ABSTRACT
Broadsides with sensational news, such as the latest information concerning theatres of war, freak births or glittering occasions of state, commanded a wide circulation. These were generally called “Newe Zeytung” after their main heading, and gradually the Middle High German term “Zeitung” gave its name to a new genre or medium. The earliest illustrated news-sheets reported the discoveries too, and jumbled up imaginary figures of globetrotters from antiquity such as Herodotus with the narratives of the Portuguese mariners. “Feldmaren”, or tales from the front, also reached wider circles as printed folk-ballads, the most popular news medium of the age; a few ballads mostly by unknown authors betray their direct dependence on, or are themselves versifications of, official bulletins. Maximilian certainly used new means of communication to influence his contemporaries politically, but in addition he saw in them a way to plan his own immortality.
