the pamphlet wars
Around 1800, Prussia’s political arguments were fought in print. Anonymous pamphlets appeared under false imprints, black books were bound and sent to the court, and careers ended over a footnote. These texts circulated in small numbers and against the censor; most survive in a handful of copies. Each one here can be read whole, in German and in English.
The True Jacobins in the Prussian State, or - A Documentary Account of the Wicked Intrigues and Fraudulent Conduct in Office of Two Prussian Ministers of State
is an anonymous political dossier published in 1801 with the false imprint "Everywhere and nowhere," compiled by the Prussian excise official Hans von Held.
printed in the year 1801
New Firebrands - Marginalia on the Tract - Confidential Letters on the Internal Affairs of the Prussian Court since the Death of Frederick II
is the first collected volume of a political journal issued anonymously in 1807 by the Prussian official Friedrich von Cölln, gathering the first three of the eighteen instalments that eventually appeared under a false Amsterdam and Cologne imprint.
printed in the year 1807
Materials for the History of Polish Territories under Prussian Administration
is an anonymous polemical collection of historical documents published at Leipzig in 1861, assembled to contest Prussian and German-national claims to the formerly Polish lands of the Grand Duchy of Posen by turning the records, decrees, and private papers of Prussian officials against the administration that produced them.
printed in the year 1861