ABSTRACT
The Enlightenment encouraged the emergence and acceptance of a plethora of new ideas; regrettably, however, opinion research institutes and demoscopic polling were not among them, and it is much more difficult to reconstruct anything resembling a 'public opinion' or 'popular opinion' for this period than for the twentieth century.1 Indeed, the lenient censorship laws of Joseph IPs reign promoted such a diversity of views that for Austria during the late eighteenth century the task is harder still. Yet as Jiirgen Habermas has observed, it is precisely at this time, with the emergence of bourgeois society, and the development of the press as a new factor in politics, that a coherent, independent 'public opinion' began to form.2 The press very quickly became the 'servant of two masters'. On the one hand, it was systematically made to serve the official interests of the political authorities, as was clearly illustrated by a press regulation issued in March 1769 by the Vienna government:
On the other hand, during the first half of the eighteenth century, reasoned editorial consideration began to make an appearance in the daily press. By articulating the interests of the subjects of the realm, newspapers introduced a counterweight to official power. The press, once the handmaiden of the authorities, was transformed into their adversary; and one of the high points of this process in Austria is to be located during the last Austrian war against the Turks (1788-91), which took place during the reign of Joseph II.
