On the orgin of German press censorship - core study, biographies of censors, affected authors and booksellers, scientific annotated document regests (register),A registry of all rescripts, mandates and instructions concerning press censorship and source index

• Applicant: Dr. Matthias John
• Subject Area: Communication Sciences
• Term: from 2012 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 232329399

It is safe to say, that the history of the "Leipziger Bücherkommission" ("Leipzig Book Committee") is an academic void, most historians engaged in censorship research would be eager to close. As far as we know, nobody has tried untill now to analyse the Dresden holdings besides the Leipzig holdings systematically and to place them into the context of the relevant higher-ranking as well as subordinated public authorities, to draw a complete new picture of the effectivness of press censorship. The project focuses on the process of "emancipation", that generated press censorship out of general censorship. Besides that, similarities as well as differences in practiced censorship over the run of several descades and the developement of the relation between press censorship and the public form part of the project. Additionally, the process of press censorship becoming independent at the begin of the 19th century, sidelined by a paradigm shift that lifted the rule, that censors were recruted exclusivly at universities, forms also part of this investigation. In spite of everything, Robert Darnton's dictum of also reconstructing the censor's respectivly the protagonist's "gaze" is carefully kept in mind. It's safe to say, that the latter will be a realistic perspective due to the fact, that the so far uninvestigated reference file of the political censor and one local censor are taken into consideration. Furthermore, biographies of the people involved in press censorship as well as people suffering from it are going to get compiled. To guarantee a proper follow up use of the collected research data, the archival documents get indexed by inventories. Additional to that, registers that embrace all rescripts, mandates and instructions concerning the press get worked out too. Finally, a source book covering all newspaper and magazin volumes mentioned in the censorship files will be established. To provide subsequent researchers with these data, the entries of the source book will get transfered to the open acces "Zeitschriftendatenbank" ('Periodicals Data Base').

• DFG Programme: Research Grants