Johann Carolus (26 March 1575 − 15 August 1634) was a
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
publisher of the first
newspaper
A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background.
Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, spor ...
, called ''Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien'' (Account of all distinguished and commemorable stories). The ''Relation'' is recognised by the
World Association of Newspapers
The World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) is a non-profit, non-governmental organization made up of 76 national newspaper associations, 12 news agencies, 10 regional press organisations, and many individual newspaper ...
, as well as many authors, as the world's first newspaper.
Carolus published the
German-language
German ( ) is a West Germanic language mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Italian province of South Tyrol. It is also a ...
newspaper in
Strasbourg
Strasbourg (, , ; german: Straßburg ; gsw, label= Bas Rhin Alsatian, Strossburi , gsw, label= Haut Rhin Alsatian, Strossburig ) is the prefecture and largest city of the Grand Est region of eastern France and the official seat of the ...
, which had the status of a
free imperial city
In the Holy Roman Empire, the collective term free and imperial cities (german: Freie und Reichsstädte), briefly worded free imperial city (', la, urbs imperialis libera), was used from the fifteenth century to denote a self-ruling city that ...
in the
Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation
The Holy Roman Empire was a political entity in Western, Central, and Southern Europe that developed during the Early Middle Ages and continued until its dissolution in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars.
From the accession of Otto I in 962 unt ...
.
Life
Johann Carolus was born in 1575 in
Muhlbach-sur-Munster in the
Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation
The Holy Roman Empire was a political entity in Western, Central, and Southern Europe that developed during the Early Middle Ages and continued until its dissolution in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars.
From the accession of Otto I in 962 unt ...
. He was the son of a
priest
A priest is a religious leader authorized to perform the sacred rituals of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and one or more deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in partic ...
and his wife. He made an apprenticeship as a bookbinder and later worked as a bookseller, a
scribe
A scribe is a person who serves as a professional copyist, especially one who made copies of manuscripts before the invention of automatic printing.
The profession of the scribe, previously widespread across cultures, lost most of its promi ...
for a newspaper and as a printshop owner.
Because of these professions, especially his job as scribe, he held good relationships to postmen and traders, what helped him later to create the ''Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien'' in 1605. Carolus died in 1634 in Strasbourg.
Dates
In 2005, the
World Association of Newspapers
The World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) is a non-profit, non-governmental organization made up of 76 national newspaper associations, 12 news agencies, 10 regional press organisations, and many individual newspaper ...
accepted evidence that the Carolus pamphlet was printed beginning in 1605, not 1609 as previously thought. The Carolus petition discovered in the Strasbourg Municipal Archive during the 1980s may be regarded as the birth certificate of the newspaper:
:"Whereas I have hitherto been in receipt of the weekly news advice
andwritten news reportsand, in recompense for some of the expenses incurred yearly, have informed yourselves every week regarding an annual allowance; Since, however, the copying has been slow and has necessarily taken much time, and since, moreover, I have recently purchased at a high and costly price the former printing workshop of the late Thomas Jobin and placed and installed the same in my house at no little expense, albeit only for the sake of gaining time, and since for several weeks, and now for the twelfth occasion, I have set, printed and published the said advice in my printing workshop, likewise not without much effort, inasmuch as on each occasion I have had to remove the formes from the presses …"
[Johannes Weber, "Straßburg, 1605. The Origins of the Newspaper in Europe", ''German History'' 24/2006, pp. 387–412 (409ff.)]
Soon the ''Relation'' was followed by other periodicals, such as, the ''
Avisa Relation oder Zeitung''.
If a newspaper is defined by the functional criteria of publicity, seriality, periodicity, and currency or actuality (that is, as a single current-affairs series published regularly at intervals short enough for readers to keep abreast of incoming news) then ''Relation'' was the first European newspaper.
However the English historian of printing
Stanley Morison held that the ''Relation'' should be classified as a
newsbook, on the grounds that it still employed the format and most of the conventions of a book: it is printed in
quarto
Quarto (abbreviated Qto, 4to or 4º) is the format of a book or pamphlet produced from full sheets printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded twice to produce four leaves. The leaves are then trimmed along the folds to produc ...
size and the text is set in a single wide column.
[Morison, S. (1980) The Origins of the Newspaper. In ''Selected Essays on the History of Letter-Forms in Manuscript and Print'', (Ed, McKitterick, D.) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,] By Morison's definition, the world's first newspaper would be the
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
''
Courante uyt Italien, Duytslandt, &c.'' from 1618. By the same definition no German, English, French, or Italian weekly or daily news publications from the first half of the seventeenth century could be considered "newspapers" either. As noted above, the World Association of Newspapers and many others have not adopted his definition.
See also
*
List of newspapers by date
Notes and references
Further reading
* Pettegree, Andrew. ''The Invention of News: How the World Came to Know about Itself'' (Yale University Press, 2014)
* Weber, Johannes. "Strassburg, 1605: The origins of the newspaper in Europe." ''German History'' (2006) 24#3 pp: 387-412.
*
External links
University Heidelberg, ''Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien''- Facsimile of 1609
*
ttp://www.mainz.de/WGAPublisher/online/html/default/mkuz-6btk5k.de.0 "400 Jahre Zeitung," exhibition at Gutenberg Museum, Mainz, Germanybr>
Mitchell Stephens, "History of Newspapers," from ''Collier's Encyclopedia''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Carolus, Johann
German male journalists
German journalists
German printers
17th-century German newspaper publishers (people)
1575 births
1634 deaths
German male writers
17th-century German inventors
17th-century journalists