open access

https://hdl.handle.net/2115/85268

On the social impacts and historical role of newspapers in 17th century Germany

日本語

2022-03-11

Research Faculty of Media and Communication Hokkaido University

Media and Communication Studies

75

11-38

The dissemination of news by newspapers in Germany and other European countries immediately evoked various responses, much as the emergence of all other later news media has. During the 17th century, many scholars and academics discussed the pros and cons of newspapers. In their most famous publications in the second half of the 17th century, compiled and edited first by Kurth (1944) and then again by Wilke (2015), authors including Stieler (1695) attempted to clarify not only the benefits of printed newspapers, but also their inherent risks. However, no author denied the social merits of newspapers, even though they stood in unison against the notion of the free press. Prints without censorship were just unsuitable for the absolutistic political system of the time. These scholars also continued to maintain the Bible and God as the source of ultimate authority, and to identify human curiosity as the main psychological reason to »consume« the news. After a summary presentation of these scholarsʼ arguments, this paper seeks to outline the historical meaning of newspapers from the respective viewpoints of historical reader research and the sociology of knowledge. Engelsing (1970) presents a working hypothesis that the reading of the Bible, i.e. different texts in one book which remain the same, was a process which was repeated regularly and intensively, while the reading of secular texts, which occurred first mainly in the 18th century, is an action which was performed only once, and that was irregular and wide-ranging. Newspapers were perceived as peculiar in that the act of reading them was one which was regularly repeated, yet extensive (in the sense that texts were somehow new each time and mostly read only once). The contents of newspapers could be circulated not only by reading but also by reading out loud to listeners. In this way, a wide reception in German society then occurred, even for illiterates. Historically, the Bible had been the dominant commodity in the printing market until the appearance of newspapers in the 17th century. At that time the simultaneous consumption of two completely heterogeneous reading matters was possible and even became routine. Böning (2005) explains processes of historical development in relation to the political public sphere over two centuries, starting with the emerging of newspapers. He points out the importance of news texts as a new secular reading matter, contrasted to the devotional one. Böning argues that during the period before the advent of newspapers, while the Bible was peoplesʼ main reading material, the reader felt powerless in the social political context because of their lack of information about the system of rules. On the other hand people could feel temporarily somehow omnipotent after reading a newspaper, because it provided them modern rational insights and extended their vision on reality in a geographical and social political sense. The readers of both sorts of text swung continually between the two psychological poles. The consumption of newspapers could strengthen and widen secular tendencies, first driven by Protestant ethics as Weber argued, across denominational borders to wider society, and thus contributed to modernization.

紀要論文

Version of Record

1882-5303

AA12286697