60 | Mass Media and Historical Change
lar announced their intent to print all the news circulating in the coffee
houses, even specifying coffee house addresses for reader replies (Winkler
1998: 814–30). Nonetheless, coffee houses did not automatically create a
critical public sphere. For in spite of the fact that they began to spring up in
Vienna as early as 1683, no comparable critical public sphere existed because
absolutism inhibited its development.
For the lower classes, even the locations where newspapers were sold served
to facilitate communication, whether it was the post office, newspaper stalls,
or the street. In return for a fee, people would read out aloud from newspa-
pers or negotiate a collective newspaper purchase. In rural areas, at least a few
reading clubs emerged here and there, initiated by schoolmasters in the late
seventeenth century, and in the eighteenth century by pastors as well (Welke,
in Dann 1981: 37–40; Winkler 1998: 834).
Over and above these, bourgeois groups created socially restricted spaces
for their collective media use. Privately organised lending libraries and reading
societies, which have been researched in Germany in a myriad of local studies,
were of great significance. These clubs represented associations in which citi-
zens could jointly purchase media such as newspapers, periodicals and books.
They rented separate rooms in inns or apartments for general meetings and
group readings. Financial reasons, the desire for a large assortment of reading
material, and the need for discussion and shared reading experiences led to the
formation of such reading communities. They had emerged early in England
as well, but their proliferation in Germany was much greater. As with the
expansion of periodicals, there were major differences to the rest of Europe,
particularly the Eastern regions. Whereas in Bohemia the first reading rooms
opened in the 1770s, they did not arrive in the Czech Republic until after
1810, in the context of the Czech national movement (S ̆ımecek, in Dann ̆
1981: 232). In Russia, organised reading communities were not able to fully
unfold until the end of the reign of Tsar Nikolaus I (1825–1855) due to state
repression, although salons already existed (Remnek, in Barker and Burrows
2002: 232). In the subsequent reform period under Alexander II these circles
became more widespread. They ranged from groups of friends to salons, and
their participants engaged in critical exchanges about the regime (Alexander,
in Dann 1981: 239f.).
What conclusions can be drawn about media use and its effects on the basis
of reading clubs? In the first place, purchase lists reveal the great significance
of periodicals. Besides newspapers, magazines with historical-political, geo-
graphical or other popular scientific contents were most notably purchased. It
was not unusual for large German reading societies to take out subscriptions
to a dozen different newspapers, including some from neighbouring countries
such as England, France and Italy. This selection made it possible to critically
assess and compare newspaper contents.