Everything about Johann Carolus totally explained
Johann Carolus (
1575 -
1634) was the publisher of the first
newspaper, called
Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien (Collection of all distinguished and commemorable news). The
Relation is recognised by the
World Association of Newspapers, as well as many authors as the world's first newspaper. The German
Relation was published in
Strassburg, which had the status of an
imperial free city in the
Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.
Dating
In 2005, the
World Association of Newspapers accepted evidence that Carolus' pamphlet was printed beginning in
1605, not 1609 as previously thought. Carolus' petition discovered in the
Strasbourg Municipal Archive
in the 1980s may be regarded as the birth certificate of the newspaper:
» Whereas I've hitherto been in receipt of the weekly news advice [handwrittennews reports] and, 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've 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've set, printed and published the said advice in my printing workshop, likewise not without much effort, inasmuch as on each occasion I've had to remove the formes from the presses …
The
Relation was soon followed by other periodicals, such as the
Avisa Relation oder Zeitung.
Definition
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 regularly published at intervals short enough to keep abreast of incoming news) then it was the first European newspaper. English historian of printing
Stanley Morison, using a criterion of format rather than function, held that the
Relation should be classified as a newsbook, on the grounds that it still employs the format and most of the conventions of a book: it's printed in
quarto size, it features a separate title page, the text is set in a single wide column etc. By this definition, the world's first newspaper is the
Dutch Courante uyt Italien, Duytslandt, &c. from
1618, but by the same definition almost no German, English, French or Italian weekly (or even daily) news publications from the first half of the 17th century can be considered "newspapers".
Notes and references
Further Information
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