When dealing with the history of censorship in 2020, one quickly finds numerous links to the present since censorship is still practiced in many areas of the world today:1 Libraries remove certain books like the writings of Darwin or Harry Potter from their holdings, representations or simulations of violence in video games give rise to vehement discussions, and caricatures and satire can trigger diplomatic disputesâand in some cases even physical violence. Cases like the reactions to Salman Rushdieâs Satanic Verses thankfully represent rare exceptions, but even in the largely censorship-free âWest,â one cannot truly speak of unrestricted freedom of art and expression. The surveillance of citizensâwhich has reached previously unimaginable levels with the help of modern technologyâis closely related to censorship as well.
In surveillance societies, explicit prohibitions are no longer necessary since the most important systems of communication are permanently monitored anyway. The focus of governments and potentates has shifted from the print media that held a central role in previous centuries to private communication and the semi-public social media. The motives for monitoring communication have not changed significantly, however: The purpose of such measures was and still is to guard the state and its political system against terrorism and upheaval, to protect religions and individuals against various forms of slander and insult, and to preserve (sexual) moral principles. The notion that texts and images elicit imitationâthat they are in some way infectiousâlikewise seems to have persisted throughout the centuries: Nothing is too trivial or unrealistic to be seen as a potential threat and persecuted. Finally, as an inescapable consequence of norms and censorship pressure, self-censorship also continues unabated. Beyond caution applied in the context of private communication, one sixth of all authors participating in a 2014 PEN survey stated that they avoided âtouchyâ subjects in the texts they published.2
The main difference between the current circumstances and the situation in previous centuries presumably lies in the much greater efficiency of modern-day âcommunication control.â3 Although eighteenth- and nineteenth-century censorship provoked severe resistance from contemporaries and earned Austria the reputation of being the âEuropean Chinaâ during the Vormärz (pre-March) period according to a frequently cited statement ascribed to Ludwig Börne,4 the historical provisions for the review, editing, and prohibition of manuscripts and printed matter seem comparatively harmless. The monitoring and filtration of the products of the book industry began very soon after the onset of the Gutenberg galaxyâthat is, the medial transition to printing with movable letters that not only allowed a previously unheard-of dissemination of thoughts and scientific findings but also dramatically changed many aspects of human perception and thinking. That the medium of printing fundamentally stimulated the permeation of the efforts of the Renaissance and the Reformation, and especially of new research in the field of natural science, is a commonplace of historiography. An apparatus of repression was naturally assembled in parallel to these developments.5 Up until the Enlightenment period, however, censorship was linked to specific occasions or sources and usually the result of arbitrary decisions. It was only within the framework of Maria Theresaâs reforms that it was systematically and comprehensively organized in Austria. The monitoring network established in 1751 was intensified and perfected until well into the nineteenth centuryâand in fact it functioned in more or less unchanged fashion until 1848, namely by way of preventive censorship of manuscripts and critical review of imported print publications prior to their distribution by the Austrian booksellers, by officials appointed specifically for the purpose. The revolution of 1848 abolished this system of censorship; it was replaced by a legally founded and regulated scheme that approached a modern constitutional setting. The period between 1751, the year of the appointment of the first Censorship Commission, and 1848 is thus a relatively homogeneous one from the perspective of censorial practice.
It may come as a surprise considering this fact that no comprehensive study on censorship spanning the eras within this timeframe has hitherto been conducted. There is, of course, research on individual periods and dominant protagonists like Gerard van Swieten, Maria Theresa, Joseph II, or Metternich, and the most important of these studies will be mentioned or cited with gratitude in this book. However, older censorship research has largely focused on the organization and ideological thrust of censorship, with its consequences for literature and literary life discussed only rarely. This may have to do with the fact that only fragmentary information on the declared bans and obstructions to dissemination was hitherto available. This gap has recently been closed by the database âVerdrängt, verpöntâvergessen? Eine Datenbank zur Erfassung der in Ãsterreich zwischen 1750 und 1848 verbotenen Bücherâ (Suppressed, scornedâforgotten? A database collecting the books forbidden in Austria between 1750 and 1848), however.6 The study presented in this book is based primarily on analysis of this database and the extensive archival studies undertaken in the course of its compilation. Besides the frequency of prohibitions and the ratio of forbidden to allowed books, the affected languages, types of literature, authors, and publishers as well as the breakdown into disciplines can now be continuously traced and interpreted for the first time. Changes in censorship practices over time and their connections to historical events and developmentsâalong with the respective impacts on literary practiceâcan thus be reconstructed in detail. As explained in the first chapter, this study represents an attempt to paint the most comprehensive picture possible of censorship, its historical backdrop, and its consequences from the perspective of sociology of literature. The appendices offer selected examples of censorship records, including individual reports by censors as well as excerpts from the guidelines and ordinances stipulating the principles and regulations applying to the censorship process.
The study is focused on Vienna as the ânerve centerâ of the Habsburg Monarchy, but glances will also be cast onto the situation in Bohemia and Lombardy-Venetia. Although censorship was theoretically performed identically in all the Habsburg-ruled lands following the centralization decreed by Joseph II at the latest, the practice reveals frequent deviations from this ruleâthe various countries apparently knew how to secure certain special privileges and competencies. The original German version of this study7 was edited and slightly abbreviated for publication in English: Some case studies were omitted, and statistics as well as the appendices were abbreviated. Readers interested in administrative details of the censorship processes for further research are therefore referred to the German version. The German version of this book also contains the full texts of the documents in the appendix, some of which have been abridged here.
My gratitude for support in making this English version possible goes out to my translator Stephan Stockinger, to publishers Brill for handling the publication of the book, and to âFWFâDer Wissenschaftsfondsâ for its grant covering the costs of translation and open-access provision.
See Derek Jones (ed.): Censorship: A World Encyclopedia. 4 vols. London, Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn 2001. Current cases are listed in the journal Index on Censorship; see
Ilija Trojanow: Wissen und Gewissen. In: Der Standard (Vienna), 10/11/2014.
This term is used by Heinz-Dietrich Fischer (ed.): Deutsche Kommunikationskontrolle des 15. bis 20. Jahrhunderts. Munich, New York, London, Paris: Saur 1982.
Ludwig Börne: Schüchterne Bemerkungen über Oestreich und PreuÃen (1818). In: Gesammelte Schriften. 3. Teil. Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe 1829, 68â77, here 71.
Among the extensive literature available on these topics, mention should be made of Elisabeth L. Eisenstein: The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe. 2 vols. Cambridge, London, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press 1979, especially Chapter 8: Sponsorship and Censorship of Scientific Publication. Vol. 2, 636â682.
See
Norbert Bachleitner: Die literarische Zensur in Ãsterreich von 1751 bis 1848. Mit Beiträgen von Daniel Syrovy, Petr PÃÅ¡a und Michael Wögerbauer. Vienna, Cologne, Weimar: Böhlau 2017.