After the Shoah, the end of World War II, and the division of Bukovina into Romanian and Ukrainian sections, Bukovina and its (former) capital Czernowitz seemed to have disappeared from sight, while at the same time they became a part of collective memory. German historian Karl Schlögel wrote in 1988, “Czernowitz gibt es wirklich, nicht bloß als Topos der literarischen Welt”—Czernowitz is a real place, not just a literary topos (8). This is a perfect characterization of the perception of Bukovina and Czernowitz: The city has endured in the writings of its various authors, who to this day are the ones to have bestowed meaning on it.

In the early 1990s Bukovina and its inhabitants came to the center of academic attention. With the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989–90 relatively free travel across the former Soviet Union and free scholarly research suddenly became possible. The interviews with witnesses to history from Czernowitz are particularly well known, but many other studies in social and cultural history have been published in the last years as well. Markus Winkler thus joins a crowded field with his edition of the proceedings from the conference “Presselandschaft in der Bukowina und den Nachbarregionen” that took place in Czernowitz in March 2008. Certainly, the analysis of the press scene is a neglected subject, and it should be emphasized that the present publication includes not only contributions on the German-speaking press—and thus also large parts of the Jewish press—but also Yiddish, Romanian, and Ukrainian periodicals. Two developments deeply affecting the field of cultural history have made this volume possible: Firstly, the aforementioned opening of the borders, which also meant an opening of the archives, granting better access to the sources; and secondly, it is a field of research very much characterized by interdisciplinarity (7). Winkler states this in the preface, which gives a solid review of the current state of research and the structure of the book. The work is organized into four chapters and, aside from the introduction, fifteen interdisciplinary articles, that consider textural, but also geographic perspectives as a necessity for understanding the multifarious impacts on Bukovina's press (8).

With the first essay the editor presents a competent introduction to the “German-speaking press and public sphere in Czernowitz before 1918,” emphasizing the notable variety and multiplicity of newspapers and magazines—in this context Czernowitz was comparable to Vienna (13–14). At the turn of the century (1900), a more independent press emerged, free from authoritarian and political influences (17–21). The founding of the Czernowitzer Allgemeine Zeitung and Czernowitzer Tagblatt (both 1903) marked a turning point: Both newspapers addressed the critical and engaged reader (19). And who were the initiators of this ‘new journalism’? “Jews played a major role in the Czernowitz press generally” as the impressive contribution of David Rechter summarizes (60). The author also proves the existence of an exceptional Jewish public sphere, “which was a unique amalgam of person and institution, of individual and structure” (52). One of the protagonists was Alfred Margul-Sperber (1898–1967), whose position as a patron of German-language poetry is introduced by Peter Rychlo. The fascinating article describes inter alia the most ambitious of Sperber's projects: a lyrical anthology of Bukovina focusing on Jewish authors (111), but the coming Nazi era made completion of this plan impossible. In any case Sperber was a publicist, networker, and mentor of young writers, and Rychlo's essay renders outstanding service to promote a nearly forgotten writer and intellectual. Sperber also supported the more well-known author Rose Ausländer, whose role in Czernowitz newspapers is discussed in the next contribution. Regrettably, Helmut Braun's examination offers no more than a cursory glance at an interesting topic. In particular, a more detailed analysis of Rose Ausländer's publications in the press, especially her column “Frau Ruth gibt Auskunft,” might have been worth considering.

Clearly, National Socialism significantly changed Bukovina's press: “Adolf Hitler's appointment as chancellor (Reichskanzler) on 30 January 1933 was welcomed by the Czernowitzer Deutsche Tagespost, mouthpiece of the German population of Bukovina but met with strong refusal by the Jewish print media in the capital of Bukovina […]” (195). In his enriching study of the political radicalization in the 1930s, Peter Mozan analyzes the consequences using Alfred Margul-Sperber's 1936 poem “Der Fackelläufer.” The influence of the Nazi regime was of course especially felt in German-language newspapers, as the article by Alexander Rubel shows. He evaluates the relatively unknown publication Der Deutsche in Transnistrien—an embarrassing mixture of tradition and propaganda, ethnic German identity construction, and agricultural discourses.

All in all, the conference volume is an important contribution to the research on Bukovinian cultural history. With few exceptions it raises essential questions and opens up interesting perspectives that should be investigated further.