THE GAGGED PRESS OF GERMANY

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4565, 6 November 1875, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE GAGGED PRESS OF GERMANY

(Paris correspondence of The Times.)

Notwithstanding the undoubted intention of the German Keichstag that inquiries into the authorship of newspaper articles should cease upon the editors being held criminally responsible for everything they publish, the proceedings against the staff of the Frankfurter Zcitimij are being prosecuted with the utmost rigor. The Appellate Court having decided that the Zcuycnzwany is still in force, three members of the staff, M.M. Curti, Sewigh, and Stern, were arrested for contempt of court in refusing to give information as to the authorship of articles forming the subject of government prosecutions. A fourth, who is about to return from an excursion, will uudergo the same fate, and the imprisonment may extend over several months. The editor and proprietor, MM. Sak and Sonnemaun, have also been ordered to appear before the Court, and may expect similar treatment. Independently of the repugnance excited by attempts to extract information inquisitorially, there is this striking anomaly, that a number of persons may be punished for an offence for which a single punishment evidently ought to suffice. The editor may be convicted and imprisoned for publishing an obnoxious article, the entire staff (and in this case even the engine stoker has been interrogated) may be incarcerated for refusing to reveal the author, and the author himself may eventually be discovered and prosecuted. Some even of the German papers favorable to the Government which at first maintained a rigid silence have of late advocated the abolition of the Zeuycnzioany, and the question will certainly be raised in the next session of the Keichstag. In the meantime, however, the crusade against the Frankfurter Zeitung is being pushed to the last extremity, and it is not surprising to find that it has been advised to transfer itself to a neighboring German State, so as to escape the grip of the Prussian authorities.