Berlin theater censors banned a work; if that work was later submitted in another Prussian city, police there could then take Berlin's decision into account before making their own decision.6 After 1912 the Interior Ministry had the Berlin theater censorship office regularly publish a list of works that had been approved, banned, or passed with significant alterations in the capital, and local police elsewhere in Prussia could approve only works that had been previously passed by the Berlin censor; any deviations generally required the interior minister's approval. These attempts to create more consistency yet accommodate local circumstances left many local Prussian officials perplexed and uneasy about when they could or should deviate from decisions reached in Berlin.7
Several other German states undertook similar efforts at centralization. In 1912 Saxony designated the Dresden theater censorship office as Saxony's central clearinghouse for theater censorship (Landesstelle fur Theaterzensur). As such, Dresden censors kept a master list of all works approved or banned throughout Saxony and encouraged local censors to consult it before making their own decisions. Likewise, Bavaria designated the Munich police as the state's central theater censors; after 1910 local police were urged to consult with Munich censors before deciding about a work.
The major states also began cooperating more closely on censorship. Police in various German cities (including Vienna) had long consulted on an informal, ad hoc basis and exchanged information concerning particularly important censorship cases. In 1912 the Berlin, Dresden, and Munich police agreed to systematically exchange their master lists of all works banned and approved in each state, with the aim of better coordinating their decisions.8
The perpetual tension between the need for local discretion and the desire for more national uniformity in censorship matters produced an unusual predicament in the final decade of the German Empire. On the one hand, as we have seen, the Prussian and imperial governments staunchly maintained theater censorship was a state and local, not an imperial matter and they thwarted any attempts to replace local jurisdiction with more uniform national legislation. On the other hand, the problems inherent in local decision making drove Prussia and other states to centralize and standardize the way they actually applied censorship. By 1914 the major states of the empire had gone a long way toward removing theater (and also film) censorship decisions from local hands and investing them instead in police censors in the state capital. At the same time, the other major states looked increasingly to Prussia to take the lead and were less likely to approve works not already passed in Berlin. The theater censors of the Berlin police force (and, over them, the Prussian Ministry of the Interior) thus came increasingly to function as a quasi-central censorship office for the entire empire. To the delight of some and dismay of others, in the empire's last years the delicate balance between a uniform national standard and diverse local standards tipped decidedly toward the former and (the interior minister's warning of 1901 notwithstanding) that standard was set primarily by the censors in Abtheilung VIII of the Berlin police.
Censorship as a Vocation
Who staffed these censorship bureaus? What training, qualifications, or experience did they have? How did these men come to be censors? How much independence did they exercise in their duties, and how did they view their unusual vocation?
Under the prior censorship systems of the early nineteenth century, censors had the formidable task of examining all books and periodicals before they went to print (and sometimes all dramas before they were performed) and of writing reports on those considered objectionable. They often oversaw imported printed matter and the offerings of local bookstores and lending libraries as well as watching the foreign press and book trade for dangerous works before they were introduced locally. From their superiors they often received only vague, general instructions for judging specific works and then were frequently rebuked or even punished when their decisions displeased those higher up. In Russia, for example, literary censors were sometimes imprisoned for approving works their superiors thought should have been banned, while in many German states they were commonly fined considerable sums for their misjudgments or held liable for any legal costs their decisions might later incur if challenged and reversed.9
Because in most states, especially smaller, poorer ones, they were overworked and underpaid (if indeed paid at all) and seldom given the financial resources and manpower necessary to carry out their assignments, it was often difficult to find men qualified to serve on the censorship collegia. Given the aggravations of the position it is hardly surprising few men chose the job of censor. Rather, they were generally assigned to their office by the monarch, and once pressed into service were often forbidden to resign. Traditionally, they were chosen from the small pool of educated men already in government service whose position involved some familiarity with books and perhaps foreign languages: university professors, royal librarians and archivists, and members of the church hierarchy. Often, they were expected to assume the censor's demanding tasks in addition to their other bureaucratic duties.
As with any institution of social control, if officials who are charged with enforcing rules are to be effective they must have the cooperation and respect, either voluntary or coerced, of those they deal with.10 Writers, journalists, or artists subjected to censorship were presumably more likely to accept and cooperate with censors who enjoyed some standing in the intellectual and artistic community than with censors who were strangers to it. It was no accident, then, that many men appointed as censors were themselves writers, journalists, or booksellers or had close ties to the literary world. In pre-1848 Germany, for example, authors such as E. T. A. Hoffmann, Jakob Grimm, Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff, and August Friedrich Ernst Langbein were all state censors at one time; Austria and Russia, too, appointed noted dramatists, poets, and journalists to their censorship commissions. Many of these writer-censors not only knew their fellow authors whom they were called upon to censor, but were often on good terms with them. In several cases relations between censor and censored were so close it was difficult to distinguish between them: in Vormärz Prussia, for example, the censor Langbein published his poems in one of the journals he was assigned to censor, while in Hesse, Bernhardi secretly edited a liberal newspaper he and his fellow censors were supposed to be censoring.11 Indeed, far from being ruthless and petty-minded functionaries eager to silence the slightest hint of unorthodox expression, many early nineteenth-century censors were sympathetic toward the authors they had to censor and sabotaged the institution from within by exercising their powers as liberally and tolerantly as possible. “Enlightened” censors like Jakob Grimm and Christian Schubart in Germany or Fedor Tiutchev, A. V. Nikitenko, and Vasilii Odoevski in Russia were often critical of censorship and sought to be as lax as possible when applying it (which is precisely why their governments often found it necessary to hold censors personally or financially liable for their decisions).
Dismantling the system of prior press censorship after midcentury brought major changes to the task of the censor and the type of person recruited for the position. Like many other areas of nineteenth-century life, censorship and censors became increasingly bureaucratized. In contrast to the more broadly educated, skeptical, unwilling scholar- or writer-censors of the early century, those who served as censors in imperial Germany were full-time, midlevel career civil servants with a narrow legal training. Because they were primarily administrative bureaucrats, not intellectuals, these police officials were generally afforded little respect from those they censored. As the writer Karl Gutzkow remarked:
Censorship might still be bearable if from the outset it did not, as a branch of administrative bureaucracy, bear the stamp of literary incompetence. An official who has perhaps studied all the commentaries on the laws of the land but has never studied a work of a different scholarly discipline, not to mention art, an official whose thoughts are all directed towards small spaces in administrative buildings, who has only one God, namely his superior, and only one heaven, namely promotion—such a man should pass judgment on your writing?12
Censorship officials on major urban police forces like Berlin or Munich normally held the prestigious rank of administrative or police councilor (Regierungsrat, Polizeirat) or assistant administrative
