reinhard Wittmann : Will there be a reading revolution at the end of the 18th century? In: Roger Chartier, Guglielmo Cavallo (Ed.): The world of reading. From the scroll to the screen. Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1999, ISBN 3-593-36079-9 , pp. 419-454. (Original edition: Storia dellalettura nel mondo occidentale . Laterza, Rome et al. 1995, ISBN 88-420-4754-6 (Storia e società) ).
  • Henning Wrage: That factory of books. About reading addiction, a phantasm of media origin and the children's and youth literature of the Enlightenment. In: Monthly books for German-language literature and culture. 102 (2010), issue 1.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Dominik von König: Lesesucht und Lesewut. In: Herbert G. Göpfert (Ed.): Book and readers. Lectures at the first annual meeting of the Wolfenbüttel working group for the history of the book, May 13 and 14, 1976 . Hauswedell, Hamburg 1977, ISBN 3-7762-0149-5 , pp. 90-92. ( Lectures of the annual meeting of the Wolfenbüttel working group for the history of the book industry 1, 1976) (Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel (ed.): Writings of the Wolfenbüttel working group for the history of the book industry 1)
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Cf. Erich Schön: The loss of sensuality or the metamorphoses of reading. Change of mentality around 1800. In: Reinhart Koselleck, Karlheinz Stierle (Ed.): Language and history. Volume 12, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart, 1987, ISBN 3-608-91439-0 , pp. 40-43.
  3. ↑ a b c cf. Reinhard Wittmann: Was there a reading revolution at the end of the 18th century? In: Roger Chartier, Guglielmo Cavallo (Ed.): The world of reading. From the scroll to the screen . Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1999, ISBN 3-593-36079-9 , pp. 419-454 (original edition: Storia della lettura nel mondo occidentale . Laterza, Rome et al. 1995, ISBN 88-420-4754-6 , p . 423-425.)
  4. ↑ Dominik von König: Reading addiction and reading frenzy. 1977, pp. 99-100.
  5. ↑ Reinhard Wittmann: Is there a reading revolution at the end of the 18th century? 1999, p. 431.
  6. ↑ Goethe: Poetry and Truth. HA Vol. 9, p. 590; See also Erich Schön: The Loss of Sensuality or The Metamorphoses of Reading. Change of mentality around 1800. 1987, p. 41.
  7. ↑ Reinhard Wittmann: Is there a reading revolution at the end of the 18th century? 1999, p. 422 f.
  8. ↑ Erich Schön: The loss of sensuality or the metamorphoses of reading. Change of mentality around 1800. 1987, p. 44.
  9. ↑ Erich Schön: The loss of sensuality or the metamorphoses of reading. Change of mentality around 1800. 1987, pp. 45–46.
  10. ↑ JG Heinzmann: Appeal to my nation about the plague of German literature. Bern 1795, p. 139, quoted from: Reinhard Wittmann: Is there a reading revolution at the end of the 18th century? 1999, p. 421.
  11. ↑ a b Reinhard Wittmann: Was there a reading revolution at the end of the 18th century? 1999, p. 440 f.
  12. ↑ Erich Schön: The loss of sensuality or the metamorphoses of reading. Change of mentality around 1800. 1987, p. 47 f.
  13. ↑ a b Bergk: The Art of Reading Books. S. 59. In: Reinhard Wittmann: Is there a reading revolution at the end of the 18th century? In: Roger Chartier / Guglielmo Cavallo (ed.): The world of reading. From the scroll to the screen . Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1999, ISBN 3-593-36079-9 , pp. 419-454 (original edition: Storia della lettura nel mondo occidentale . Laterza, Rome et al. 1995, ISBN 88-420-4754-6 , p . 440–441.)
  14. ↑ See Erning, pp. 69 f .; Hunter: Sensitivity. esp. p. 59 ff. In: Erich Schön: The loss of sensuality or the metamorphoses of reading. Change of mentality around 1800. In: Reinhart Koselleck, Karlheinz Stierle (Ed.): Language and history. Volume 12, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 3-608-91439-0 , p. 49.
  15. ↑ Cf. Herbert G. Göpfert (Ed.): Book and readers. Lectures at the first annual meeting of the Wolfenbüttel working group for the history of the book, May 13 and 14, 1976 . Hauswedell, Hamburg 1977, ISBN 3-7762-0149-5 ( Lectures of the annual meeting of the Wolfenbüttel working group for the history of the book industry 1, 1976) (Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel (ed.): Writings of the Wolfenbüttel working group for the history of the book industry 1). Pp. 93, 96f.)
  16. ↑ a b c d e f Dominik von König: Reading addiction and reading rage. 1977, pp. 101-103.
  17. ↑ Reviewer: General Library for Schools and Education. Nördlingen 1774. 1st volume, 2nd piece, p. 377. In: Dominik von König: Lesesucht und Lesewut. In: Herbert G. Göpfert (Ed.): Book and readers. 1977, p. 91.
  18. ↑ KF Poeckels: Fragments for the knowledge and instruction of the human heart. Hanover 1788, p. 45. In: Dominik von König: Lesesucht und Lesewut. In: Herbert G. Göpfert (Ed.): Book and readers. 1977, p. 97.
  19. ↑ a b Campe: Fatherly advice. In: Campe: all children's and youth publications, edition of the last hand. 29. Ribbon. Braunschweig 1809, p. 19. In: Dominik von König: Lesesucht und Lesewut. 1977, pp. 97-98.
  20. ↑ Karl G. Bauer: About the means to give the sex drive a harmless direction. Leipzig 1791, p. 190. In: Reinhard Wittmann: Was there a reading revolution at the end of the 18th century? 1999, pp. 440-441.
  21. ↑ a b Dominik von König: Reading addiction and reading rage. 1977, pp. 103-106.
  22. ^ Karl Morgenstern: Plan while reading! Speech at the announcement of the award for the students of the Imperial University of Dorpat, delivered on December 12th. 1805. In: KM: Johannes Müller or plan in life and plan in reading and the limits of female education. Leipzig 1808. In: Dominik von König: Lesesucht und Lesewut. 1977, pp. 103-106.
  23. ^ A b Henning Wrage: That factory of books. About reading addiction, a phantasm of media origin and the children's and youth literature of the Enlightenment. In: Monthly books for German-language literature and culture. 102 (2010), issue 1, p. 4.
  24. ^ Hasso Spode: TV addiction. A contribution to the history of media criticism . In: distant entanglements. The ambivalent attachment of sociological researchers to their subject. Festschrift for Peter Gleichmann on his 65th birthday . Edition Sigma, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-89404-433-0 , p. 310.
  25. ↑ Heidi Schlüpmann: Unheimlichkeit des Blicks The drama of early German cinema . Frankfurt am Main 1990, ISBN 978-3878773733 , p. 10.
  26. ^ Hasso Spode: TV addiction. 1997, p. 297.
  27. ^ Henning Wrage: That factory of books. 2010, pp. 12-13.
  28. ^ A b Hasso Spode: TV addiction. 1997, p. 310.