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Authorship in Transition: Enthusiasts and Malcontents on Press Freedoms, an Expanding Literary Market, and Vienna's Reading Public

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2013

Heather Morrison
Heather Morrison*
Affiliation:
State University of New Yorkat New Paltz
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Extract

Joseph Richter, a prolific writer of the Viennese Enlightenment, published a satirical dictionary in 1782 called the ABC Book for Big Children. Here, under the heading “men of letters” (Gelehrte), he wrote, “Emperor Augustus brought them to his table. Among the great nobility of our time, they eat out on the steps.” This criticism of insufficient patronage, marginalization, and loss of status seemed to come at an odd time. By 1781, the current Emperor and Habsburg monarch, Joseph II, freed censorship to the extent that Richter's satire could be published; writers sought to live from their works; and Vienna sustained a vibrant intellectual scene among the booksellers, coffee shops, and Freemason lodges. Yet Richter's lamentation reveals a complex reaction to the transition to a more modern, participatory, and even democratic knowledge culture.

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Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , March 2013 , pp. 1 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 2013

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References

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22 Bodi, Tauwetter, 49.

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36 Publishers started advertising the eulogies by mid-December in the Wiener Zeitung, Dec. 16, 1780.

37 “Uns kommt es zu durch den Gebrauch, den wir von der Freyheit der Presse machen werden, diese Freyheit vor den Augen aller Nationen zu rechtfertigen; könnten wir wohl dieses kostbares Geschenk des Schätzers der Menschheit würdiger nützen, als wenn wir uns, soviel an uns liegt, als seine Mitarbeiter der grossen Ansicht deren hier erinnert worden, zeigen?” Anonymous, Ueber den Gebrauch der Freyheit der Presse (Vienna: Trattner, 1781), 29Google Scholar.

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66 Realzeitung (1783).

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70 Darnton, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime.

71 Anonymous, Ueber den Gebrauch der Freyheit der Presse.