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In the mid-1980s, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation Library was able to acquire a valuable collection of newspapers and periodicals from the time of the French Revolution of 1848. A stock record for the collection was published in 1985.
Despite its inevitable fragmentary character, this inventory of some 200 titles supplies the reader with a fascinating picture of that tension-fraught period.
As many others, the French Revolution could not have happened without the many and diverse press publications, and the freedom or the gagging of the press mark the different stages of the revolution just as much as the respective political events.
Newspapers of every political and ideological stripe were founded, but unfortunately they usually were not able to last. They illuminate the blossoming political life during the Revolution, the broad political spectrum and the multitude of diverging interests which finally clashed.
Not all the newspapers show this conflict, because often individual issues - especially when they appeared at different times - will only have a limited meaningfulness. Nevertheless, in comparison and when taking the historic context into consideration, they can offer up interesting answers to many questions.
The political range which becomes evident in - and which can be pointed out by - this newspaper inventory extends from the Left with all its variants via the wide field of Republicanism down to Conservatism, Legitimism, and Bonapartism.
While these newspapers do reflect the numerous individual interests and groups as well as events that were of major importance for the course of the revolution and the development of the republic, they will hardly ever suffice for an overall view of the situation as a whole. It will be mainly periodicals with a longer publication period, some of which are present in the collection, which will be useful to glean such an overall view.
Example titels: "L'ami du peuple en 1848 (Raspail)"; "L'illustration: journal universel" (Illustrations on the February Revolution, the events of May 15 and the June Uprising) , "La vraie république" (socialist).
This collection of periodicals is supplemented by posters, pamphlets and document collections as well as contemporary and later publications on the revolution. All this taken together offers a broad and comprehensive range of research materials to the user.
The stock record was published under the following title:
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