Hans von Held (1764-1842), a civil servant and writer working in the eastern parts of the Hohenzollern monarchy, was notorious as the author of various investigative writings and pamphlets. Because of his journalistic activities, he suffered a disciplinary transfer, imprisonment and dismissal from office. Using Held as an example, the study sheds light on the tense relationship between state and public in Prussia around 1800, the struggle for political influence, the press campaigns of radical writers against the administrative elite, but also the beginnings of state public relations, the censorship practice and the persecution of political journalists of the time.