Premisele, geneza și evoluţia presei de limbă germană din Banat între anii 1771–1867 / The Genesis and Development of German Language Newspapers in Banat. 1771–1867
Jan. 1, 2011
Abstract
The most important German language press centers in the Hungarian part of the Habsburg Empire were Pest,
Buda, Bratislava and Timişoara. During the imperial administration of the Banat region, censorship of the press
was done by the local Superior of the Jesuit order. After the dissolution of this monastic order, censorship became
the responsibility of a counselor of the Town Hall and in the period 1789-1848 it was done by the manager of the
Piarist gymnasium.
On the 18th of April 1771 the first issue of “Temeswarer Nachrichten”, the oldest newspaper of the Banat,
was published in Timisoara. The first newspapers of the Banat region survived only a short time. The newspaper
“Temeswarer Wochenblatt”, first issued in 1831, was the first newspaper to appear for a longer period of time.
Publication ceased only in the summer of 1849, due to the siege of Timisoara by the Hungarian revolutionary
army. The first issue of the “Temeswarer Wochenblatt”, which had the inscription “Mit Pressefreiheit”, appeared on
25 March 1848 and is part of the history collection of the Banat Museum, Timișoara.
After the end of the 1848-1849 revolution, the German language press of the Banat region expanded. The
most important newspaper of the region, “Temeswarer Zeitung” was published for the first time in January 1852
and appeared almost continuously as a daily newspaper until 1949. The neoabsolutist period, after the end of the
1848-1849 revolution, also marks the establishment of the first Banat printing presses outside of Timisoara and
the publishing of the first Banat newspapers in the Serbian, Hungarian and Romanian language.
