Forum… Or Against ’em

Count von Olsen

By Count Friedrich von Olsen
Do any of you know who Paul Julius Freiherr von Reuter was? He died something like a couple of decades before I was born – in 1899. Paul Reuter, who was also known as Baron de Reuter, is the sort of guy I might know something about. So, in the spirit that my readers, or at least some of them, want to know what I know, here goes…
He was a German entrepreneur, born on July 21, 1816. He would become a major innovator – a pioneer of the forerunner of today’s media. He was involved in telegraphy and he used it to make a major stride in news reporting. He was both a reporter and and eventual media owner. Look at his name again, dear reader. Yes, he was the founder of Reuters, the Reuters News Agency.
At the time of his birth in Kassel, Germany, he was not known as Paul Julius Friherr von Reuter. His birth name was Israel Josaphat. His father was Samuel Levi Josaphat, a rabbi. His mother was Betty Sanders…
As a young man, he ended up in Göttingen, where he became acquainted with Carl Friedrich Gauss, who was experimenting with the transmission of electrical signals via wire. He did not master this cutting edge technology at that time, but it did make an impression on him. He went to work in a bank, as a teller…
Along the way, he met a Lutheran girl, Ida Maria Elizabeth Clementine Magnus of Berlin. Ida was the daughter of a Lutheran minister. In October of 1845, he sojourned to London, using the name Julius Josaphat. On November 16, 1845, in a ceremony at St. George’s German Lutheran Chapel in London he converted to Christianity and changed his name to Paul Julius Reuter. One week later, in the same chapel, he married Ida…
He returned to Berlin and in 1847 became a partner in Reuter and Stargardt, a Berlin book-publishing firm, one that involved itself in the printing and distribution of radical pamphlets during the 1848 Revolution. His radical ways became a focus of the government and late in 1848 he left for Paris and went to work as a journalist with the Charles-Louis Havas’ news agency, the future Agence France Presse. Telegraphy was evolving and advancing and Reuter returned to Germany, this time to Aachen, utilizing carrier pigeons to convey information between Brussels and Aachen. This linked Berlin to Paris. Pigeons were faster than the trains of that day. Reuter thus had faster access to financial news from the Paris stock exchange than others. He was exposed to those who set up a direct telegraph link, which obviated the need for the pigeons…
After a telegraph line was constructed between Britain and Europe, Reuter moved to England in 1851, where he opened a telegraph office near the London stock exchange. At first his business was confined mostly to commercial telegrams, but, with daily newspapers flourishing, he persuaded several publishers to subscribe to his service. His first spectacular success came in 1859 when he transmitted to London the text of a speech by Napoleon III foreshadowing the Austro-French Piedmontese war in Italy…
On March 17, 1857, Reuter was naturalized as a British subject. On September 7, 1871, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha conferred a barony (Freiherr) on Julius Reuter. The title was later “confirmed by Queen Victoria as conferring the privileges of the nobility in England.”
In 1863 he privately erected a telegraph link to Crookhaven, the farthest southwest point of Ireland. On nearing Crookhaven, ships from America threw canisters containing news into the sea. These were retrieved by Reuters and telegraphed directly to London, arriving long before the ships reached Cork…
With this stroke of genius, away Reuter went…
The spread of undersea cables helped Reuter extend his service to other continents. After several years of competition, Reuter and two rival services, Havas of France and Wolff of Germany, agreed on a geographic division of territory, leaving Havas and Wolff their respective countries, parts of Europe, and South America. The three agencies held a virtual monopoly on world press services for many years…
In 1872, Nasir al-Din Shah, the Shah of Iran, signed an agreement with Reuter, a concession selling him all railroads, canals, most of the mines, all the government’s forests, and all future industries of Iran. George Nathaniel Curzon called it “The most complete and extraordinary surrender of the entire industrial resources of a kingdom into foreign hands that has ever been dreamed of.” The Reuter concession was immediately denounced by all of Persian society, and Reuter had to cancel it…
The Baron retired as managing director of Reuters in 1878…
Reuter had three sons; Herbert, 2nd Baron de Reuter (succeeded by his son Hubert as 3rd Baron), George Reuter and Alfred Reuter. Clementine Maria, one of his daughters, married Count Otto Stenbock, and after Stenbock’s death, Sir Herbert Chermside, a governor of Queensland. George had two sons, Oliver, 4th Baron de Reuter, and Ronald Reuter. The last member of the family, Marguerite, Baroness de Reuter, widow of the 4th Baron and Paul Julius Reuter’s granddaughter-in-law, died in 2009, at the age of 96.
Paul Julius Reuter died in 1899 at Villa Reuter, Nice, France. His final resting place is in West Norwood Cemetery in south London.

Leave a Reply