72 | Mass Media and Historical Change
Rheinbayern to the more programmatic Deutschland, and Johann Georg
August Wirth, whose paper Deutsche Tribüne was subject to continuous cen-
sorship but nevertheless continued to appear in spite of numerous lawsuits.
In February 1832 they founded the Deutschen Vaterlandsverein zur Unter-
stützung der freien Presse (German Fatherland Association for the Support
of a Free Press) that organised a gathering registered as a folk festival in
Hambach. At least thirty thousand participants stood up for freedom of the
press, for a German national state, and against arbitrary use of police power.
Thus the media became intermeshed with sundry organisations and tradi-
tional rituals. The festival was closely monitored by the press, which openly
expressed its sympathy in numerous articles. In the short term the forces of
repression triumphed; leading journalists were arrested or forced into exile,
and press censorship and restrictions in the public sphere actually increased.
But at the same time this had the effect of politicising those writers of the
1830s, like Heinrich Heine and Georg Büchner, who are now known as
‘Young Germany’. Above all it was a beacon for the nationalist movement
and a precursor of the revolution of 1848.
Something very often overlooked is the fact that there was a simultaneous
interplay between press and protests in England too. Even here, the fear of
revolt current after the defeat of Napoleon led to restrictions of press freedom
as well as to higher taxes and sureties for newspapers, and four years later,
concurrent with the Karlsbad Resolutions, the ‘Six Acts’ restricted public com-
munication to an even greater degree. However, English journalists were more
courageous than those on the Continent. Around 1815 and 1830 respectively,
a radical press with high print runs flourished. It bore belligerent names like
Poor Men’s Guardian. Published in Defiance of ‘Law’, to try the Power of the
‘Might’ against ‘Right’. Each edition was adorned with a picture of a printing
press and the caption ‘Knowledge is Power’. Between 1830 and 1836 alone
about 550 illegal newspapers came into being, and because they did not bear
the revenue stamp, were able to be sold cheaply, thus ensuring high circula-
tion. The radical paper Weekly Political Register, published by William Cobett,
had a print run of forty thousand copies (Wiener 1969: XVII). These papers
exercised moral criticism of the ‘Old Corruption’ in simple, accusatory lan-
guage, denounced the exploitation of the populace and injustices in courts
of law, and advocated freedom of the press, free suffrage and better working
conditions. The Radical Press and Unstamped Press thus put their imprint on a
proto-socialist movement, addressing ‘the people’ as the true sovereigns of the
nation (Conboy 2002: 72).
Furthermore, English journalists encouraged protest gatherings that had
a similar exponential effect as the Hambacher Festival. Thus in 1819 a mass
gathering of sixty to eighty thousand people in Manchester was organised
by the Patriotic Union Society that was sponsored by journalists from the