Johann Carolus (26 March 1575 − 15 August 1634) was a German publisher of the first

newspaper A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, 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 poli ...

, called ''Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien'' (). The ''Relation'' is recognised by the World Association of Newspapers, as well as many authors, as the world's first newspaper. Carolus published the

German-language German (, ) is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, mainly spoken in Western and Central Europe. It is the majority and official (or co-official) language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. It is a ...

newspaper in

Strasbourg Strasbourg ( , ; ; ) is the Prefectures in France, prefecture and largest city of the Grand Est Regions of France, region of Geography of France, eastern France, in the historic region of Alsace. It is the prefecture of the Bas-Rhin Departmen ...

, which had the status of a free imperial city in the

Holy Roman Empire The Holy Roman Empire, also known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation after 1512, was a polity in Central and Western Europe, usually headed by the Holy Roman Emperor. It developed in the Early Middle Ages, and lasted for a millennium ...

Life

Johann Carolus was born in 1575 in Muhlbach-sur-Munster in the

. 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 deity, deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in parti ...

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 Printing press, automatic printing. The work of scribes can involve copying manuscripts and other texts as well as ...

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 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: 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 '' 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.

Notes and references

Citations

Sources

* *

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, Germany
Mitchell Stephens, "History of Newspapers," from ''Collier's Encyclopedia''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Carolus, Johann German male journalists German journalists German printers 17th-century German publishers (people) German newspaper publishers (people) 17th-century newspaper publishers (people) 1575 births 1634 deaths 17th-century German male writers 17th-century German inventors 17th-century journalists