''Pester Lloyd'' is a German-language online daily newspaper from
Budapest
Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...
, Hungary with a focus "on Hungary and Eastern Europe".
History during the Austrian Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire
Its first stint of existence was from 1854 to 1945; until 1945 it was the leading German language publication in Hungary. Its origin was a vital part of the modernization of Hungary in the 1850s. Until then Hungary was part of the
Habsburg Empire
The Habsburg monarchy (german: Habsburgermonarchie, ), also known as the Danubian monarchy (german: Donaumonarchie, ), or Habsburg Empire (german: Habsburgerreich, ), was the collection of empires, kingdoms, duchies, counties and other polities ...
, ruled by the regime in Vienna. It chafed under restrictions which tended to see it as a vassal to be exploited for its agricultural products, for tax income, and for conscripts for the Austrian army, while at the same time keeping industrial development and financial power in Austrian hands. In the 1840s the political and business classes, led by
Lajos Kossuth and his vision pressed for change, but met with obstinate resistance in Vienna. The result, in 1848, was the
Hungarian Revolution which became a war for independence from Austria. Kossuth and his associates created an independent government and succeeded for a time, but upon Russian intervention it was quickly put down. In the aftermath the leaders of the rebellion were hanged, imprisoned or exiled and Hungary faced years of brutal military occupation by the Austrian army. All political life was totally stamped out.
Far-sighted individuals who survived all this now asked themselves, what can we do to rebuild Hungary? Organizations or publications of the least political nature were clearly out of the question but Austrian policy allowed, even encouraged, economic development—in the late 1830s investment in the building of railroads had created great profits and the banks in Vienna had an appetite for more of the same.
The political and financial heart of Hungary was the sprawling market city of Pest, the portion of present-day Budapest on the left bank of the Danube. Its location there had over many centuries made it a trading center for merchandise moving between northern Europe and the East — Turkey, Russia and beyond. Its quarterly expositions mounted 900 booths and attracted thousands of dealers. In 1844, 15,000 wagon loads plus 947 river boatloads of goods were sold in the markets of Pest. The main products were agricultural: wool, wheat, tobacco, swine and cattle.
Despite all that commerce Pest had little industrial facilities. The only sizable steam engines (40 and 60 HP) were in the two small rolling mills for metal. Beyond that a mere 13 additional small steam engines of 3 to 12 HP were to be found among the two oil mills, a silk factory, three other textile mills with a mere total of 45 looms, and a few other small industries.
So the life of Pest was more about trading than industry. In 1846 it had a wholesale merchants’ association with 36 members,. There were also two retail merchants associations: a Gentile one with 245 members and a Jewish one with 136 members. Craft guilds with a total of 3445 members existed as well.
Aside from those modest organizations Pest was an inchoate city of individuals, more like an oriental bazaar than a modern society. As a result of its rapid growth in just a few decades, the business community was made up largely of newcomers from the far reaches of the Habsburg Empire, so most of the business people were strangers to one another.
Among the mercantile elements in Pest were some who had a vision for political and economic progress. That vision was to turn this mass of people into a community that worked together and would have an economic operation as modern as those of London, Paris or Vienna, if not as large.
These men had a clear plan for carrying out their vision and by 1853 it took the form of an association which they named Die Pester Lloyd Gesellschaft. It differed greatly from the earlier merchants’ associations: first, membership was open without religious distinction; second, it included as honorary members dignitaries, officials, educated people and artists. The enthusiastic reception of this project was shown by the initial enrollment of 620 members.
From the first it was designed to work on two levels, the social and the technical. On the social level Pester Lloyd quickly began to organize weekly concerts, social events, and lectures on natural science, chemistry, geology, etc. As a venue for this public life they obtained the Casino, the largest hall in the city. Once refurbished, it was the handsomest as well.
On the technical level the Gesellschaft took three steps: They established a grain exchange hall, a bourse (stock market), and a daily newspaper, the Pester-Lloyd Tagesblatt. The paper carried general news, official announcements, rail and boat schedules, exchange rates and market quotations. In the 50-year retrospective volume of the Pester Lloyd Gesellschaft issued in 1903, the Tagesblatt is designated as the outstanding product of the organization.
Born under conditions of severe censorship, the Tagesblatt focused primarily on the Hungarian economic world at first. In small steps, however, the editor Dr. Johann Weisz expanded that agenda. Working with the quiet but esteemed political statesman
Ferenc Deák he found ways to spread liberal ideas, to quietly help their supporters, and to advance the concept of the Hungarian state in a period when it was non-existent as such. It grew from a paper dealing primarily with commercial matters to become as much of a political newspaper as they could push against the limits.
Incidentally Weisz’s knowledge of history and politics was so profound that when the talk of a new Hungarian government began in 1861 the national leaders, Deak and
Gyula Andrássy turned to him for guidance. The treatise that he produced, "The Struggle for the
Hungarian Constitution
The Fundamental Law of Hungary ( hu, Magyarország alaptörvénye), the country's constitution, was adopted by parliament on 18 April 2011, promulgated by the president a week later and entered into force on 1 January 2012. It is Hungary's first c ...
," published in the Egydische series, became an oft-cited textbook.
In the period when German was the official language, the Tagesblatt was the leading newspaper in the country. Even after Hungarian became the official language again, German still remained the dominant lingua franca in foreign trade, and Pester Lloyd has continuously been the strongest German-language publication in Hungary. Over the years it was prominent enough to attract such internationally famous contributors as
Theodor Herzl
Theodor Herzl; hu, Herzl Tivadar; Hebrew name given at his brit milah: Binyamin Ze'ev (2 May 1860 – 3 July 1904) was an Austro-Hungarian Jewish lawyer, journalist, playwright, political activist, and writer who was the father of modern po ...
,
Max Nordau
Max Simon Nordau (born ''Simon Maximilian Südfeld''; 29 July 1849 – 23 January 1923) was a Zionist leader, physician, author, and social critic.
He was a co-founder of the Zionist Organization together with Theodor Herzl, and president or vic ...
,
Thomas Mann
Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novell ...
,
Stefan Zweig,
Joseph Roth
Moses Joseph Roth (2 September 1894 – 27 May 1939) was an Austrian journalist and novelist, best known for his family saga '' Radetzky March'' (1932), about the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, his novel of Jewish life '' Job'' ...
,
Alfred Polgar
Alfred Polgar (originally: Alfred Polak) 17 October 1873, Vienna – 24 April 1955, Zurich) was an Austrian-born columnist, theater critic, writer and occasionally translator.
All in all, he was one of the most important protagonists of the Wien ...
,
Ferenc Molnár
Ferenc Molnár ( , ; born Ferenc Neumann; 12 January 18781 April 1952), often anglicized as Franz Molnar, was a Hungarian-born author, stage-director, dramatist, and poet, widely regarded as Hungary’s most celebrated and controversial play ...
,
Dezső Kosztolányi
Dezső Kosztolányi (; March 29, 1885 – November 3, 1936) was a Hungarian writer, journalist, translator and also a speaker of Esperanto. He wrote in all literary genres, from poetry to essays to theatre plays. Building his own style, he used ...
,
Egon Erwin Kisch
Egon Erwin Kisch (29 April 1885 – 31 March 1948) was an Austrian and Czechoslovak writer and journalist, who wrote in German. He styled himself ''Der Rasende Reporter'' (The Raging Reporter) for his countless travels to the far corners of the ...
,
Bertha von Suttner,
Franz Werfel
Franz Viktor Werfel (; 10 September 1890 – 26 August 1945) was an Austrian- Bohemian novelist, playwright, and poet whose career spanned World War I, the Interwar period, and World War II. He is primarily known as the author of ''The For ...
and
Felix Salten
Felix Salten (; 6 September 1869 – 8 October 1945) was an Austro-Hungarian author and literary critic in Vienna.
Life and death
Salten was born Siegmund Salzmann on 6 September 1869 in Pest, Austria-Hungary. His father was Fülöp Salzmann, t ...
.
History during Nazi-Germany
Being published outside the
Third Reich's borders until
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, Pester Lloyd was not subject to Nazi
Gleichschaltung and thus, in an article on 16 September 1935, openly criticized the
antisemitic Nuremberg Laws
The Nuremberg Laws (german: link=no, Nürnberger Gesetze, ) were antisemitic and racist laws that were enacted in Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935, at a special meeting of the Reichstag convened during the annual Nuremberg Rally of ...
of 1935. The paper spoke of the laws allowing an extent of
discrimination unheard of in history and compared the situation of the
Jew
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""T ...
s in Nazi Germany to those of the
Helots
The helots (; el, εἵλωτες, ''heílotes'') were a subjugated population that constituted a majority of the population of Laconia and Messenia – the territories ruled by Sparta. There has been controversy since antiquity as to their e ...
, a slave class in the
ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...
state of
Sparta
Sparta ( Doric Greek: Σπάρτα, ''Spártā''; Attic Greek: Σπάρτη, ''Spártē'') was a prominent city-state in Laconia, in ancient Greece. In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon (, ), while the name Sparta referre ...
.
Since 1994 and online version
In 1994 the publication resumed as a weekly magazine under the proud title ''Der Neue Pester Lloyd''. The initial title ''Pester Lloyd'' was restored in 1999 (editor in chief:
Gotthard B. Schicker).
Since 2004, the ''Wiener Lloyd'' is part of the publication every four to six weeks, as an insert, reflecting the relations between the two capitals,
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
and Budapest, of the former
Austro-Hungarian Empire.
In June 2009 the Pester Lloyd's print version was discontinued for economic reasons. New articles can still be read on the newspaper's website.
The Pester Lloyd can only be read on the internet in the future – article on Népszabadság.hu
/ref>
References
Anton Deutsch, Die Pester Lloyd Gesellschaft, 1903
Johann Weisz Obituary, Pester Lloyd Tagesblatt, 5. November 1900
External links
Webseite der Zeitung
(the newspaper's website (German))
Archiv des Pester Lloyd der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek
(Archive of the Pester Lloyd at the Austrian National Library
The Austrian National Library (german: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek) is the largest library in Austria, with more than 12 million items in its various collections. The library is located in the Neue Burg Wing of the Hofburg in center of V ...
(German))
Beitrag des KuBus, des Magazins des Goethe-Instituts über den Pester Lloyd
(Article on the Pester Lloyd in KuBUs, the magazin of the Goethe Institute
The Goethe-Institut (, GI, en, Goethe Institute) is a non-profit German cultural association operational worldwide with 159 institutes, promoting the study of the German language abroad and encouraging international cultural exchange and ...
(German))
{{Authority control
Daily newspapers published in Hungary
Mass media in Austria-Hungary
Newspapers published in Budapest
German-language newspapers published in Hungary
European news websites
Publications established in 1854
Publications disestablished in 1945
History of Budapest