Minerva (magazine)
The Minerva - a journal of historical and political content was a German monthly magazine that was founded in Hamburg in 1792 by the former Prussian officer Johann Wilhelm von Archenholz . It existed until 1858 and was read above all by the educated middle class and liberal members of the military .
history
Archenholz, who had been a travel writer and journalist since the 1760s, founded Minerva primarily to provide German readers with information about the French Revolution . He used the Teutsche Chronik of his friend Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart as a template . The edition was up to 6,000 copies, which was very high for the time. He chose Hamburg as the place of publication because the censorship there was comparatively mild .
Archenholz was initially enthusiastic about the ideals of the revolution and had traveled to Paris in 1791 to see for himself, but changed his positive attitude after the riots of 1793. In the Minerva , other topics came up more and more as a result . Archenholz stated that he wanted to offer his readers "the latest history of all countries as far as it is of interest to the enlightened people". He wrote about a quarter of the texts himself, for the others he won some well-known writers and military men, whom he had met on his numerous trips. However, since most of the texts are only marked with initials, the authors can hardly be identified. During the French occupation of Hamburg, the Minerva was then subject to censorship and hardly contained any critical statements about France. The French envoy Bourienne, however, wrote in his memoirs that Archenholz had not complied willingly.
In 1809, for reasons of age, Archenholz gave the editor-in-chief to Friedrich Alexander Bran , a popular writer and editor of the Nordic Miscellen . The importance of politics in the magazine then rapidly declined.
Appearance and content
The Minerva appeared monthly and comprised almost 200 pages each. Its format was very handy (slightly larger than DIN A6), but the layout was extremely simple. The sheet only contained continuous, sometimes very long texts without pictures or decorative elements. The content consisted of factual, political discussions, separate comments, detailed war reports, historical treatises on the history of various countries, as well as some literary reviews and poems. Graf v. B ..., "a statesman who lives in solitude". In 1794, the Jenaer Allgemeine Literaturzeitung called Minerva the “best periodical sheet”.
Archenholz had an astonishingly modern understanding of the press for the time. He prefixed Minerva with the English motto "To shew the very age and body of the time, its form and pressure" - loosely translated: Present events as they really are. Archenholz endeavored to maintain strict impartiality and a separation of message and opinion, as it was only common practice in Germany after the Second World War. He informed his readers about things they couldn't know because they weren't there or because they lacked prior knowledge, but he didn't try to "sell" them an opinion. On some, above all current political issues, he did not keep his own views behind the mountain, but rather packed them into ironic preliminary and follow-up remarks or footnotes to the articles - especially when his guest authors were less impartial than himself When it came to particularly explosive topics, he turned his newspaper into a regular discussion forum. The debate about the Prussian defeat in the battle of Jena and Auerstedt , for example, dragged on for years. He also printed the defense of the fortress commanders to Oder and Neisse, although he personally blamed them for the disaster because of their “cowardly” abandonment of the fortresses.
literature
- Karl d'Ester: Archenholtz, Johann Wilhelm v. , in: Walter Heide (Ed.): Handbuch der Zeitungswissenschaft Vol. 1, Leipzig 1940, pp. 239–241.
- Friedrich Ruof: Johann Wilhelm v. Archenholtz. A German writer at the time of the French Revolution and Napoleon (1741–1812) , Berlin 1913.
