The Media History of the Early Periodical Press in Latvian

The first newspaper in Latvian is established by a German pastor in 1822, only a few years after the abolition of serfdom in Courland and Livland (1817– 1819). A half a entury later, the public sphere in both of these provinces is not only inhabited by a Latvian reading public in its role as an object, but also it is being increasingly taken over and conquered by Latvian authors, writers, and editors. This chapter follows the establishment of the first Latvian newspapers and the development of the public sphere by looking at the following key aspects: the contents of the first newspapers; the physical and mental space reached, covered, and created by the media; the ‘implied’ (Wolfgang Iser) and actual Latvian reader and their development into an author.