James Brophy
University of Delaware
How sites and forms of popular culture became media of the
political public sphere in the Rhineland in the period 1800-1850 is the central
question of my book, Popular Culture and the Public Sphere in the Rhineland, 1800-1850 (Cambridge UP, forthcoming). The study examines the unconventional
ways with which ordinary Rhinelanders encountered the new political ideas of
the revolutionary period and how these communicative networks affected
political agency. Although German scholarship has mostly emphasized the rise of
associational life and its elite print culture as the motor of political
modernity, this book examines the communicative interplay between popular and
bourgeois publics. Chapters on reading, singing, public space, carnival, tumult,
and religion compose this six-chapter book on how a popular political sphere
formed between the French Revolution and the Revolution of 1848/49.
Access to Princeton Library's collections in March 2006 sharpened
the study's arguments on the transnational diffusion of ideas during the age of
revolution. Princeton's materials on French revolutionary song sheets
strengthened my interpretive claims that the provenance of the Rhineland's increasingly politicized popular culture was linked to French politics. The
Rogers Collection of French revolutionary songs was particularly useful,
especially when combined with the Special Collection's émigré publications from
Koblenz, Kleve, and other Rhenish cities. Of special value for my song
chapter was the Mendel Music Library's seven boxes of Volkslieder,
roughly 240 song pamphlets. These boxes offered excellent material from the
Wars of Liberation (1812-15) as well as from the Vormärz period (1830-1848). Although
the collection chiefly centers on patriotic military songs after 1850, the
first two boxes of this collection offered solid materials for the first half
of the nineteenth century.
Various collections of Firestone
Library and its Rare Books and Special Collection offered other source materials
for popular opinion formation. The Firestone is, for example, particularly
rich with calendars, almanacs, and similar ephemera from this period. I
consulted dozens of Volkskalender. Its almanacs and calendars from various
German printing centers enabled me to assess whether the Rhineland's
popularization of politics was typical or exceptional for German political life.
Such publications as Ludwig Ferdinand's Neue Klio. Eine Monatsschrift für die
französische Zeitgeschichte (Leipzig, 1797-) and Politisches
Rundgemälde, oder kleine Chronik des Jahres 1828. Für Leser aus allen Ständen,
welche auf die Ereignisse der Zeit achten (Leipzig, 1829) constitute outstanding
examples of the new genre of popular political reportage. No less interesting
were pictorial chronicles of the new political period, such as Friedrich
Strass's Der Strom der Zeiten oder bildliche Darstellung der Weltgeschichte
von den ältesten Zeiten bis zum Ende des achtzehten Jahrhunderts (Vienna, 1804). These and other texts led me to conclude that political ephemera affected calendar
literature during and after the Napoleonic period. Firestone's non-Rhenish
German calendars furthermore gave me a comparative perspective to judge the
popular political culture of the Rhineland. Although the Rhineland's literacy
rates, advanced market economies, and access to border printing centers in France, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland facilitated an extraordinary transnational exchange of
political ideas, the Firestone's materials suggest that the cultural
hinterlands of Leipzig, Munich, Stuttgart, and Berlin offer similar developments.
The Rhineland emerges as a heightened version of the norm.
The Library's collection of pamphlet material from the
Revolution of 1848-49 also occupied a large portion of my time. The oversized
folio of over 100 pamphlets from Berlin in the years 1848-49 shed light on the intersection
of popular culture and opinion formation in the 1840s. Of particular interest
to me was the 'implied reader' of this street literature and the political
sophistication that authors assumed readers to possess. The pamphlets adduced
a wide array of evidence for song, singing practices, and political song sheets
as a street commodity. This collection furthermore contained compelling
popular discussions on political charivaris during the 1848 Revolution as well
as commentaries on Rhenish radical politics in 1849.
Finally, the library's collection of French, Belgian, and
German pamphlets, periodical literature and books on political Catholicism and
material pertaining to the Rhine Crisis of 1840 recast my views on how
Rhinelanders constructed a regional political identity in the 1840s. Of particular
importance was the library's run of Journal historique et litteréraire
(Liege, 1835-38), a Belgian periodical that played a crucial role in forming
priests' opinions against the Prussian Protestant state. State and Church
paper in the Rhineland frequently mentioned this journal; in Princeton I was able
to read and study the journal's arguments.
The combination of the Rare Books and Special Collections,
the Mendel Library, and the Firestone's regular stacks provided a surfeit of
information for my research project. I remain indebted to the generosity and
accommodating spirit of the Friends of the Princeton Library for affording me
the time, access, and support to study these important materials.
6 July 2006
libraryf@princeton.edu
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