The Establishment of Periodicals | 55Even though the development of the periodical market in Europe differed
from country to country, the given examples underline how dynamic, varied
and keen to experiment this market proved to be in the course of its progres-
sion.
Interpretations, Effects and Usage of Periodicals
Hitherto research on the social and cultural significance of periodicals in
the seventeenth century has been scarce. The Strasbourg Relation from 1609
assigned the newspaper two functions: on the one hand it was intended to help
the ruler to ‘govern commendably and strive to preserve his subjects in peace
and serenity’, on the other hand its aim was to sharpen the critical faculties
of the ‘private individual’ and offer them moral support to achieve ‘godliness
and the amendment of life and to admonish’. The newspaper was to serve as
a path ‘to reason, wisdom and experience guided by rectitude’ (Relation 1609,
printed in Blühm and Engelsing 1967: 20–22). Besides the medium’s morally
instructive function, then, such analyses adumbrated the newspaper’s claim to
both counsel political authorities as well as to judge them on the basis of its
own observations.
Extensive contemporary evaluations of newspapers can be found in the
myriad of scholarly papers which were published in the last third of the sev-
enteenth century, such as those written by Ahasver Fritsch (‘Gebrauch und
Missbrauch der Zeitungen’, 1676), Christian Weise (1676), Tobias Peucer
(‘Über Zeitungsberichte’, 1690) and Kaspar Stieler (‘Zeitungs Lust und Nutz’,
1695). They concordantly emphasised the newspaper’s benefit to society (these
texts are reprinted in Kurth 1944). Stieler particularly stressed that newspapers
should protect against imminent dangers and impart knowledge of the world
to the bourgeois class. He recommended all sovereigns to consult newspa-
pers in their decision-making processes, as these were ‘impartial, fearless, not
ashamed and did not blush’ in contrast to human advisers (Stieler 1969: 20).
Critics, however, did not vouchsafe these functions to the average reader. The
jurist Ahasver Fritsch in particular declared in his polemic pamphlet that the
information conveyed through newspapers would not benefit the majority of
readers, since in his opinion they could not understand it. On the contrary he
claimed that newspapers might cause damage if they were to print false reports
in order to ‘make the people panic’ (printed in Blühm and Engelsing 1967:
52; Kurth 1944).
Another central line of argument in contemporary discourse revolved
around the significance of the new medium in the context of individual psy-
chology (also cf. Pompe 2004: 42f.). The Relation of 1609, but also Tobias
Peucer’s dissertation of 1690, located the origins of the newspaper in the