Ernst Keil vesus Prussia: The Amazone Scandal and Berlin's Ban of the Gartenlaube

With the aid of documents from the Prussian Ministry of Internal Affairs, obtained at the Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin, I chart the fascinating twists and turns in the Verbot issued by Prussia against the Gartenlaube, the most prominent in a new genre of illustrated popular journals in Germany, in response to the 1862 appearance of the article "Untergang der Amazone" [Demise of the Amazone], which in the opinion of some officials had exploited the mysterious sinking of a navy ship in order to slander the aristocracy. Officials emerge not just as censors, but also as readers sensitive to the potentially democratic resonance of the format; above all, they are challenged time and again by Keil's ingenious attempts to evade the ban, namely by means of the distance between Leipzig and Berlin as well as the ability of the high-volume printing press to leverage mass and speed against the uncertain judicial protocol of post-1848 Prussia. This piece is drawn from my dissertation, "Pages of Progress: German Liberalism and the Illustrated Popular Press, 1848-71." Executed as a history of public outreach, state censorship and early mass media, the project maps out a surprising side of a critical yet woefully underexplored period in German history, one in which the convergence of political repression, rapid sociocultural change and innovations in print technology put ownership of the public sphere up for grabs in dramatic fashion. The firestorm ignited by the incriminating Gartenlaube article amply illuminated the stakes, and in many ways Prussia’s ban, I argue, was the response of an injured state ego.