The "Good" Press 1847

"Sweet, holy censorship,

Let us follow in your path;

Lead us by your hand.

Like children on a leash!"

The banner being carried by the politically blind mole shows as a heraldic animal a crab walking backwards which has also obscured his view of the circumstances of the time by means of a blindfold. The mole is followed by a pared red pen being used as a walking staff, and the ascetically austere censorship, whose sharp eyes see everything and whose scissors is keen to excise every freely formulated sentence. Next, being lead on a leash, is the gullible, intellectually limited government press, which cannot produce anything more than an "I-a". The imperial official leading a Pomeranian (in German: "Spitz") is the last in the procession; he signifies Vienna. It was there that the term "Spitzel" first became commonly used for a police spy.

[Caecilie Brandt?], Die "gute" Presse, lithograph, 1847, in: Der Leuchtthurm: Monatsschrift zur Belehrung und Unterhaltung für das deutsche Volk, Braunschweig 1847; source: Martin Welke et al. (eds.): 400 Jahre Zeitung: Die Entwicklung der Tagespresse im internationalen Kontext, Bremen 2008. © Stiftung Deutsches Zeitungsmuseum Augsburg / Dres M. u. S. Welke.