The Delayed Reflex: Journalism in Josephinian Vienna

T h e D e la y e d R e fle x : J o u rn a lism in J o se p h in ia n V ien n a J O Y C E S . R U T L E D G E onmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA The following scene is worthy of being staged as a Viennese farce: at Jause, high tea in Austria, you politely ask a specialist in Germ an literature for nam esof eighteenth*century Austrian writers, where* upon he turns the conversation to Du Paquier porcelain and Masonic symbolism in T h e M a g ic F lu te. You press your inquiry to journalism and are offered S a ch er T o rte and coffee m it S ch la g , along with a mum* bled comment that the Austrian press was “literary” and in no way as “political” as its European counterparts. Next your friend conjures up the demon of monkery. The Counter*Reformation Roman Church, he alleges, exercised a stranglehold on public expression in the Hapsburg dominions through the Censorship Commission; thus he cites the power of the Church as the principal reason for the failure of Austria to keep pace with intellectual developments else* where.1 Since the exorcism of demons is presumably not yet within your legitimate jurisdiction, the two of you finally attack the dessert tray and lapse into mutually embarrassed silence. L es a m is d e V ien n e might prefer that the silence had never been broken. Foreign visitors to eighteenth*century Vienna pronounced it a provincial, if hedonistic outpost in comparison to Europe’s more 79 80 / ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA J O Y C E S . R U T L E D G E cosm opolitancapitals.2 Som em odernhistorians fall back on persist* ing stereotypes and judge Austrian culture to have been derivative and even retarded.3 Assumptions of Austrian stasis and stepchild* hood, more warranted in some areas than in others, require modifi* cation when confronted by the circumstances surrounding the growth of a periodic press in Vienna after the 1760s. A charting of journalistic activity there, especially during the 1780s,4 together with analysis of a few select periodicals, forces into view an unsuspected range and vitality, both quantitative and qualitative. Journalism during the Josephinian epoch brought Vienna closer to outside cul* tures through several developments. First, the emergence of daily newspapers, which sped current news and entertainment to thou* sands, was itself a great technical achievement for the small presses of the city. Publishing houses and booksellers’ establishments under* went physical expansion to handle local business, and these enlarged facilities5 then boosted the volume of the Austrian book*export trade to a twenty*five*fold increase between 1773 and 1793.6 Third, the habit of reading was encouraged by the formation of clubs and the creation of reading rooms such as the L eseka b in ett founded by the publisher Trattner in 1776 where, for a monthly or a yearly fee, mem* bers could examine newspapers and periodicals, as well as new books.7 Finally, a readership accustomed to devotional books and the lives of the saints saw a variety of literary forms in the more sophisti* cated journals (sermon, epistolary and dialogue treatise and review, parodies of cathechisms and prayer books, utopias, animal satires, dialogues of the dead)8 and had contact with stylistic devices bor* rowed largely from ancient rhetoric and liturgical sources. Between 1781, when Joseph II introduced his relaxed censorship regulations, and 1789, when that same Emperor imposed more re* strictions on printers and publishers, the Viennese press was a thriv* ing concern, swept along by energetic entrepreneurs who struggled to identify, perhaps to shape, and certainly to meet the demands of an exploding market. The market bloomed in an atmosphere of quick profits; but it was allowed to blossom because of the license given journalists by the vague, almost neglectful terms of Joseph’s C e n su s P a ten t, In that decree the daily press is banished to the same minor Jo u rn a lism in V ie n n a / onmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQ 81 category as are posted notices...