Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900)
Identifier: d_1790b
Commentary on J.F.F. Ganz's A brief outline of the reasons for the harmfulness of reprinting (Mainz and Fulda, 1790)
Friedemann Kawohl
Centre for Intellectual Property Policy & Management, Bournemouth University, UK
Please cite as:
Kawohl, F. (2008) ‘Commentary on J.F.F. Ganz's draft for a general ban on reprinting (1790)', in Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org
1. Full title
2. Abstract
3. The election of Leopold used as an opportunity to file a draft for a general reprinting ban
4. Ganz's economic approach to the problem of reprinting
5. The progress of Ganz's project and its ultimate failure
6. References
1. Full title
Ganz: A brief outline of the reasons for the harmfulness of reprinting for literature, the book trade, and the reading public in the German Empire, as published in: Journal von und für Deutschland (1790): 404-415
2. Abstract
This article by Johann Friedrich Ferdinand Ganz, a Prussian Councillor to the Permanent Imperial Diet (Immerwährender Reichstag) in Regensburg is one of a number of publications addressing plans for the first general reprinting ban which, it was hoped, would cover the whole territory of the Empire. His article explains the detrimental effects of reprinting; gives reasons as to why a general protection had not yet been brought forward; and presents a draft version for such a ban, binding the local sovereigns to protect citizens of other German lands within their territories. The death of Emperor Joseph II and the well-known sympathy of his younger brother and successor Leopold II for constitutional ideas and modern trade policies had raised expectations that such a ban on reprinting might be included within the so-called Electoral Capitulation (Wahlkapitulation), a kind of contract between the Emperor-elect and the electors which was traditionally drawn up at the beginning of each new Emperor's reign. Eventually, however, Ganz's proposal was turned down.
3. The election of Leopold used as an opportunity to file a draft for a general reprinting ban
On 20 February 1790, Emperor Joseph II died of tuberculosis and was succeeded by his younger brother Leopold (1747-1792), who as Grand Duke of Tuscany (1765-1790) had successfully modernised commerce, government administration and the penal system, even going so far as to abolish the death penalty. He also arranged for a draft to be drawn up for a representative constitution for Tuscany, but this could not be implemented because of an Imperial veto.[1] It was widely thought that once Leopold succeeded his despotic brother on the Imperial throne, he would be able to co-ordinate the various divergent interests that were at work within the Empire. Johann Friedrich Ferdinand Ganz (1741-1795) and Albrecht Christoph Kayser (1756-1811) - who was librarian to Prince Karl Anselm von Thurn und Taxis, the First Commissioner who represented the Emperor at the Permanent Imperial Diet (Immerwährender Reichstag) in Regensburg - soon began to publish several versions of their draft for a future reprinting legislation to cover the whole Empire,[2] which they hoped could be incorporated into the Electoral Capitulation (capitulatio caesarea) at the beginning of the new Emperor's reign. In these capitulations the Emperors-elect would traditionally make various assurances towards the prince-electors and the other estates of the Empire. These assurances would then be set into writing, which effectively gave them the status of a contract or constitution binding the Emperor and all Imperial estates and subjects.[3] Among jurists there were hopes that this time the Electoral Capitulation might serve as a perpetual constitution. As the Württemberg-based jurist Wilhelm August Danz (1764-1803) put it in 1794:
"How high were the expectations of all German citizens in the days immediately after the late and unfortunate Joseph II had died! There were hopes that a number of important, still disputed points of our constitution would be set right, and, with regard to the electoral contract of the new Emperor, some even flattered themselves with the hope that this document would at last truly deserve to be called the magna charta [i.e. constitution] of Germany."[4]
After referring at the outset of his article to some recent publications which provided evidence for the injustice of reprinting, Ganz goes on to explain the detrimental effects of reprinting on the book trade, literature, and the reading public in Germany. He gives reasons as to why a general protection for legitimate publishers had not yet been brought into effect, and presents a draft version for a reprinting ban which would oblige local sovereigns to protect the rights of citizens of other German lands within their territories.
In March 1790, the Hamburg-based Prussian author and editor, Johann Wilhelm von Archenholtz (1741-1812) submitted a ‘national petition' (Nationalbittschrift) to the Imperial court in Vienna.[5] However, given that he was a retired captain in the Prussian army and the author of a recently published work on the Seven Years' War (Geschichte des siebenjährigen Krieges) which glorified the recently deceased Frederick the Great, Archenholtz seemed hardly to be the most ideal person to present such a request to the Habsburg court! But Archenholtz happened to be acquainted with Chancellor Wenzel Anton Count of Kaunitz (1711-1794) - a fact that may have helped to get his petition at least to be discussed within the Commission for Censorship and Education (Zensur- und Studienkommission). The proposal, however, was turned down and after a general discussion it was decided that reprinting should continue to be allowed, in order to counteract the predominance of the major Saxon publishers.[6] Thus, it was the initiative of Ganz which proved to be the more important: thanks to his role as councillor (Legationsrat) to the Permanent Imperial Diet in Regensburg he was exactly in the right position to submit such a bill. For after Prussia and Saxony had refused to take an active part in this matter, Ganz decided to independently work out a general blueprint for anti-reprinting legislation and tried to enlist the support of various publishers for his project. He wrote letters to a number of these,[7] and also published a treatise, an abridged version of which was printed on pp. 405-15 of the Journal von und für Deutschland (this is the version that is presented here).
4. Ganz's economic approach to the problem of reprinting
Ganz's article is divided into thirteen sections, and begins with a reference to six recent publications, listed in chronological order, which had demonstrated "to the point that it now ought to be self-evident" ("bis zur Evidenz erwiesen") the unlawfulness of reprinting (Section 1). These publications are: Pütter's famous book (d_1774); a 1780 article by Johann Georg Heinrich Feder (1740-1821), who had argued for a 14 / 28 years' term of protection, modelled on the Statute of Anne (uk_1710);[8] a petition to Emperor Joseph II, drafted in 1785 by the Austrian councillor Joseph von Sonnenfels (1705-1768) on behalf of the Vienna Censorship Committee, of which he had been a member; [9] a book by Rudolf Zacharias Becker (1759-1822) (d_1789); and the two recent books by Ganz himself and Kayser.
Ganz then proceeds to outline the deleterious effects of reprinting on the book trade, literature and reading public of Germany (Section 2). His arguments focus on economic aspects, rather than positing any natural rights of publishers or even authors. Since competition from reprinters forces original publishers to produce smaller numbers of copies, they have to increase prices, in order to recoup their costs and risks. As a result, the book trade suffers from high book prices, on the one hand, and cheap second-rate publications, on the other, for publishers would increasingly be forced to take recourse to the latter, in order to make ends meet.
Ganz leaves aside the arguments often advanced by South German, Swiss and Austrian reprinters in their self-defence (see d_1790, similarly d_1774a, d_1799), which Martin Vogel has aptly summarised as "the real reasons for the reprinting boom."[10] These included: the monopoly of the Leipzig fair, by which is meant how publishers were forced to have their books printed in Leipzig, so that they would be sure of obtaining reprinting protection when they brought their titles to the fair; the high cost for admission into the Leipzig Book Register (see d_1773); the boycotting of the Frankfurt fair by Leipzig publishers, meaning that Swiss and South German book traders had to make the much longer journey to Leipzig; the shift from barter trade to cash payment successfully carried through by the pressure of the Leipzig publishers (see d_1765); and the so-called Leipzig "freight license", which meant that booksellers had to pay the freight both for fair articles delivered to them from Leipzig and for unsold books which they wished to return to Leipzig. (Before c. 1760, these costs had been borne separately by the respective addressees - i.e. the bookseller paid for the delivery of books ordered by him, and the publisher for the return of unsold books).
Ganz, however, is aware of the constraints faced by the ‘Sortimentsbuchhändler', that is, those booksellers-cum-publishers who still adhered to the traditional barter system. Quite similar to the arguments advanced by such apologists of reprinting as Ludwig Christian Kehr (d_1799) is his admission that the barter-trading booksellers could hardly be expected to survive without reprints:
"The bookseller can no longer carry on buying expensive original editions, since the majority of clients will understandably be looking to buy cheap ones. The reprinter thus swamps every region with the spoils of his piracy, and those local booksellers who do not wish to become receivers of stolen goods nor accomplices of the reprinter, are driven into ruin."[11]
But unlike the reprinters, what Ganz is trying to make clear is the modern, differentiated structure of the book market that had emerged thanks largely to the joint efforts of Reich and his Leipzig colleagues (cf. d_1765). In contrast to the apologists of reprinting who complained about the unfair competition suffered by barter-trading booksellers across the Imperial lands from the large wholesale book trading firms (‘Nettobuchhändler') in Leipzig, Ganz accepts that their functions are and ought to be different, and emphasises instead how competition between the wholesale traders amongst themselves had beneficial effects for everyone else involved in the book trade:
"The wholesale book trader, or he who trades solely with his own in-house publications, selling them for cash, is equivalent to the first-hand manufacturer in other branches of commerce. The less he is restricted, the less encroachments he has to suffer, the cheaper can he sell his products, as a result of which both barter-trading booksellers and the public will benefit. No monopoly is conceivable here, since, in view of the fact that there is great competition amongst publishers and barter-trading book-sellers, that trader will be the most sought after who has acquired the reputation of offering a wide selection and who has been able to defend this reputation."[12]
When finally summing up the conclusions of his unsigned article, Ganz shows his familiarity with contemporary economic theories, for he asserts that
"the decline of literature, of the book trade, of good taste, the increase in book prices, the excessive fees commanded by authors in some cases, are all consequences of reprinting; and that once reprinting has been extirpated, and the book industry, by virtue of its commercial nature, taken under the supervision of the sovereign authorities, all these deleterious consequences will automatically disappear. He confidently invokes the testimony of all statesmen who are in charge of commercial matters, and who will vouchsafe that it is not necessary - nay, that it is most harmful - to publicly fix the price of a specific commodity, since complete security of property, protection against deceit, facilitation of the means of redress, etc. will stimulate competition amongst the sellers, the result of which is to bring about the cheapest possible price for the commodity being sold."[13]
It is, in fact, on the strength of his acquaintance with the economic theories of his time that Ganz advocates the modern structure of the book market as one which is based on a strict differentiation between publishers and booksellers (i.e. where the latter do not also double as publishers, as was frequently the case until then). The government's task is to safeguard the publishers' property and provide protection against fraud, but, more importantly, Ganz expresses the hope that the book market might be liberated from all the constraints imposed by the censorship and privilege systems currently in force across the Empire.
5. The progress of Ganz's project and its ultimate failure
Ganz knew exactly where the root of the matter was on the political level: it all depended on the question as to whether regulation of the book trade fell within the competence of the Empire or that of the local sovereign rulers. Ever since Emperor Charles V (1500-1588) Electoral Capitulations had often included various kinds of commercial regulations, such as, for example, provisions meant to encourage both overland and river-traffic trade, and to prevent any customs abuses that might undermine this trade.[14] Religious matters, however, had been treated as the preserve of the local sovereigns ever since the Thirty Years' War. Ganz's focus on the purely commercial side of the book trade, leaving aside all religious, educational, and censorship aspects, was thus not only a manifestation of his political opinion: he may well have deliberately taken this approach, in order to reinforce the case for Imperial competence as far as regulation of the book trade was concerned.
Ganz's endeavour was backed by the Regensburg-based author and librarian Albrecht Christoph Kayser, An author writing under the pseudonym "the Blue Man" - who is thought to have been the notorious Karlsruhe-based reprinter Christian G. Schmieder - also tried to affect public opinion at the same time by bringing out an essay entitled "Book Reprinting: Pro and Contra. From the Papers of the Blue Man" (d_1790). The "Blue Man" presents readers with a reprint of Ganz's book, accompanied by extensive comments in the footnotes, which complain, in a tone that is both envious and sophisticated at the same time, about the "oppressive monopoly exerted by the Saxon publishers, who, in the process of accumulating princely fortunes, buying up estates, and having their walls and ceilings painted by Oeser, have taken as much as they could get from the other German regions".[15] The "Blue Man" also insinuates that writers would not really be better off if reprinting ceased to happen:
"At all times the good writers have to serve as the fog which the publishers scatter around themselves, in order to be ‘invisible' and in a position to seize every opportunity [for making a profit], just as Venus enveloped her beloved son Aeneas in a cloud of fog [so that he could reach the palace of Dido without anyone stopping him]. In fact, these respected writers, who constantly have to act as ‘umbrellas' [or figureheads] for their publishers, will not gain or lose a single farthing whether or not reprinting continues to take place. As soon as the publishers manage to name but a single author in Germany who by his writing has made even just a third of the fortune amassed by Messrs Breitkopf, Weidmann's Heirs, Fritsch, Vandenhoek, Dyk, etc. etc., we are prepared to cross out all our arguments and to never again lift a finger in defence of reprinting!"[16]
Shortly afterwards, an anonymous riposte to the "Blue Man" was "printed in Swabia", the only reference to the printing place being given on the title page (d_1790a).
Ganz's letters to various publishers (dated 10 and 27 May, 17 June) did result in a number of initiatives. Thus, a letter signed by twenty Leipzig publishers was sent to the Imperial court in Vienna on 12 August 1790, resulting in an ordinance which, although not a general ban on reprinting, did specify that foreign authors of works which had a recognisable literary value would on request be issued with privileges free of charge. The ordinance was promptly drafted and signed already on 23 August 1790 by Leopold's son Francis (1768-1835), who at the time was acting as the Emperor's deputy in Vienna and the Habsburg hereditary lands while Leopold was visiting other regions of the Empire. However, already in 1794 this ordinance was revoked by the very same Francis, who two years earlier had succeeded his father on the Imperial throne.[17] At two meetings which Ganz held, first with some 125 publishers and booksellers at the Leipzig Easter Fair, and then with about a hundred at the Jubilee Fair in the same year, it was agreed to present a petition to the Emperor which was nearly identical in wording to our document,[18] and persons were appointed to submit the petition to the local sovereigns of their various places of residence. Thus, the Berlin-based publisher Christian Friedrich Himburg (1733-1801) filed the petition to the Prussian court on 8 July 1790.[19] The Frankfurt publishers Varrentrapp and Wenner addressed a petition directly to the College of Electors in which they also referred to Ganz's article. Whilst in older literature on the subject it is claimed that Ganz received no support at all from the publishers,[20] Steffen-Werner Meyer has shown on the basis of archival research that, in fact, more than a hundred publishers backed Ganz‘s proposal.
It was traditionally the court of the Elector-Archbishop of Mainz which presided the discussions and passing of the Electoral Capitulation. Ganz's proposal was duly filed there and supported above all by Heinrich Friedrich Carl Baron vom Stein (1757-1831), the representative of the Electorate of Brandenburg (i.e. the western region of Prussia around Berlin which, unlike her eastern provinces, did form part of the Empire). Whereas Stein had been authorised by the Prussian government to lobby for an immediate ban on reprints, the representatives of the Elector-Archbishop of Mainz wanted instead to have the project passed on to the Imperial Diet. They did eventually agree for it to be discussed beforehand during the electoral conference, but all that was finally achieved was the following non-binding declaration, included under Article 7: "On policing and commercial matters" ("Von Polizey- und Handlungsssachen" - note that the term ‘Polizey' in eighteenth-century German comprised all areas of administration):
"The preservation and improvement of policing and trade, especially of the book trade [...] In particular, we do not wish to neglect the book trade, which is so important for Germany: on the contrary, it is our intention to have the aforementioned expert report [on the modernisation of police ordinances] also consider the question as to what extent it might be possible to save this branch of industry from its present state of decline by completely suppressing all reprinting activities and establishing reasonable prices for all printed publications" [21]
A nearly identical draft had raised concerns amongst the representatives of the Electorate of Saxony, who were opposed to the junctim of a reprinting ban and a price regulation which seemed to be implied by the wording. Thus, they applied to have the latter half of the sentence omitted, but were in the end outvoted.[22]
In the end it wasn't the arguments of the original publishers, nor those of the reprinters, which caused the stalling of Ganz's proposal. More likely, to quote Martin Vogel again, it all came down to
"the heterogeneous nature of the mercantilist-minded princes to whom Ganz had addressed his proposal, whereby some of them defended reprinting for the very same reasons that others rejected it. Austria profited from reprinting just as Saxony did from the production of original editions."[23]
As an apologist of free trade, Ganz was going against the mercantilist beliefs held by most German sovereigns at the time. His postulate: "where there is no property, there is no trade"[24] is one with which contemporary neo-liberal economists would certainly agree, but it must have sounded strange to the ears of the representatives of the pre-capitalist German principalities of the late eighteenth century, with their huge state farms and factories. Similarly, his view of the book as a tradable commodity can be readily tallied with the modern notion that a book belongs at the same time to a number of differentiated functional subsystems, but one could hardly expect it to have been accepted by officials who were still refusing, several decades later, to separate copyright and censorship legislation (as was the case in Austria: see d_1837b).
In his emphasis on economic theories when considering how the book market ought to be regulated, Ganz was most definitely ahead of his time. But on the other hand, he did not mention an argument that was soon to be at the centre of the reprinting discussion in Germany: namely, an author's right, such as Fichte was to formulate in 1793 (d_1793).
6. References
Books and articles [in alphabetical order]
Burgdorf, Wolfgang. "Review of: Steffen-Werner Meyer, Bemühungen um ein Reichsgesetz gegen den Büchernachdruck", Sehepunkte 5 (2005): 9. Available online at: <http://www.sehepunkte.de/2005/09/7290.html>
Conrad, Hermann. Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, vol. 1 (Karlsruhe: C.E. Müller, 1962)
Crome, August Friedrich Wilhelm. Die Wahlcapitulation des römischen Kaisers Leopold des Zweiten (Hildburghausen: Hanisch, 1791)
Feder, Johann Georg Heinrich. "Neuer Versuch einer einleuchtenden Darstellung der Gründe für das Eigenhtum des Bücherverlags, nach Grundsätzen des natürlichen Rechts und der Staatsklugheit" and "Über das Verlagseigenthum", Göttingesches Magazin der Wissenschaften und Literatur 1 (1780): 1-37 and 220-242. Online at:
<http://www.ub.uni-bielefeld.de/diglib/aufkl/goettmag/goettmag.htm>
Ganz, Johann Friedrich Ferdinand (ed.). Übersicht der Gründe wegen des Strafbaren des Büchernachdrucks und Vorschläge, wie diesem Uebel durch ein allgemeinverbindliches Reichsgesetz vorgebeugt werden könne (Regensburg: Kayser, 1790)
Goldfriedrich, Johann. Geschichte des Deutschen Buchhandels (Leipzig: Verlag des Börsenvereins der Deutschen Buchhändler, 1909)
Kayser, Albrecht Christoph. Die Abstellung des Büchernachdrucks als ein in der neuesten kaiserlichen Wahlkapitulation der reichsoberhauptlichen Abhilfe ebenso nöthig als unbedenklich zu übertragender Gegenstand (Regensburg 1790)
Meyer, Steffen-Werner. Bemühungen um ein Reichsgesetz gegen den Büchernachdruck. Anläßlich der Wahlkapitulation Leopolds II. aus dem Jahre 1790 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2004)
Schwarz, Karl. Art. "Leopold II.", in Biographisch-bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (1992), 1505-1507. Available online at:
Selwyn, Pamela E. Everyday Life in the German Book Trade: Friedrich Nicolai as Bookseller and Publisher in the Age of Enlightenment, 1750 - 1810 (University Park: Pennsylvania State U. P., 2000)
Sonnenfels, Johann von "Vortrag der Studien- und Censurs-Hofkommission zu Wien über den Nachdruck fremder Bücher", Journal von und für Deutschland (1785): 115-119. Available online at:
<http://www.ub.uni-bielefeld.de/diglib/aufkl/journdeut/journdeut.htm>
Vogel, Martin. "Deutsche Urheber- und Verlagsrechtsgeschichte zwischen 1450 und 1850. Sozial und methodengeschchtliche Entwicklungsstufen der Rechte von Schriftsteller und Verleger", Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens 19, nr 1 (1978): 1-180
[1] Karl Schwarz, Art. "Leopold II.", in Biographisch-bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, vol. 4 (1992): 1505-1507. Available online at: <http://www.bbkl.de/l/Leopold_II.shtml>
[2] Johann Friedrich Ferdinand Ganz (ed.). Übersicht der Gründe wegen des Strafbaren des Büchernachdrucks und Vorschläge, wie diesem Uebel durch ein allgemeinverbindliches Reichsgesetz vorgebeugt werden könne (Regensburg: Kayser, 1790); Albrecht Christoph Kayser. Die Abstellung des Büchernachdrucks als ein in der neuesten kaiserlichen Wahlkapitulation der reichsoberhauptlichen Abhilfe ebenso nöthig als unbedenklich zu übertragender Gegenstand (Regensburg: Zeitler 1790).
[3] Martin Vogel, "Deutsche Urheber- und Verlagsrechtsgeschichte zwischen 1450 und 1850: Sozial und methodengeschchtliche Entwicklungsstufen der Rechte von Schriftsteller und Verleger", Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens 19, nr 1 (1978): 1-180 (83), with reference to Hermann Conrad, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, vol. 1 (Karlsruhe: C.E. Müller, 1962), 71.
[4] "Wie hoch waren nicht in unseren Tagen die Erwartungen aller deutschen Bürger gespannt, als der verewigte unglückliche Joseph II. die Augen schloss? Manche wichtige, bisher noch bestrittene Punkte unserer Verfassung hoffte man berichtigt zu sehen, und von dem Wahlvertrag des neuen Kaisers schmeichelte man sich, er werde endlich in Wahrheit die magna charta Germaniens genannt zu werden verdienen". Translation by Luis A. Sundkvist. Quoted without further reference in Wolfgang Burgdorf, "Review of Steffen-Werner Meyer: Bemühungen um ein Reichsgesetz gegen den Büchernachdruck", Sehepunkte 5 (2005): 9. Available online at: <http://www.sehepunkte.de/2005/09/7290.html>
[5] Steffen-Werner Meyer, Bemühungen um ein Reichsgesetz gegen den Büchernachdruck. Anläßlich der Wahlkapitulation Leopolds II. aus dem Jahre 1790 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2004), 167.
[6] Meyer (2004), 51.
[7] Pamela E. Selwyn, Everyday Life in the German Book Trade: Friedrich Nicolai as Bookseller and Publisher in the Age of Enlightenment, 1750 - 1810 (University Park: Pennsylvania State U.P., 2000), 190, refers to a letter to this effect which Ganz sent to Nicolai, and which is now in the archive of the ‘Staatsbibliothek' in Berlin.
[8] Johann Georg Heinrich Feder, "Neuer Versuch einer einleuchtenden Darstellung der Gründe für das Eigenhtum des Bücherverlags, nach Grundsätzen des natürlichen Rechts und der Staatsklugheit" and (by the same author) "Ueber das Verlagseigenthum", Göttingesches Magazin der Wissenschaften und Literatur 1 (1780): 1-37 and 220-242. Online at: http://www.ub.uni-bielefeld.de/diglib/aufkl/goettmag/goettmag.htm. The proposal for a 14 / 28 years' term of protection is made on p.229.
[9] Johann von Sonnenfels, "Vortrag der Studien- und Censurs-Hofkommission zu Wien über den Nachdruck fremder Bücher", Journal von und für Deutschland (1785): 115-119. Online at:
<http://www.ub.uni-bielefeld.de/diglib/aufkl/journdeut/journdeut.htm>
[10] Vogel (1978), 87.
[11] "Der Sortimentshändler kann nicht länger bey dem theuern Einkaufe ächter Ausgaben bestehen; der größere Theil der Käufer hat Ursache, auf Wohlfeile zu sehen. Der Nachdrucker überschwemmt jede Gegend mit seinem Raube. Will der Sotimentshändler nicht einen Hehler des Diebstahls, ein Mitgenoße des Nachdruckers werden, so geht er zu Grunde." (p. 406). Translation by Luis A. Sundkvist.
[12] "Der Netto-Buchhändler, oder derjenige, welcher bloß mit eignen Verlagsartikeln gegen baares Geld handelt, ist dasjenige, was beym übrigen Commerz der Manufacturist, die erste Hand, ist. Je weniger er beschränkt, je weniger er beeinträchtigt wird, desto wohlfeiler kann er seine Fabrikaten geben, wobey der Sortimentsbuchhändler und das Publicum gewinnen. Kein Monopol läßt sich dabey gedenken, denn da unter den Verlegern und Nettobuchhändlern eine grosse Concurrenz entsteht, so wird derjenige endlich den größten Zulauf haben, der sich in den Ruf einer guten Auswahl gesetzt, und solchen behauptet hat." (p.407, d_1790b_im_001_0003).
[13] "daß der Verfall der Litteratur, des Buchhandels, des guten Geschmacks, die Uebertheuerung der Bücher, die Übermäßigkeit der Honorarien, lauter Folgen des Nachdrucks sind, daß wenn der Nachdruck ausgerottet, und das Bücherwesen als eine Commercialsache in landesherrliche Aufsicht genommen wird, alle diese schädlichen Folgen von sich selbst wegfallen werden. Er beruft sich getrost auf das Zeugniß aller Staatsmänner, welche das Commercialfach bearbeiten, daß es nicht nöthig, vielmehr höchst schädlich ist, den Preis einer Waare öffentlich zu bestimmen; indem vollkommene Sicherheit des Eigenthums, Schutz gegen Betrug, Erleichterung der Hülfsmittel, etc. die die Concurrenz der Verkäufer erweckt, diese aber die möglichste Wohlfeile der zu verkaufenden Waare erzeuget." (p.415, d_1790b_im_001_0011).
[14] Johann Goldfriedrich, Geschichte des Deutschen Buchhandels (Leipzig: Verlag des Börsenvereins der Deutschen Buchhändler, 1909), 443.
[15] "[das] drückende Monopol der Sächsischen Buchhändler, die indeß sie fürstliche Reichthümer aufhäuften, Landgüter zusammenkauften, und ihre Platfonds von Oeser mahlen liesen, die andern Länder Deutschland bezinnßten". See d_1790: pp. 59-60. Adam Friedrich Oeser (1717-1799) was a distinguished etcher and painter based in Leipzig (he gave drawing lessons to the young Goethe).
[16] "Die guten Schriftsteller die !! müssen jeden Augenblik der Nebel seyn, den die Buchhändler um sich herwerfen, um unsichtbar mit von der Partie zu seyn, wie Venus um ihren theuren Sohn Aeneas. Haben doch die guten Schriftstller, die immer und immer den Verlegern zum Regenschirm dienen müssen, keinen Deut mehr oder weniger, es mag Nachdruck seyn oder nicht seyn. So bald die Buchhändler uns in Deutschland auch nur einen Schriftsteller nennen, der, als Schriftsteller, sich nur den dritten Theil des erworben hat, was die Herren Breitkopf, Weidmanns Erben, Fritsch, Vandenhoek, Dyk u.s.w. u.s.w. so wollen wir alle unsere Argumente durchstreichen, und zu Gunsten des Nachdruks keinen Finger mehr rühren." (d_1790). Translation by Luis A. Sundkvist.
[17] Meyer (2004), 54.
[18] Meyer (2004), 69. A list of the more than a hundred publishers and booksellers is given in the appendix.
[19] Meyer (2004), 78.
[20] Vogel (1978), 85, with reference to August Friedrich Wilhelm Crome, Die Wahlcapitulation des römischen Kaisers Leopold des Zweiten (Hildburghausen: Hanisch, 1791).
[21] "Erhaltung und Verbesserung der Polizey und Kommerzes, besonders des Buchhandels [...] inbesonderheit wollen wir den für Deutschland wichtigen Buchhandel nicht außer Acht lassen, sondern das obgedachte Reichsgutachten auch darüber erstatten lassen, inwiefern dieser Handlungszweig durch die völlige Unterdrückung des Nachdrucks, und durch die Herstellung billiger Druckpreise vor dem jetzigen Verfall zu retten sei." Quoted by Vogel (1978) from Crome (1791). Translation by Luis A. Sundkvist.
[22] Meyer (2004), 100.
[23] "der heterogene Adressatenkreis merkantilistisch denkender Fürsten, von denen die einen dem Nachdruck aus denselben Motiven befürworteten, aus denen die anderen ihn ablehnten. Österreich verdiente am Nachdruck so wie Sachsen an der Originalproduktion." Vogel (1978), 88.
[24] "Wo kein Eigentum ist, da ist auch kein Handel" - Ganz, (ed.), Übersicht der Gründe wegen des Strafbaren des Büchernachdrucks, 16, quoted in Vogel (1978), 88.