Reichstagkommission,” Vossische Zeitung, 8 Mar. 1905; Frankfurter Zeitung, 28 Apr. 1903; Huber, Das klassische Schwabing, 91.
77. Remarks by Müller-Meiningen in Der Tag, 8 Mar. 1903, quoted in Schulze-Olden, “Theaterzensur in Rheinprovinz,” 23, and in Reichstag, 19 Feb. 1903, StenBer/RT, X. Leg. Periode, II. Session, 262. Sitzung 19 Feb. 1903, Bd. 187, 8024–30.
78. Remarks by Müller-Meiningen, StenBer/RT, 203 Sitzung 10 Feb. 1909, 6824, and 145. Sitzung, 11 Mar. 1911, 5360–61; Remarks by Barth in StenBer/Pr, 16. Sitzung, 7 Feb. 1903, Bd. 459, 1015–21 and by Hirsch (SPD), 25 Sitzung 13 Feb. 1911, Bd. 555, 1788–93; StenBer/ Bav, 156. Sitzung vom 20 June 1906, IV. Band, 842–95.
79. “Entwurf eines Gesetzes, betreffend Änderung der Pars. 33, 33a, 33b, 35, 40, 42a, 45, 49, 147, 148 der Gewerbeordnung,” StenBer/RT, 13. Leg. Periode, 1. Session, Bd. 304 (Anlagen zu den Stenographischen Berichten; Berlin, 1914), Aktenstück 1431. See also GStA PK, Rep. 120 BB, IIb1, Nr. 37, Adh. 2, Bd. 1, Bl. 214–222, and Schöndienst, Geschichte des deutschen Bühnenvereins, 226ff.
80. Schulze-Olden, “Theaterzensur in Rheinprovinz,” 126.
81. See my “All Quiet on the Home Front: Popular Entertainments, Censorship and Civilian Morale in Germany, 1914–1918,” in Authority, Identity and the Social History of the Great War: Essays in Comparative History, ed. Frans Coetzee and Marilyn Shevin-Coetzee (Providence, RI, 1995), 77, n.7.
82. Stengel and Fleischmann, Wörterbuch des Verwaltungsrechts, 1:398; OVG decisions of 7 Oct. 1915 and 21 May 1917; Schulze-Olden, “Theaterzensur in Rheinprovinz,” 99–100; PrIM to Prussian Polizeipräsidenten, 7 May 1917, LAB A/74, Th 134.
83. OK in den Marken to PrWM, 29 Dec. 1914, LAB A/74, Th 134; LAB, Rep. 2, Abt. I, 3446; Schulze-Olden, “Theaterzensur in Rheinprovinz,” 99–100.
84. StenBer/RT, 23 Mar. 1917, 2625.
85. The “Kartell freier Kunstverbände,” consisting of the Protective Association of German Writers (Schutzverband deutscher Schriftsteller), Goethe League, Association of German Dramatists (Verband deutscher Bühnenschriftsteller), Union of Artistic State Managers (Vereinigung künstlerischer Bühnenvorstände) and Society for Theater History. See Arthur Eloesser's comment in Die Zukunft der deutschen Bühne. Fünf Vorträge und eine Umfrage, ed. Reichsverband deutscher Schriftsteller (Berlin, 1917), 78. Also Fischer, “Der ‘Schutzverband',” 192–94.
86. See Lenman, “Censorship and Society,” 314–17.
Chapter 2
THE CENSORS
The German censors _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ idiots _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.
—Heinrich Heine, Reisebilder, Zweiter Teil. Ideen. Das Buch Le Grand, Chapter XII (1826)
A censor is a human pencil or a pencilized human, a living blue line scratched across the products of human genius, a crocodile lying in wait along the bank of the river of ideas and biting off the heads of the writers swimming there.
—Ultra, in Johann Nestroy, Freiheit in Krähwinckel, Act I, scene 14 (1849)
Few occupations are as detested as that of the censor. Like the despised medieval hangmen to whom some Germans frequently compared them,1 modern censors are “literary executioners” with a thankless job. In performing their duties censors meet with near universal condemnation and have long been objects of ridicule and vilification.
To most writers and liberal-minded citizens the very institution of censorship is anathema and those who exercise it personify blind reaction and ignorance in action. If one believed their most outspoken critics in imperial Germany, police censors fell into one or more of the following categories: uncultured, inartistic petty functionaries incapable of recognizing, much less understanding and appreciating, genuine art and learning; puritanical, self-righteous moralists who (as was said of the English stage censor in the 1880s) were convinced the nation was “rushing towards an abyss of national degradation in morals and manners, and only held back on the edge of the precipice by the grasp of a strong hand”;2 or benighted obscurants who tyrannically wielded their blue pencils to throttle any stirrings of enlightenment and progress. Yet moderates who reluctantly accepted the need for censorship and conservatives who enthusiastically demanded it were equally critical of the hapless censors who had to apply it: the former continually condemned censors for being too harsh and petty while the latter constantly faulted them for being too lax and tolerant. And everyone complained the decisions of the censors were arbitrary and inconsistent; why, their critics demanded, did censors permit X yet ban Y, or vice versa?
While some police censors, especially in isolated provincial areas, certainly deserved the contempt in which they were held, most, especially those in larger metropolitan areas, were conscientious, university-educated, pragmatic men put in a difficult position. Pulled among many opposing influences and interests—their bureaucratic superiors, the local populace, the nation's literary and artistic community, various political parties, private associations, and pressure groups—the office and work of the empire's censors was as demanding as it was unappreciated.
The Dilemma of Local Standards
Before the revolutions of 1848, when most European states had an extensive system of prior press censorship, the task of censoring publications was often assigned to a specially appointed collegium or commission. Decisions of these central bodies, which typically operated under the supervision of the minister of the interior, generally applied to the entire territory, yielding a single statewide standard for what was permissible. Moreover, within the German Confederation the 1819 Karlsbad Decrees established a nationwide commission on press censorship that coordinated and further standardized the work of the individual states' censorship commissions.
After 1848, however, responsibility for press censorship was increasingly transferred to local police officials. Although the Imperial Press Law abolished prior press censorship, it retained the right of police to oversee and regulate all publications not concerned with art or science and to exercise a punitive, postpublication censorship over them when necessary. Because local police were responsible for supervising theaters and other public amusements, they also handled theater censorship.
Germany's police forces were highly diverse. In a few of the more liberal states like Württemberg, all police were under local municipal control. In Bavaria and Saxony, police in the capital cities of Munich and Dresden were a branch of the state bureaucracy and thus directly under royal control, while in the remaining towns and cities police were controlled by local municipal authorities. In Prussia, by contrast, police in all major and several minor cities were commanded by royal officials appointed by the central state government. Thus, of the fifteen largest cities only police forces in Leipzig, Nuremberg, and Stuttgart were controlled by the city's residents; in the other twelve—and in many other sizeable German cities and towns—police were part of the state civil service.
Most crown-appointed urban police commissioners (who usually held the title of police president or police director) were independent higher civil servants. Usually of noble birth, they had experience in some branch of civil administration, held a rank within
