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Johann Carolus (26 March 1575 − 15 August 1634) was aGerman publisher of the firstnewspaper, calledRelation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien (English:Account of all distinguished and commemorable stories). TheRelation is recognised by theWorld Association of Newspapers,[1] as well as many authors,[2] as the world's first newspaper.
Carolus published theGerman-language newspaper inStrasbourg, which had the status of afree imperial city in theHoly Roman Empire.
Johann Carolus was born in 1575 inMuhlbach-sur-Munster in theHoly Roman Empire. He was the son of apriest and his wife. He made an apprenticeship as a bookbinder and later worked as a bookseller, ascribe for a newspaper and as a printshop owner.[3] Because of these professions, especially his job as scribe, he held good relationships to postmen and traders, what helped him later to create theRelation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien in 1605. Carolus died in 1634 in Strasbourg.
In 2005, theWorld 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[4] may be regarded as the birth certificate of the newspaper:
Whereas I have hitherto been in receipt of the weekly news advice [handwritten news 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 have 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 have set, printed and published the said advice in my printing workshop, likewise not without much effort, inasmuch as on each occasion I have had to remove the formes from the presses …"[5]
Soon theRelation was followed by other periodicals, such as, theAvisa 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) thenRelation was the first European newspaper.[6]
However the English historian of printingStanley Morison held that theRelation should be classified as anewsbook, on the grounds that it still employed the format and most of the conventions of a book: it is printed inquarto size and the text is set in a single wide column.[7] By Morison's definition, the world's first newspaper would be theDutchCourante 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.
