August Lewald and Gustav Kühne introduce European society to Germany in Europe, Chronicle of the Educated World (1836–1846)

Keywords: prospectus; translation; cross-marketing; supplements; Europe; national identity In the summer of 1835, just a few months before the ban on publications of the writers of Young Germany marked a culmination of the persecution of liberal political tendencies in German literature during the Vormärz , a new magazine appeared whose considerable success was based on the fact that it was completely apolitical. Its title, Europa, Chronik der gebildeten Welt (Europe, chronicle of the educated world), had a strong programmatic dimension, appealing to a well-educated, socially, and financially privileged audience that defined itself as part of a unified European culture. “We want to portray European society at large faithfully and truthfully, in all its relations,” editor August Lewald (1792– 1871) summarized the program of Europa in his editorial note “An die Leser” (To the reader) at the beginning of 1836. A notion of broadening horizons and cross-cultural exchange underlies the periodical, as glossed in an advertisement of the journal. It is no longer appropriate, the advertisement asserted, “for society to be organized differently in every small corner of the world and, in this isolation, for it to preserve unique features that are neither enviable nor positive.” According to this kind of eurocentric thinking, the world is Europe, or more precisely the socially, economically, and culturally potent centers of Europe. The fact that the magazine was based in the “midsized German city” of Stuttgart (it moved to Karlsruhe in 1841 and to Leipzig in 1846) was seen as an advantage rather than a disadvantage. Whereas “an editor in a large, influential capital city is obliged to make that city the center of his journal” and “a local reporter to satisfy the readers within his walls,” Europa was dedicated to the “educated world,” Lewald argued in the 1838 editorial, excerpts of which are included in this anthology.