Rheinische Zeitung

The Rheinische Zeitung ("Rhenish Newspaper") was a 19th-century German newspaper, edited most famously by Karl Marx. The paper was launched in January 1842 and terminated by Prussian state censorship in March 1843. The paper was eventually succeeded by a daily newspaper launched by Karl Marx on behalf of the Communist League in June 1848, called the Neue Rheinische Zeitung ("New Rhenish Newspaper").

The city of Cologne (Köln) has long been the most important urban center of the region of Germany known as Rhineland. During the decade of the 1830s a newspaper called the Kölnische Zeitung ("Cologne Newspaper") emerged as the voice of the Catholic political opposition based in that city. The protestant Prussian government, based in Berlin, considered this newspaper and its 8,000 subscribers a thorn in its side, and looked favorably upon attempts of those attempting to establish new newspapers to undercut the Kölnische Zeitung's dominant position.

A series of papers had been launched in Cologne, each failing, with the powerful Kölnische Zeitung generally buying out its fledgling competitors. One of this series of hapless rivals was a newspaper launched in Cologne in December 1839 called the Rheinische Allgemeine Zeitung ("Rhenish General Newspaper"). The paper struggled for two years without successfully gaining a foothold and seemed headed for extinction.

At the 11th hour a group of prominent Cologne citizens decided to raise fresh working capital and to attempt to reestablish the paper on a new basis. This new version of the old Rheinische Allgemeine Zeitung was to be known as the Rheinische Zeitung ("Rhenish News").

The Rheinische Zeitung was launched on 1 January 1842, with Moses Hess serving as an editor. The paper originally expressed a pro-government stance, but its political line soon shifted to better accord with popular sentiment among Rhinelanders, many of whom regarded the Prussian government in Berlin as an oppressive alien entity.

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