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Baron Paul Julius De Reuter

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Baron Paul Julius De Reuter 1 Baron Paul Julius de Reuter By Paul H. Emden, F.R.S.L. IHE desire for news, to be informed of what is happening elsewhere is as old as civilization and the Jews, like other have been eager to learn. Thus, A people, always scattered over Europe and beyond, they have always carried on a busy correspon? dence with relatives, business connections and friends. By thismeans they sometimes obtained news of consequence in circles wider than their own, from abroad and, as happened occasionally in English history, were able to be of appreciable service to the Government of the country whose protection they enjoyed. Jews may therefore be said to have been by heredity, stretched over a score of centuries, specially equipped for the dissemination of news. About 1830 Karl Friedrich Gauss, a great physicist but a still greatermathematician, began in Goettingen, a Hanoverian university town, his electro-magnetic researches and three years later the first electric telegram could be sent from his laboratory to the one mile distant astronomical observatory. The event created, as might be expected, a considerable stir and among those duly impressed was a sixteen year old bank clerk at Goettingen, Israel Beer Josaphat who, having left school three years earlier, knew practi? cally nothing of electricity or physics. However, he made the acquaintance of the great scientist and itmay well be that he was enlightened as to the possibilities of the embryonic invention. Hitherto the collection and quick dissemination of news had been dependent on the homing instinct of carrier pigeons. Balzac inMonographie de la Presse Parisienne (1843) reveals2 how news from abroad was patched together. Newspapers in Paris employed translators who rendered into French reports and portions of the leading articles from the great journals of all Europe. According to their taste and political conviction the editors added only the juice, "ils joint aux nouvelles la sauce." In 1835 these translators, Balzac continues, became superfluous and lost their jobs because a universal provider of translated news, a Monsieur Havas, had established himself in the Rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau within easy reach of theGeneral Post Office, Stock Exchange and Produce Exchange, and handed out lithographed foreign news to all who paid for it. This Monsieur Havas was Charles Louis Havas, a Sephardi Jewish merchant, hailing from Oporto, whose office developed into the Agence Havas, the leading French news agency. He, however, had not been the first in the field?the pioneer was the German Jew, Boernstein, who formed in 1831 in Paris, the Correspondance Gamier, which was two or three years later acquired by Havas. Among the clerks whom Havas gathered round him was the young man who sixteen years earlier had come in contact with Gauss when the first telegraphic message had been sent. Josaphat remained with Havas for some years until, in the spring of 1849, with not much experience, inadequate financial means but unbounded courage, he began to publish, in Paris, his own lithographed news-sheet. Israel Beer Josaphat, was born in 1816 at Cassel, the capital ofHesse-Cassel in which at that time (until 1821) the Elector William I, the great customer and patron ofMayer Amschel Rothschild, still ruled. Israel Beer was the son of Samuel Levi Josaphat who 1 read before the Historical of on 7th 1951. 2 Paper Jewish Society England February, Page 375 of the English translationpublished in 1872. u 215 Jewish Historical Society of England is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to Transactions Jewish Historical Society of England ® www.jstor.org 216 BARON JULIUS DE REUTER had come fromWitzenhausen?a small Hessian town in the neighbourhood of Casse\, in which his father had been legal adviser to the Jewish community?and, following the example ofmany other Jewswho had also left their birth places, called himself Samuel Witzenhausen. Hereditary family names had not yet been made compulsory for Jews. He had a great reputation for learning and was in 1814 appointed Rabbi (Oberlandesrabbiner) at Cassel which position he occupied until his premature death in 1829. An elder son, Gerson, born in 1808, followed the same vocation. After his father's death he was elected his successor but resigned two years later to study at the universities of Bonn and Marburg. The famous community of Halberstadt, in which Jews had lived since 1261, appointed him, in 1837, their rabbi and in this position and that of head of the Halberstaedter Klaus,1 founded in 1703 and reorganized by him in 1858,Gerson Josaphat remained for forty-six years until his death in 1883. Israel Beer Josaphat, the younger son, was intended for a business career and at the age of thirteen he was sent to a relative named Benfey,2 a banker. However, he soon abandoned banking and changed to bookselling at Rodenberg, a small place in the neighbourhood of Cassel where he was employed by Simon Gumpert Levy.3 Early in the 1840's Israel Beer settled in Berlin, took a share in an established bookshop and publishing house and became the driving force in the firm Reuter and Stargardt. Financially the venture was a success : the bookshop existed for over ninety years and is still flourishing as J. A. Stargardt inHamburg. They published in the course of its career a number of political pamphlets and brochures, all of a progressive and democratic character. When the revolution broke out in 1848 and failed, Israel Beer resolved to turn his back upon Germany and settled in Paris. In the meantime important changes had taken place in the young man's private life. At the age of twenty-eight he had accepted baptism and taken the name of Paul Julius Reuter. A year after his conversion, in 1845, he married Ida Maria Magnus, daughter of S. M. Magnus, an influential and wealthy Jewish banker of Berlin and only with the financial assistance of his father-in-law had he been able to become a partner in the bookselling business. In Paris, however, when pubUshing his own news-sheet, he seems to have been without financial backing, and he had to be not only editor but also printer and book-keeper, assisted only by his young wife. The office was their one living-room and there, working on the same lines as Havas, extracts from French and foreign papers were translated and sent to the not very numerous subscribers in German provincial towns. Despite all their work, however, the venture failed; the news-sheet stopped publication and Reuter and his wife leftParis. Twenty years had by now passed since the first experiments were made with the electro magnet. Gauss' invention had been greatly improved and on October 1, 1849, the first public telegraph line had been opened. It connected Berlin with Aachen, the most westerly Prussian town, a commercially negligible place; but Brussels, only 77 miles distant, was an important centre. Immediately after the opening of the 1 A Klaus-Klause (Cloister) or Bet Hamidrash?is a house of study in which Talmudic scholars are given free lodging and often also a stipend in order that they may devote all their time to the study of the Talmud, sometimes also to and 2 teaching lecturing. Theodor Benfey, another cousin, was a distinguished Sanskrit scholar at Goettingen. 3 Levy's son, Julius, changed his name to that of his native town and as Julius Rodenberg became a great figure in German letters. He formed in 1874, the Deutsche Rundschau, for almost half a century, and again now after the downfall of the Nazi regime, the most distinguished literary magazine in Germany. A brother-in-law of Rodenberg was Sir Ernest Schiff who, born in Trieste, settled in London and became a wealthy stockbroker and philanthropist. BARON JULIUS DE REUTER 217 Prussian line Reuter established himself at Aachen. From the first he had recognized that in order to have speedy news he must himself create the means of communication where they were lacking. So he did now on a small scale what he accomplished later on a much larger one, by connecting Aachen and Brussels by a carrier-pigeon service. By thismeans he gained six or eight hours and was able to handle direct messages from Paris and Berlin and vice versa, and to supply local and provincial bankers and merchants with financial information. With a foothold in Cologne where, for a short time he had an office,Reuter could venture further afield and brought "Mr. Reuter's Prices"?stock exchange and commodity quotations?from themain European centres to Brussels and Antwerp. The despatches he now offered were not necessarily copied from the press but in a great part compiled in various cities by his "own correspondents," "own," of course, in the journalistic sense. It was not very long before most of the capitals of the Continent were brought into direct telegraphic communication and when both lines from Paris and Berlin had been further extended, narrowing the gap to a negligible five miles, Reuter's pigeons were replaced by relays of horses. When, however, just after Christmas, 1850, both capitals were linked up by electric wire, Reuter definitely lost what was his only monopoly in operation?the bridging of the gap?and there was no longer any purpose in remaining at Aachen. Reuter had the valuable gift of getting to know the right people at the right time and so at that critical juncture he met Werner (von) Siemens when the great electrical engineer was building the extension of themain line fromAachen toVerviers. Siemens reports of the meeting1 In the course of the construction of that line I made the acquaintance of the owner of the pigeon post between Cologne2 and Brussels, a Mr.
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