Ernst Keil vs. Prussia: Censorship and Compromise in theAmazonAffair

Abstract

Recent scholarship has cautioned us that censorship does not require a censor, nor can it be described merely as the repression of information by power. Censorship can be discursively productive, and historically it has worn many guises. This article treats a case in which state censorship practices were unstable, their execution uncertain, and their target cunning, if ultimately open to compromise. Sparked by an antiaristocratic short story in Ernst Keil'sGartenlaube(arbor, bower), the most widely read German periodical of the era, theAmazonaffair involved not only its namesake ship—the Prussian S.M.S.Amazon(Amazone), a wooden corvette that sank in a storm off the coast of Holland in 1861—but an extraordinary confrontation between the conservative Prussian state and the liberal popular press. From the misstep of a weekly family magazine arose a multiyear press ban and a struggle over liberal-democratic public opinion in Germany. If no clear winner emerged from theAmazonaffair, the episode nonetheless speaks to the malleability of German political culture at a moment of profound transition, as well as to the ability of the state to shape it.