Aufklarung, Inc.: Publishing in Eighteenth-Century Germany

Hans-Joachim Kertscher. Der Verleger Johann Justinus Gebauer (Halle a.S.: Hallescher Verlag, 1998). Pp. 163. € 15.50.

Pamela E. Selwyn. Everyday Life in the German Book Trade: Friedrich Nicolai as Bookseller and Publisher in the Age of Enlightenment 1750-1810 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000). Pp. xvi + 419. $75.00 cloth.

Paul S. Spalding. Seize the Book, Jail the Author: Johann Lorenz Schmidt and Censorship in Eighteenth-Century Germany (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1998). Pp. xviii + 347. $39.95.

One of the lingering illusions about the electronic universe—the WWW and the Internet—has been that it could be a free space, both in terms of financing and in terms of content. The gradual shift to privatization is making the costs visible, while increasing censorship of sites and of electronic transmissions asserts state control over the latest attempt to liberate the republic of letters. In this context, it is salutary to be reminded by new studies in the history of publishing and the book trade how difficult the struggle for freedom of expression has always been. What makes the publishers of the German Enlightenment especially valuable is that they are a positive example of how the interests of business could serve to advance ideas as well as profits.

Pamela Selwyn's study of Friedrich Nicolai, which appears in the Penn State Series in the History of the Book, began as a dissertation written under Robert Darnton, but has been revised so as to make it accessible for general readers. Nicolai (1733-1811) is familiar to German literary historians as a multi-faceted advocate of the Enlightenment. He published, edited, sold books, sponsored and did book reviewing, and wrote novels. His creative bent was for satires such as the Leben und Meinungen des Herrn Magisters Sebaldus Nothanker (1773-78) and the parody Freuden des jungen Werthers (1775). But it was as a publisher based in Berlin that Nicolai had the greatest impact, especially through the critical reviews published in the Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek (1765-1805). The ADB was omnivorous, with the aim of reviewing all significant German books; over 400 contributors would eventually review more than 80,000 books in all disciplines, making it the most influential periodical of the German Enlightenment. Nicolai's story has been told before, notably by Horst Möller in his Aufklärung in Preussen (1974), but Selwyn's is the first monograph to make him available to an English-reading public.

Moreover, Selwyn has returned to the archives, so that her study is a significant new contribution, not just a reworking of published material. The holdings for Nicolai are exceptionally rich, including his correspondence with some 2,500 individuals. Selwyn modestly notes that she "could read only some 20 per cent of the circa 15,000 letters in detail" (xiii), but she has also mined the business records as well as published primary sources. After an opening chapter surveying Nicolai's overall accomplishments, there are chapters on the history of Nicolai's publishing house, on the book trade, on the problems of licensing, piracy and censorship, on the ADB, and on Nicolai's relations with his authors and contributors. The picture that emerges is one of Nicolai as a tireless businessman who strove to maintain a balance among all the forces in which a publisher was enmeshed: family versus business, freedom of expression versus decorum, profit versus service to the common good, encourage talented young authors versus squandering limited capital.

Selwyn's proximity to the sources, while yielding a trove of facts, occasionally makes for slow reading. But there are also lively moments, such as the sniping from an anonymous critic about the ADB:

I would like to write to you, if not as Christians, then as civilized philosophers, if you were such; as it is, I cannot. To be sure, I do not read your offensive work, except when some scrap of it is sent to me; the ugly...