76 | Mass Media and Historical Change
ignorance of the citizenry and the incompetence of politicians both old and
new also betrayed a sense of powerlessness.
Another new development in 1848 was women’s involvement in journal-
ism. Generally speaking, women too participated in political change. They
took part in protests and assemblies, distributed printed matter in the streets,
or at the very least attended sessions of Parliament as observers.
In 1848 a newspaper called La Voix des Femmes appeared that inaugurated
the founding of numerous women’s associations and held gatherings of the
‘Central Committee of the Society of the Voice of Women’ in its editorial
rooms as well (Koch, in Dowe 1998: 785f.). In Germany at least a few women
played a part in political journalism, even editing political newspapers inde-
pendently. In the Neue Kölnische Zeitung, Mathilde Franziska Anneke for
example stood up for the establishment of a republic, and when this paper was
thereupon forbidden, the Frauen-Zeitung published by Louise Otte stepped
into its legacy. It printed news and comments on daily political happenings,
and demanded equal rights for women (Wischermann, in Blühm and Geb-
hardt 1987: 351; Freund 2004: 173). Thus the revolution of 1848 marked
a milestone in the development of emancipated woman journalists and the
public participation of women in politics.
As had been the case in previous revolutions, journalists proved to be polit-
ical actors and often entered the political arena. In Paris, after Emile Girardin,
the publisher of La Presse called for the king’s abdication, journalists again took
up numerous government posts (e.g. Foreign Minister or Minister of War),
and sometime later, the editor-in-chief of Le National became mayor of Paris.
In the National Assembly that framed the Constitution, about 11 per cent of
the members were full-time journalists and 10 per cent had journalism as a
part-time occupation (Koch, in Dowe 1998: 779).
The revolution of 1848 failed, and with it the short flowering of a diverse
and sophisticated media world. Political restoration had many consequences
for the media: freedom of the press was abolished, journalists were arrested
or forced to emigrate, and the majority of those papers that had just come
into being folded or suffered from vastly decreased circulation. The state now
used financial incentives to influence the press to an even greater degree than
before. Nevertheless there was no going back to former conditions, for gov-
ernments could no longer act with their old severity without discrediting
themselves. Instead of pre-censorship, the government of Germany was now
content to practise post-censorship, which in turn made it ever easier to test
limits (Requate 1995: 251). Moreover, the media had developed new models
in 1848 that either survived covertly or were revived from the 1860s onwards.
In this way at least a few satirical journals or party newspapers were able to
survive and become reference points for the formation of political societies
during the following decade.