Toward the Century of Words: Johann Cotta and the Politics of the Public Realm in Germany, 1795-1832

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University of California Press, Jan 1, 1990 - History - 304 pages
In the decades between the French Revolution and the first stirrings of liberalism in the 1830s, German political culture defined itself apart from that of its neighbors to the west. Focusing on the career of Johann Cotta, the preeminent publisher of his generation, this book offers a lens through which we can more fully understand these turbulent years. Cotta is a familiar figure in the history of German letters, but his public life has never been studied comprehensively. He financed and directed the Allgemeine Zeitung of Augsburg, which would become one of the great European newspapers of the nineteenth century. He was the first German to convert money and cultural prestige into political power by means of the press.
Cotta and his colleagues emerge not as liberals, but as characteristic figures of the Reform era. Their aim was to define and institutionalize a realm of thought and action beyond the control of the state, but short of opposed to it--a "public" realm in which intellectual independence and political loyalty would be equally well served. In the decades between the French Revolution and the first stirrings of liberalism in the 1830s, German political culture defined itself apart from that of its neighbors to the west. Focusing on the career of Johann Cotta, the preeminent publisher of his generation, this book offers a lens through which we can more fully understand these turbulent years. Cotta is a familiar figure in the history of German letters, but his public life has never been studied comprehensively. He financed and directed the Allgemeine Zeitung of Augsburg, which would become one of the great European newspapers of the nineteenth century. He was the first German to convert money and cultural prestige into political power by means of the press.
Cotta and his colleagues emerge not as liberals, but as characteristic figures of the Reform era. Their aim was to define and institutionalize a realm of thought and action beyond the control of the state, but short of opposed to it--a "public" realm in which intellectual independence and political loyalty would be equally well served.
 

Contents

Life and Times
1
Origins
19
The Politics of Impartiality
50
The End of the Good Old Law
67
French Hegemony
87
German Liberation
116
The Federation
142
Württemberg
166
Reaction
198
Political Economy
220
The Edge of Opposition
238
The Cotta Press in 1830
268
BIBLIOGRAPHY
277
INDEX
297
Copyright

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About the author (1990)

Daniel Moran is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Northern Colorado.

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