Abstract
The foundation of the German Empire in 1871 represents a crucial turning point for German history in the 19th century, an epoch characterized by many political, social, cultural and socio-communicative upheavals. Not only did the foundation of empire lead to the national unity demanded by civil movements for many years, but also enabled broad sections of the population to participate in political life. The changes to this political public go hand in hand with the development of the newspaper, a communication medium that had started to spread its domain effectively, at the latest, in the German Empire. Political and linguistic action was no longer limited to the exclusiveness of the Parliament or the Reichstag and could spread its sphere of activity to the publicly and socially differentiated space of the press. Therefore, political speech gained a new function as a mass media form of communication between a political public and propaganda. Since the interaction of linguistic, political and medial action has been neglected in favour of the study of a few political characters, this article focusses on the broad subject of interdisciplinary research.
