„[I]n lieblichster Muße Land und Volk zu beobachten“: das Morgenblatt für gebildete Leser und die Formierung ethnographischen Wissens (1837–1857)

The 19th century was an era of social observation and description. In the context of the expanding press market and bourgeois life, Europeans produced a significantly greater number of depictions of social life than in earlier periods. At the same time, new, differentiated literary-journalistic genres emerged. This dissertation examines these so-called ‘social sketches’, using the example of the popular German-language periodical Morgenblatt für gebildete Leser (‘Morning Paper for Educated Readers’) from 1837 to 1857.

The study explores the question of how ethnographic forms of knowledge emerged during this period and their relation to the beginnings of academic ethnography. The sources are positioned within the field of tension between journalism, contemporary science and intellectual currents such as Romanticism and social reform.

A mixed methods approach encompassing qualitative content analysis, hermeneutics, and (historical) discourse analysis illuminates the categories of knowledge practices, knowledge formats, knowledge orders, and actors. The work places previously neglected journalistic sources at the center of a knowledge-historical examination of the pre-disciplinary phase of the social sciences and humanities (folklore studies, ethnology, sociology).

Alexandra Rabensteiner studied European Ethnology and History in Innsbruck and Vienna, receiving her doctorate in European Ethnology from Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. Her doctoral thesis was based on her work as a research assistant on DFG- and ERC-funded projects investigating the formation of ethnographic knowledge in 19th-century journalism.