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Cotta and Napoleon: The French Pursuit of the Allgemeine Zeitung
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 December 2008
Extract
In contrast to virtually every other aspect of Napoleon's German policy, his treatment of the German press has never been subject to much scholarly controversy. For good reason: on the one occasion when Napoleon had a German publisher entirely in his hands, he had him shot—an act whose simplicity, indeed finality, does not leave much room for quibbling as to details. The execution of J. P. Palm did not reflect Napoleon's entire policy; but it may serve as a reminder that, among the ruling personalities of Europe, it was the Emperor of the French who esteemed the power of the press most highly. Napoleon had seen an aroused nation first hand, and as the leader of Europe's first postrevolutionary society he brought to the regulation of public opinion a degree of determination unknown to the Old Regime. One of his first acts as First Consul had been to suppress most of the newspapers published in France, and he soon domesticated those that remained. His aim was not to expel public opinion from the political arena, but to remove it from the hands of the public, and to make it serve him. The same purpose guided his press policy in Germany. As the young Count Metternich noted in a dispatch from Paris, the new century would be “a century of words,” and Napoleon meant his word to be the last.
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References
This essay is based on research supported in part by grants from the German Academic Exchange Service, the Mabelle McLeod Lewis Foundation, and the Stanford Committee for Research in International Studies.
1. von Metternich, Clemens, Aus Metternich's nachgelassenen Papieren, 8 vols., ed. von Klinkowström, Alfons and Metternich-Winneburg, Prince Richard (Vienna, 1880–1884), 2: 192.Google Scholar
2. See Lohrer, Liselotte, Cotta: Geschichte eines Verlags, 1659–1959 (Stuttgart, 1959), pp. 51–76.Google Scholar
3. Göschen to Böttiger, Oct. 8, 1805, Gerhardt, L[uise], ed., Schriftsteller und Büchhändler vor hundert Jahren: Karl August Böttiger und Georg Joachim Göschen im Briefwechsel (Leipzig, 1911), p. 184;Google Scholar Böttiger to Cotta, Jan. 23 and April 30,1807, Cotta Archiv, Handschriftensammlung, Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach am Neckar (hereafter abbreviated CA); and Paul Ferdinand [Friedrich] Buchholz to Cotta, Jan. 5, 1807, CA.
4. Engelsing, Rolf, “Zeitung und Zeitschrift in Nordwestdeutschland 1800–1850: Leser und Journalisten,” Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens 5 (1964), col. 859.Google Scholar
5. J. W. von Archenholz (editor of the Hamburg Minerva) to Cotta, Nov. 7, 1798, CA. Most German newspapers appeared three to five times per week. More frequent publication was sometimes regarded as politically provocative, suggesting a craving for popularity and the attention of the crowd. In 1792 the Prussian government rejected a plan by a secretary of the Berlin Academy of Science to publish a daily newspaper composed entirely of official documents, on the grounds that the daily format itself might cause unrest (Consentius, Ernst, “Die Berliner Zeitungen während der französischen Revolution,” Preussische Jahrbücher 117 [1904]: 465ff.Google Scholar) Württemberg, however, had had relatively little experience with an active political press, and Cotta had no difficulty convincing the Privy Council that his project merited their support. The council's decision is reprinted in Vollmer, Wilhelm, ed., Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und Cotta (Stuttgart, 1876), pp. 613–16.Google Scholar
6. See Meyer, H. F., “Zeitungspreise in Deutschland in 19. Jahrhundert und ihr gesellschaftliche Bedeutung” (Ph.D. diss., Munster, 1967), pp. 118ff.Google Scholar A year's subscription normally cost 18 gulden—roughly equal to a year's rent on two acres of arable land—but the price could double in states like Austria that taxed foreign periodicals heavily.
7. See for instance the comments of von Herder, J. G. and Gentz, Friedrich, in Düntzer, Heinrich and von Herder, Ferdinand Gottfried, eds., Von und an Herder: Ungedruckte Briefe aus Herders Nachlass, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1861–1862), 3: 241–45Google Scholar; and Wittichen, F. C. and Salzer, Ernst, eds., Briefe von und an Friedrich von Gentz, 3 vols. in 4 (Munich and Berlin, 1909–1913), 1: 248, 254f.Google Scholar See also a review of the AZ's first year in Wieland's Neue Teutscher Merkur (Jan., 1799), pp. 3–27.
8. On the circulation of the AZ, see Heyck, Eduard, Die Allgemeine Zeitung, 1798–1898 (Munich, 1898), p. 185Google Scholar, and Druckauftragsbücher 1800–1812, 1810–1818, CA. These two sources do not agree precisely. In 1798, the Hamburg Correspondent had about 25,000 subscribers (Dietrich von Bülow [Hamburg correspondent for the AZ] to Cotta, Feb. 23, 1798, CA).
9. Cotta to Count Gabriel von Bray (Bavarian envoy in Vienna), Dec. 24, 1828, Heyck, Allgemeine Zeitung, p. 254.
10. “Promemoria” from Cotta to the Reichshofrat, Oct. 29, 1803, Vollmer, Briefwechsel, p. 665.
11. The quality of the AZ's reporting and the influential character of its audience were mutually reinforcing, as can be seen from a comment of Heinrich Laube's. Contributions to the AZ, Laube noted, came from “the most important people in the Fatherland. Every minister took care that his news appeared in this paper, that it was well presented, well supported. Every publicist strove to have his views expounded there, because he knew that all the powerful read it” (von Boehm, Max, Biedermeier, 2nd. ed. [Berlin, 1961], p. 398).Google Scholar
12. See the report prepared in 1808 for the Austrian Police Ministry by Johann Armbruster, an official of that department, and the AZ's Vienna correspondent. Armbruster identified only nine German newspapers (including four published in Switzerland) that gathered their own news (Glossy, Karl, “Ein Kapitel aus der Zeitungsgeschichte Alt-Österreichs,” Jahrbuch der Grillparzer-Gesellschaft 33 [1935]: 134f).Google Scholar
13. A number of the AZ's early correspondents have been identified by Heyck, Allgemeine Zeitung, pp. 130–43, 168–71, 238, on the basis of letters in the Cotta Archive. Beginning with the issue of Jan. 1, 1807, it is sometimes possible to discover the source of an article by referring to marginal notations in a surviving editorial exemplar (CA). Each number of the paper was marked by the editor or his assistants with cryptic references identifying who was to be paid for a given story. This was then forwarded to Cotta. The individual identified in this way was not necessarily the author of the piece, however. Many of the AZ's regular contributors acted as clearing houses for material sent to them by third parties; articles from a single source could thus carry numerous date lines. This was particularly true for Cotta himself. He is the most frequently cited source of material in the editorial exemplar, but he wrote almost nothing himself during the period discussed here. Organizationally, correspondence and related official or secondhand material were always grouped together by country, beginning in the west—a typographical convention that expressed both the day to day impartiality and the subtly Francophile character of the staff. Barring news from the Americas or Spain, France was always accorded pride of place, on page one. Britain followed, then Switzerland, Italy, and the Low Countries. “Germany” seldom appeared before page three, with Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Turkey bringing up the rear. Articles rarely carried titles of their own. Correspondence was always identified as such in the text. Over the years, typographical insignia—asterisks, daggers, etc.—were devised to identify the work of regular contributors.
14. See Cotta to Karl Reinhard (German-born French diplomat and, briefly, French Foreign Minister), Aug. 3, Sept. 12, and Nov. 16, 1798, CA.
15. Cf. Vollmer, Briefwechsel, pp. 624–52; and Heyck, Allgemeine Zeitung, pp. 61f. It was owing to this incident that the Allgemeine Zeitung acquired the name under which it became famous. Prior to Sept. 9, 1798, the paper bore the title Neueste Weltkunde.
16. Vollmer, Briefwechsel, p. 661; Heyck, Allgemeine Zeitung, pp. 79f; and Hölzle, Erwin, “Cotta, der Verleger und die Politik,” Historische Vierteljahrschrift 29 (1934): 580.Google Scholar
17. Baron von Verger (Bavarian envoy in Bern) to Montgelas, Apr. 10, 1804, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Abteilung II: Geheimes Staatsarchiv, Archiv des Innenministerium (signature M Inn), vol. 25097/1.
18. Guggenbühl, Gottfried, Geschichte der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft, 2 vols. (Zurich, 1947–1948), 2: 283f.Google Scholar
19. Cotta to Karl Reinhard, Oct. 15, 1803, CA.
20. Ibid.
21. Heyck, Allgemeine Zeitung, p. 140.
22. Baasch, Ernst, Geschichte des Hamburgischen Zeitungswesens von den Anfängen bis 1914 (Hamburg, 1930), p. 7.Google Scholar
23. Cotta to Schiller, Nov. 11, 1803, Vollmer, Briefwechsel, p. 501.
24. Ibid.; and Cotta to Max Joseph, Nov. 7, 1803, M Inn 25097/1.
25. Schneider, Franz, Pressefreiheit und politische Öffentlichkeit: Studien zur politischen Geschichte Deutschlands bis 1848 (Neuweid am Rhein and Berlin, 1966), p. 140.Google Scholar
26. Montgelas' press law is described in Bitterauf, Theodor, “Die Zensur der politischen Zeitungen in Bayern, 1799–1825,” Riezler-Festschrift: Beiträge zur Bayerischen Geschichte, ed. von Müller, Karl Alexander (Gotha, 1913), pp. 306ff.Google Scholar
27. Chief Magistrate Wattenwyl to Baron von Verger, Apr. 3, 1804, M Inn 25097/1.
28. Baron von Verger to Montgelas, Apr. 4, 1804, ibid.
29. Huber, Ludwig, “Promemoria,” 04 8, 1804Google Scholar, ibid.
30. District President Hartling to Montgelas, Apr. 10, 1804, ibid.
31. Montgelas to Baron von Verger, June 25, 1804, ibid.
32. Otto to Montgelas, Oct. 24, 1804, ibid.; the article had appeared in the AZ of Oct. 22.
33. Ludwig Huber to the District Government, Nov. 6, 1804, M Inn 25097/1.
34. Cotta to Schiller, Sept. 11 and 17, 1804, Vollmer, Briefwechsel, pp. 528ff.
35. Protocol of an interview between Stegmann and District President von Arco, Nov. 3, 1804; Huber to the District Government, Nov. 6, 1804, M Inn 25097/1.
36. Bitterauf, “Zensur der politischen Zeitungen,” p. 313.
37. Montgelas to von Arco, Oct. 27, 1804; and Hartling to Montgelas, Apr. 10, 1804, ibid. Heyck, Allgemeine Zeitung, p. 202, incorrectly claims that Bavaria lifted her censorship of all periodicals between 1803 and 1806 and that Cotta moved the AZ to Ulm to take advantage of this. But cf. Cotta to Max Joseph, Nov. 7, 1803, M Inn 25097/1.
38. Quint, Wolfgang, Souveränitätsbegriff und Souveränitätspolitik in Bayern, von der Mitte des 17. bis zur ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1971), p. 148n.Google Scholar
39. Stegmann to Cotta, [July, 1805], CA; excerpt in Heyck, Allgemeine Zeitung, pp. 173f.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid.
42. See the exchange of letters between Police Director Wirschinger and Montgelas, July 20 and 30, 1814, M Inn 25097/1. Stegmann was exposed to the police by Cotta's older brother, Friedrich, once a leading member of the Jacobin societies in Mainz and Strasbourg, who had quit French service in 1810, and came to work for the AZ sometime thereafter. Perhaps because he was jealous of Stegmann's authority, or his close relationship with Cotta, Friedrich began to intercept Stegmann's mail and discovered the suspicious connection with the French Minister of Police. (Stegmann to Cotta, June 4, 1813, CA.) It is not clear how Stegmann managed to write to Fouché every day, as he claims, without being discovered. Possibly he enclosed his reports in routine letters to Cotta, who passed them on to the French envoy in Stuttgart in return for material destined for the AZ.
43. Schneider, Pressefreiheit, pp. 175f, and Bitterauf, “Zensur der politischen Zeitungen,” p. 319.
44. The relevant documents are in M Inn 25097/I.
45. Tiainen, Jorma, in his study of Napoleon und das Napoleonische Frankreich in der Öffentliche Diskussion der “Dritten Deutschland” 1797–1806, vol. 8 of Studia Historica Jyväskyläewsie (Jyväskyla, Finland, 1971)Google Scholar, claims, on the basis of earlier published work, that about 35% of the material in the AZ was taken from the Moniteur. There is no indication of how this figure was calculated or, more interesting, whether Tiainen regards it as especially high or low. He offers it as evidence for his assertion that almost all the news about France that appeared in German newspapers was in fact the work of French journalists, which contributes to his conclusion that prior to 1848 newspapers played no significant role in the formation of German public opinion—a view, I suspect, that no German government of that era would have shared. Tiainen's impatience with the parochialism of most German newspapers is understandable, but it did cause him to ignore the AZ, which, during the period he covers, employed at least half a dozen regular correspondents, all German born, in Paris and Strasbourg.
46. Bitterauf, “Zensur der politischen Zeitungen,” p. 321.
47. Ibid., pp. 313–21.
48. Stegmann to Cotta, [July, 1805], Heyck, Allgemeine Zeitung, p. 173.
49. Eichler, Herbert, “Zur Vorgeschichte des Oesterreichischen Beobachters,” Jahrbuch der Grillparzer-Gesellschaft 28 (1926): 177.Google Scholar In 1807, the AZ, which cost six times as much as the Beobachter, had three to four hundred subscribers in Vienna alone. See J. M. Armbruster to Cotta, Mar. 2, 1807, CA.
50. Gentz to Metternich, Feb. 24, 1810, Wittichen and Salzer, Briefe, 3, pt. 1: 76f.
51. Fournier, August, Historische Studien und Skizzen (Prague, 1885), pp. 280ff.Google Scholar; and Hözlle, Erwin, Württemberg im Zeitalter Napoleons und der Deutschen Erhebung (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1937), pp. 133ff., 139.Google Scholar
52. Hölzle, “Cotta,” pp. 581f.
53. Kraehe, Enno, Metternich's German Policy (Princeton, 1963), p. 232.Google Scholar
54. Cotta to Max Joseph, June 25, 1811, M Inn 25097/1.
55. Friedrich Engelbach (Strasbourg correspondent for the AZ) to Cotta, Nov. 29, 1810, CA; Heyck, Allgemeine Zeitung, p. 170.
56. See the letters of J. M. Armbruster's eldest son, Carl Anton, to Cotta, Oct. 30, Nov. 17, and Nov. 21, 1810, CA.
57. On Aug. 31, 1810, Montgelas informed the District Government in Augsburg that the AZ, which would begin publication there the following day, should be forbidden to publish political news that was not “based on official sources.” He received in reply a memorandum from Stegmann, and a supporting letter from the district president (Sept. 3, 1810) which reviewed the earlier concessions to the AZ on this point (see especially Montgelas to the Ulm District Government, Nov. 10, 1808), and suggested that the paper might not be able to continue if the old arrangement were not restored. Montgelas then drafted new instructions (Sept. 10, 1810) which specified, “in light of the extraordinary reputation that the Allgemeine Zeitung enjoyed in the rest of Germany,” that private correspondence should continue to appear, subject to the judgment of the district president—language taken verbatim from Stegmann's memo. Two months later, in response to a French complaint, Montgelas modified his instructions slightly, by advising the censor that reports of troop movements could come only from the French legation (Nov. 29, 1810). On the other hand, he specifically permitted the inclusion of an article sharply critical of the Moniteur's reports on French colonial policy (Dec. 1, 1810). All these documents in M Inn 25097/1.
58. Pilat to Cotta, July 7, 1812, CA.
59. Gentz to Metternich, Nov. 14, 1810, Wittichen and Salzer, Briefe, 3, pt. 1: 81ff.
60. The AZ's privileges were not shared by other Bavarian papers. The Bamberger Zeitung had already been suppressed at French insistence in 1809; the Nuremberg Correspondent von und für Deutschland was confined to strictly official sources. It was not allowed to reprint material that had already appeared in the AZ. The AZ's independence has itself been overstated. It is not true, as claimed by Heyck, Allgemeine Zeitung, pp. 180–87, 299f.; and Hölzle, “Cotta,” p. 582, that in 1809–10 the AZ published reports on Prussian affairs by the banished former minister, Baron vom Stein. Such an affront to the French would have been out of the question. A close examination of the editorial exemplar (CA) suggests that the articles in question were the work of a different Karl Stein, who was a professor at Weimar, and a Prussian State Councilor.
61. The Munich ministry seems to have been almost willfully ignorant of the problems faced by the AZ's censors. In January 1812, for instance, a censor was reprimanded for permitting the editors to juxtapose two excerpts from the Moniteur in a misleading way. The poor fellow replied that he would be glad to compare all exerpts from the Moniteur with the original, if only he were allowed to receive it himself (M Inn 25097/1).
62. Cotta to Bray, Dec. 24, 1828, Heyck, Allgemeine Zeitung, pp. 253ff.