The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze the People’s House in Bromölla as an arena for a plebeian public sphere. More specific, the analysis revolves around how the labour movement created a plebeian public sphere, the construction of the very arena and the activities there, including study circles, labour library, theatre plays, film showings, dance evenings and other amusements as parts of adult education among the working class people. It also comprises examinations of the labour movement’s acting in the local political arena, the labour movement’s connections with the local bourgeoisie on matters concerning politics and the People’s House. The main theoretical perspective is based on Jürgen Habermas’ theory of bourgeois public sphere, reformulated to a plebeian public sphere. The adult education in study circles mainly focused on subjects related to the work in the local politics and in the trade union, i.e. for the activities in the public sphere. These parts of the adult education were primarily a matter for the male part of the labour movement. This mirrors the situation in politics and in the trade union, where foremost men were engaged. Beside the trade union and political studies, subjects like Swedish, English, Esperanto, mathematics and literature were common. From time to time socialism and Marxism were studied. The women mainly studied humanistic subjects with individual development and hold thus the vision of the education ideologists within the labour movement. In the 1940’s the study circles decreased, and finally, in the end of the 1950’s almost ceased. Despite this the education did not cease, but were replaced by music, singing, dancing and machine sewing courses arranged by commercial companies and aesthetic associations. The People’s House was from the beginning open even for associations outside the labour movement. In the 1940’s and, in particularly, the 1950’s the People’s House became an assembly hall for a huge range of associations. Among the tenants were Free Church parishes, athletic associations, hobby associations, temperance societies, political parties from left to right, trade unions, authorities, companies, and the municipal of Bromölla. People’s house was also a place for wedding and birthday celebrations and other private parties. Among the more frequent tenants were Free Churches and music, singing and athletic associations, beside Bromölla municipal, which were a permanent tenant, for instance for the municipal library. The amount of associations from outside the labour movement among the tenants exceeded for some years in the end of 1950’s the labour movement’s meetings. This cross class policy was a conscious strategy by the People’s House association, in order to be a cultural institution for all inhabitants in Bromölla. The municipal council of Bromölla was even a part of this policy when subsidizing the People’s House association. It was in accordance with the cross class and consensus policy which the social democratic movement by this time was an exponent of. The People’s House in Bromölla was thus an arena not only for the labour movement, but also for the entire society.

Notre travail a comme objectif d’étudier la fonction de la Nouvelle gazette rhénane pendant la révolution de 1848 en Allemagne. A partir d’un corpus constitué des numéros du journal, y compris les éditions spéciales et les suppléments, notre étude analyse la conception du journal voulue par ses fondateurs, sa réalisation journalistique ainsi que l’évolution de sa ligne politique. Comme outil d’analyse nous nous appuyons sur la notion de l’espace public, notamment de l’espace public bourgeois, conçue par Jürgen Habermas en 1961, mais aussi sur les notions d’un espace public plébéien et d’un espace public prolétarien que la recherche a développées entre-temps. Après avoir étudié l’état de l’espace public en Allemagne, l’évolution du mouvement ouvrier avant et au début de la révolution et les prémices de la Nouvelle gazette rhénane, nous développons l’hypothèse que le journal fut un projet indépendant, explicitement conçu pour l’espace public bourgeois, en parallèle avec le projet de la Ligue des communistes qui, elle, a été créée à l’attention du mouvement ouvrier et pour l’espace public prolétarien naissant. La conception de la Nouvelle gazette rhénane puise ses sources dans les analyses de ses fondateurs, notamment de son rédacteur en chef Karl Marx, notamment en ce qui concerne la situation en Allemagne et en Europe. Suivant ces analyses, le journal a l’exigence de peser sur le cours de la révolution. L’idée de départ est de faire pression sur les parties progressistes de la bourgeoisie. En conséquence sa stratégie est de s’insérer dans le mouvement démocrate afin de pousser les démocrates vers une politique de confrontation avec la monarchie absolue. En s’adaptant au début de son existence aux critères de l’espace public bourgeois, la Nouvelle gazette rhénane correspond aux critères d’excellence de son époque : son travail rédactionnel, son organisation, sa production matérielle et sa distribution sont à la pointe du journalisme politique. Notre étude statistique des articles concernant l’Allemagne et l’étranger montre qu’il s’agit d’un journal prussien qui bénéficie d’un réseau dense de correspondants dans les régions et les Etats d’Allemagne ainsi qu’en Europe. Un accent particulier est porté sur les informations venant des pays européens. Ce fait s’explique par la conception européenne que le journal a de la révolution de 1848.La particularité du journal est à notre sens qu’il a accompagné toutes les modifications de l’espace public pendant la révolution. Sa politique se caractérise par la défense de la révolution et en premier lieu la défense de la liberté de la presse. Confronté à un morcellement et une destruction partielle de l’espace public bourgeois, sa ligne politique évolue d’une critique de la politique des parlements de Francfort et de Berlin vers une ligne de plus en plus insurrectionnelle. Notamment pendant les crises de septembre et de novembre, son influence sur les démocrates est notable sans qu’elle puisse s’imposer entièrement. En réaction à un bilan négatif de la politique du mouvement démocrate, ses rédacteurs quittent leurs fonctions dirigeantes au sein du mouvement au printemps 1849 pour intégrer la fraternité ouvrière (Allgemeine Deutsche Arbeiterverbrüderung) de Leipzig. Cette décision correspond à une orientation vers l’espace public prolétarien ; le processus de cette réorientation est cependant interrompu par la fin de la révolution et ne pourra pas se concrétiser. / Our work has the objective of studying the function of die Neue Rheinische Zeitung during the German revolution in 1848. Our work is based on a corpus that consists of all the numbers of the journal that comprise of special editions and supplements. Our study analyses the conception of the newspaper as imagined by its founders, its journalistic creation as well as the evolution of its political direction. The basis of our analysis is the notion of public sphere, notably the bourgeois public sphere conceived by Jürgen Habermas in 1961 but also the notions of the plebeian public sphere and the proletarian public sphere. These notions had been developped by the research in the meantime.After having studied the situation of the public sphere in Germany and the evolution of the labour movement that already existed at the start of the revolution and the beginnings of die Neue Rheinische Zeitung, we developped the hypothesis that the journal was an independent project conceived for the bourgeois public sphere in parallel with the project of the Communist League, which was created for the attention of the labour movement and the emerging proletarian public sphere. The conception of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung takes its inspiration from his founders, namely chief contributor Karl Marx and his analyses about the situation in Germany and in Europe. According to his analysis, the newspaper had an impact on the course of the revolution. The first idea behind it is to put the progressive parties under pressure. Consequently, his strategy is to enter the democratic movement in order to push its members towards a political confrontation with the monarchy. At the start of its existence, it adapted itself to the criteria of the bourgeois public sphere and therefore matched the criteria and the political standards of journalism at that time in terms of writing skills, organization, production and distribution. Our statistics of the articles dealing with Germany and other foreign countries show that it is about a Prussian newspaper, which benefited from a wide network of correspondents in the regions and states in Germany as well as Europe. Information coming from European countries is extremely important, certainly because of the European conception which the journal developed of the revolution in 1848. A particular feature of the journal is that it followed all the changes of the public sphere during the revolution. Its politics was characterized by the defence of the revolution ad in the first instance of the Freedom of the Press. Confronted by a splitting up and a partial destruction of the bourgeois public sphere, the political movement started moving from a critic of the Parliaments in Frankfurt and Berlin into a more and more insurrectional direction against the government. During the crises of September and November 1848, its influence on the democrats is notable without being completely imposing. In reaction to the negative results of the democratic political movement, the contributors started quitting the leadership in Rhineland in spring 1849 to integrate die Allgemeine Deutsche Arbeiterverbrüderung of Leipzig. The decision corresponded to a changing direction towards the proletarian public sphere whose progress had been interrupted by the end of the revolution and could not be realized.