Relation (1605): The World's First Printed Newspaper, Strasbourg

The Relation was a weekly news publication printed in Strasbourg by the bookseller Johann Carolus from about 1605, and it is widely recognised as the world’s first newspaper. Its full title, Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien, means roughly “Account of all distinguished and memorable news”. By printing regular, numbered issues of current news for sale to the public, Carolus created the format that would shape European communication for centuries.

Background: news before newspapers

By 1600 Europe already had a lively trade in news. Merchants, diplomats and princes relied on handwritten newsletters, known in Italian as avvisi, which were compiled in hubs such as Venice, Rome and Antwerp and copied for paying subscribers. The Fugger banking family of Augsburg collected thousands of them.

Printing, developed in Europe by Johannes Gutenberg, who had himself worked in Strasbourg, was already used for news. Single-sheet broadsides and pamphlets reported battles, disasters and wonders. From the 1580s the Messrelationen, digests pioneered by Michael von Aitzing in 1583 and later issued twice a year for the Frankfurt book fairs, summarised events of the past months. None of these, however, appeared frequently and regularly enough to count as a newspaper.

Johann Carolus and his weekly

Johann Carolus (1575–1634) was a Strasbourg bookseller and binder. Strasbourg was then a prosperous Protestant Free Imperial City of the Holy Roman Empire, well placed on routes linking Italy, the German lands and the Low Countries.

Carolus had been producing handwritten weekly newsletters for subscribers. In 1604 he bought the printing workshop of the late printer Thobias Jobin. He realised that setting the news in type would be quicker than having scribes copy it out, and he began to print his weekly.

The key evidence comes from a petition Carolus sent to the Strasbourg city council, generally dated to 1605. In it he explained that he had been receiving weekly reports and, because copying by hand was slow, had acquired a press and printed them for several weeks. He asked the council to forbid other printers from reprinting his news. The council does not appear to have granted the privilege, but the petition survived in the city archives.

What the Relation looked like

The oldest surviving copies are from 1609 and are held by Heidelberg University Library. Each issue was a small quarto pamphlet of a few pages. It had no headlines, pictures or advertisements.

Reports were arranged by the place they came from, each introduced with a dateline such as “from Rome” or “from Venice” and the date the report was sent. They covered wars, diplomacy, the doings of princes and the Ottoman frontier. Carolus did not comment on the news; he simply passed on what his correspondents’ letters contained.

Readers paid for the Relation by subscription, much as they had for handwritten newsletters, and copies were also passed from hand to hand and read aloud. Because each issue simply relayed letters from distant correspondents, news from Italy or Hungary might be several weeks old when it reached Strasbourg, and reports were sometimes contradicted in later issues. Carolus continued to publish for many years, and the paper is thought to have run under his successors after his death in 1634.

Media historians use four classic tests for a newspaper: regular publication, public availability, topicality and a broad range of subjects. The Relation met them all, which is why it is counted as the first.

Spread of the newspaper

The model spread quickly. The Aviso appeared in Wolfenbüttel in 1609, and weeklies followed in Basel, Frankfurt, Berlin and Hamburg within a decade. In Amsterdam the Courante uyt Italien, Duytslandt, &c. began in 1618, and Dutch printers soon produced English-language news sheets, called corantos, before London printers took them up in 1621.

The outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War in 1618 created a huge appetite for regular news in the German lands. In France, Théophraste Renaudot founded the Gazette in 1631, and in 1650 Leipzig gained the first daily, the Einkommende Zeitungen.

Recognition

Older claims had been made for other titles. Some historians pointed to the Aviso of Wolfenbüttel, whose earliest surviving issues are also from 1609, and others to earlier serial news digests, which appeared too rarely to qualify. For many years historians disputed which publication deserved the title of first newspaper. Research by the German press historian Johannes Weber on the Strasbourg petition helped settle the question. In 2005, the 400th anniversary, the World Association of Newspapers recognised the Relation as the first newspaper.

Timeline

• 1583: Michael von Aitzing publishes the first Messrelation news digest.
• 1604: Johann Carolus buys a Strasbourg printing workshop.
• 1605: Carolus petitions the city council about his printed weekly.
• 1609: Date of the oldest surviving issues; the Wolfenbüttel Aviso begins.
• 1618: Amsterdam’s first newspaper appears; the Thirty Years’ War begins.
• 1650: Leipzig’s Einkommende Zeitungen becomes the first daily.
• 2005: World Association of Newspapers recognises the Relation.

Why it matters

The Relation turned news from an occasional, expensive commodity into a regular printed product for the public. That simple change began the history of the newspaper and, in time, of the modern press, public opinion and journalism.