Reading sites as sights for reading. The sale of newspapers in Germany before 1933 : Bookshops in railway stations, kiosks and street vendors

Abstract

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, with the founding of the German nation-state, the removal of various restrictions on the distribution of newspapers, a decrease in the price of paper and an improvement in printing techniques, lighting and means of communication opened the way in Germany for the mass distribution of reading material, in general, and newspapers in particular. In those years a closely-knit network of distribution of newspapers and journals developed which had a decisive role in popularising a reading culture in the period of transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries. Various aspects of this system of distribution are considered through examination of three points of distribution of newspapers and journals; bookshops in railway stations, kiosks and the sale of newspapers on the streets. Methods of distributing newspapers and the position of these points of distribution in the social space are considered to decipher the social and cultural significance of these points of distribution as 'reading sites': that is, as places where readers and newspapers came together, representing a variety of social, economic and cultural interests. Thus the aim of this paper is not only to examine the points of distribution as 'reading sites' but to reveal these places as 'sights of reading'; that is, as places that helped people orient themselves in the modern space. Orientation in the modern urban space depended more and more on the eyes and this rapid development of the 'viewing' culture led to an increase in semiotic sensibility and to a need for means of learning and sources of information to cultivate this sensibility.