78 | Mass Media and Historical Change
Kohnen 1995: 111). In Vienna and Austria, however, it was only when the
‘newspaper stamp’ was discontinued in 1899 that the age of an inexpensive
mass-circulation press set in, with the establishment of the Kronen-Zeitung,
for example.
Fourthly, the press also flourished thanks to the abolition of direct and
indirect forms of censorship. A particularly liberal press law was passed by
France in 1881, while in England there was a decrease in the number of libel
trials, which had until that time functioned as a kind of indirect censorship. In
the 1860s censorship was relaxed even in Russia in consequence of the reforms
instituted by Tsar Alexander II, which enabled the press to thrive, and in 1905
further easing of restrictions triggered a second wave of new publications
(McReynolds 1991: 220). As for Germany, although the Reichspressegesetz of
1874 had for the first time – with the exception of 1848 – granted extensive
press freedom, during the following decades the Kulturkampf (culture strug-
gle) and the Socialist Laws subjected almost more journalists and newspapers
to political persecution than ever before. In Prussia alone there were fourteen
hundred trials during the subsequent four years (cf. Wetzel 1975: 159). The
Socialist Laws of 1878 even led to a partial return of pre-censorship over the
next twelve years, by prophylactically forbidding Social Democratic printed
matter. Not until the 1890s did Germany come close to the standard of
Western press freedom and experience widespread growth of the mass media,
but even so, critical journalists still had to live in fear of prosecution.
Fifthly, the indispensable preconditions for expansion were technical inno-
vations. These included greater ease of distribution (railroad, steam ships),
communication (telegraph, telephone, etc.) and production. Since the 1870s
the rotary press had increasingly come into use. Autotype facilitated the print-
ing of photographs, and the invention of the typesetting machine combined
setting and casting after the 1880s (R. Stöber 2000: 120f.). The high cost of
purchasing a rotary press literally forced its owners to produce extremely high
print runs in order to amortise their investment.
In spite of national differences, three formats characterised the press boom
in Western countries: the daily popular press that avoided partisan alliances;
party organs or party-affiliated periodicals; and relatively un-political but
richly illustrated weeklies. Nevertheless the lines of demarcation between them
were not as clearly drawn as many studies or even contemporaries would have
it. The new mass press was given various names: ‘Yellow Press’ in the United
States, ‘Popular Press’ in England, ‘Petit Press’ in France and ‘Generalanzeiger’
in Germany. With all its novelty, of course it had predecessors across borders.
Inexpensive mass newspapers with their entertaining and instructive contents
had already appeared in the 1830s, most prominently the Penny Magazine
in 1832, adapted in Germany one year later under the same name Pfen-
nig-Magazin. In the 1840s and 1850s these were followed by rapidly growing