The opinions of individuals upon political affairs were principally conveyed in a form which was then considered particularly ingenious, as pasquinades or dialogues. These small news sheets were innumerable, and their spread was rapid; after the Reformation it became a separate branch of industry. The booksellers, or as they were then called, stationers, who offered these newspapers for sale in their shops and stalls, and introduced them to the markets of foreign cities, made a dangerous competition with the printers, bookbinders, and illuminators. Important newspapers were everywhere pirated. Along the great trade and post roads, more particularly of the Rhine and southern Germany, certain trading and printing establishments made special gains from the communication of the daily news; for example, Wendelin Borsch, at the Tiler's Hut in Nuremberg, about 1571, Michael Enzinger at Cologne, at the end of the century, and others. These sheets at first were published very irregularly, but they already contained a correspondence from different cities, in which not only political, but mercantile intelligence was given.[32] At last, in 1612, appeared here and there separate newspaper sheets in numbers, and in a certain degree of continuity. Meanwhile it had been long the custom of the merchants to make such communications to their mercantile friends with some regularity, so that there already existed news-writers who were in the habit of forwarding written newspapers. This method of spreading intelligence had come to Germany from Italy. In Venice, from the year 1536, there were _Notizie Scritte_, written news in successive series, which continued there till the French Revolution. There also, appeared the first regular newspaper shortly before 1600, which it is stated took the name of _Gazzetta_ from a little coin which was the cost of the single numbers. Soon after, the German newspapers began to appear regularly. In 1615 the first weekly newspaper was published at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, by Egenolf Emmel, bookseller and printer. In opposition to which, in 1616, the Imperial deputy postmaster Johann van der Brighden, published a competing paper called 'Political Notices.' From these two undertakings resulted the oldest German newspapers, the 'Frankfort Journal,' and the 'Oberpostamts Zeitung.' But these and other weekly papers were for a long time, only news sheets in which opinions on the facts communicated were carefully withheld. The great stream of public opinion still continued for two centuries to run in the old direction; the flying leaves and occasional brochures.