Copyright by Matthew Stephen Bunn 2014 The Dissertation Committee for Matthew Stephen Bunn Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Censors, Intellectuals, and German Civil Society, 1815-1848 Committee: Tracie Matysik, Supervisor David Crew Judith Coffin Kirsten Belgum George Williamson Censors, Intellectuals, and German Civil Society, 1815-1848 by Matthew Stephen Bunn, AB; MA Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin December 2014 Acknowledgements I would like to thank the members of my committee, David Crew, Kirsten Belgum, George Williamson, and Judith Coffin, and my adviser, Tracie Matysik, for their tireless and conscientious reading of my work. The research for this dissertation was made possible thanks to the generous support of the DAAD, the American Council on Germany, the Central European History Society, and the Graduate School at the University of Texas at Austin. I also received valuable feedback on the project from the participants of the Transatlantic Doctoral Seminar at the German Historical Institute; in particular, James Brophy and Kenneth Ledford were especially supportive and generous with their time. The Institute for Historical Studies offered a wonderful forum for presenting part of this work at an early stage as well, for which I would like to thank the IHS staff and its then-director, Julie Hardwick. Without the guidance and friendship of Susan Boettcher, who first taught me German paleography among many other things, this work might never have gotten off the ground. Finally, I want to acknowledge Helen Pho and W.J. Jones, my constant sources of support and caring. Without both of them, this journey would not have been as rewarding. iv Censors, Intellectuals, and German Civil Society, 1815-1848 Matthew Stephen Bunn, Ph.D The University of Texas at Austin, 2014 Supervisor: Tracie Matyisk In late 1819, reactionary forces led by Prince Clemens von Metternich pushed through a package of legislation aimed at curbing what they saw as a dangerous revolutionary conspiracy. Among those policies was the requirement of preventive censorship for all works published in the newly formed German Confederation under 320 pages. As a result of this policy, German states and intellectuals were set against one another, as publishers, editors, and authors fought for their ability to speak and write without state tutelage, while governments sought not only to control domestic discourse, but also to avoid offending other powerful states. Despite the significance of such a task, however, governments took on the challenge of regulating an ever-growing press with remarkably limited resources, and entrusted a small group of men, drawn from the ranks of educated civil servants, to be censors. This study examines the work of these censors, who, often against their own inclinations, had to mediate between a neo-absolutist state and an increasingly mobilized political press. Charting the development of censorship from the issuance of the Carlsbad Decrees in 1819 until the abrogation of prior restraint in 1848, it argues that censors were not one-sidedly reactionary figures, but rather were often indicative of the attitudes and assumptions of the milieu of educated state servants from which they were drawn. Censorship itself was also not simply repressive, but also had generative effects, as it v touched off wide-ranging debates over the meaning of scholarship, politics, and religion. Ultimately, however, the state’s claim to exercise censorship in defense of public order was undermined with the emergence of stark cleavages within German society, which set loose forces beyond the state’s control. The end of censorship thus also spelled the end of fantasies of a politics of consensus, not only for traditionalist conservatives, but also for the liberal movement that had opposed it. vi Table of Contents Introduction..............................................................................................................1 Parameters of Investigation.............................................................................4 The Lives of Censors ....................................................................................11 Structural Logics of Censorship....................................................................14 Censorship and Statecraft in Central Europe before 1819............................23 Intellectuals and the Public Sphere in Vormärz Germany............................32 Architecture of the Study..............................................................................47 Chapter One: Redefining Censorship ....................................................................52 The Liberal Conception of Censorship.........................................................58 The Marxist Challenge to Liberal Civil Society...........................................69 New Censorship Theory and its Detractors ..................................................75 Conclusion ....................................................................................................86 Chapter Two: The Development of Censorship Institutions, 1819-1821..............90 The “Carlsbad Moment” and the Reactionary Turn .....................................94 The Development of Censorship Commissions..........................................101 Censorship and the Problem of Borders in Baden......................................116 Conclusion ..................................................................................................133 Chapter Three: Censors and the Mediation of Public Life, 1820-1829...............136 Censorship and State Formation in Württemberg.......................................144 Censors and Public Life in a Biedermeier State .........................................157 Foreign Pressures and the Domestic Press..................................................167 Conclusion ..................................................................................................179 Chapter Four: Entanglements of State and Civil Society, 1830-1832.................184 The July Revolution in Southwestern Germany .........................................189 The Deutsche Tribüne and its Forerunners.................................................204 Conclusion ..................................................................................................238 vii Chapter Five: Policing the Boundaries of Wissenschaft, 1838-1843 ..................244 Censorship and the Academy in Saxony ....................................................250 Censorship and “Literary Life”...................................................................256 Seeds of Confrontation ...............................................................................264 Ministerial Intervention and Prussian Pressure...........................................271 Conclusion ..................................................................................................284 Chapter Six: The Unraveling of Censorship on the Eve of Revolution...............289 Censorship and the Emergence of Catholic Opposition .............................293 Revolutionary anti-Catholicism: Gustav Struve and the Mannheimer Journal.............................................................................309 Conclusion ..................................................................................................327 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................331 Bibliography ........................................................................................................346 Archival Sources.........................................................................................346 Periodicals...................................................................................................346 Published Primary Sources .........................................................................347 Secondary Literature...................................................................................349 viii Introduction From the chaotic days of autumn 1819 until the streets filled with barricades in March 1848, the printed word in Germany could not escape the watchful eyes of censors. During this era, the German Confederation, the new political form created in 1815 to stabilize the traditional state order in central Europe, mandated and its member states implemented a complex system of censorship. Among its features were pre-publication review by state censors, inter-state coordination and regulation of the press, and post- publication repressive measures including fines and confiscations for offending works. Individual member states also employed a variety of other means of controlling the printed word: requiring cash deposits to print, demanding the dismissal of politically threatening editors or writers, and manipulating government sources of funding to punish recalcitrant publishers. Consequently, it is fair to say that the states of the Confederation as a whole employed practically every form of press control known to history, though with highly varying degrees of vigor and enthusiasm. The motivations for this project were varied, and historians have sought to disentangle the genuine fear of revolution and its attendant violence from the cynical exploitation of a