Viktor Mataja · 1916
Viktor Mataja’s Die Reklame offers a systematic political-economic account of advertising as one of the institutions that organize modern exchange. It does not treat advertising chiefly as ornament, nuisance, or fraud, but as a practical means by which production and consumption are brought into relation under conditions of distance, competition, and mass distribution.
In diesem Netz von Erscheinungen, die sich aus der Herstellung einer Verbindung zwischen Erzeugung und Verbrauch ergeben, fällt auch der Reklame ein Platz zu.
English translation: In this web of phenomena that arise from establishing a connection between production and consumption, advertising too has its place.
Mataja’s central conceptual move is to define advertising before judging it. Reklame is first a mode of public making-known: it may persuade, praise, exaggerate, or mislead, but those are secondary possibilities rather than its essence. This lets him separate advertising’s economic function from its abuses and ask how visibility itself becomes a condition of business life.
Reklame ist, wie schon gesagt, vor allem und ihrem Wesen nach Bekanntmachung, aber nicht notwendigerweise Bekanntmachung verbunden mit offener oder versteckter Anempfehlung oder Zuerkennung vorteilhafter Eigenschaften.
English translation: Advertising is, as already said, above all and in its essence announcement, but not necessarily announcement combined with open or hidden recommendation or the attribution of advantageous qualities.
The book’s strongest theoretical claim is that advertising creates a dispersed substitute for the market-place. Instead of buyers encountering goods gathered in one physical location, notices circulate through newspapers, posters, catalogues, letters, and other media. Advertising thus overcomes limits of time and place by staging commercial presence wherever attention can be reached.
Die Reklame schafft einen Zustand, der einem Markte vergleichbar ist, auf dem die Waren zur Schau und Auswahl bereitgestellt werden, nur wirkt sie viel ausgedehnter, weil unabhängig von bestimmten Zeitpunkten und vom Erscheinen der Interessenten.
English translation: Advertising creates a condition comparable to a market on which goods are set out for viewing and selection, only it operates far more extensively, since it is independent of particular points in time and of the appearance of interested parties.
From this premise Mataja turns to the concrete media and institutions of advertising. He gives special weight to the press, whose advertising income sustains circulation, lowers prices, and changes the economics of journalism. Newspapers are not only carriers of opinion or information; they are also commercial surfaces on which notices compete for rapid recognition. Mataja therefore anticipates later theories of attention by stressing that advertisements are scanned more than read.
Der Anzeigenteil hat in der Tat mehr Beschauer als Leser.
English translation: The advertisement section has in fact more viewers than readers.
This insight shapes his discussion of advertising technique. The effective advertisement must be visible, but visibility alone is not enough: it must still answer the practical expectations of a business notice. Mataja is critical of tasteless, intrusive, or dishonest forms because they damage public tolerance of advertising as a whole. His argument is pragmatic rather than puritanical: advertising is legitimate when it clarifies market possibilities, but it becomes socially destructive when it overwhelms common spaces or substitutes noise for information.
The final sections place advertising within public administration and law. Because advertising depends on streets, postal systems, newspapers, and taxation regimes, the state cannot be absent from its development. Mataja treats regulation neither as simple repression nor as blind support. Outdoor advertising may require restraint; postal arrangements may encourage circulation; taxation may seem attractive but risks administrative difficulty and injury to the press.
Die Einwendungen, die der Anzeigensteuer entgegenstehen, entstammen übrigens in erster Linie den Schwierigkeiten bei Veranlagung der Steuer, sowie den Gefahren einer Schädigung der Presse.
English translation: The objections raised against the advertisement tax stem, moreover, primarily from the difficulties in assessing the tax, as well as from the dangers of harming the press.
The importance of Die Reklame lies in this combination of market theory, media analysis, and institutional realism. Mataja presents advertising as a structural feature of modern economic life: it organizes knowledge, creates comparability, finances communication systems, and exposes private enterprise to public regulation. His account remains striking because it defines advertising as announcement before persuasion, treats attention as an economic resource, and shows that the legitimacy of advertising depends on disciplined technique as much as commercial effectiveness.
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