Condé Montrose Nast

Condé Montrose Nast (born March 26, 1873 in New York , † September 19, 1942 there ) was an American journalist and publisher.

Life

Nast was a son of the diplomat William F. Nast (1840-1893) and his wife Ethel A. Benoist, a daughter of the banker Louis Auguste Benoist (1803-1867); his paternal grandfather was the Methodist preacher William Nast (1807-1899). Nast was named after his uncle Condé L. Benoist.

Nast studied humanities at Georgetown University ( Georgetown ) and was able to successfully complete this degree in 1894. Immediately afterwards, he moved to Washington University ( St. Louis ) to study law for the next three years; He also completed this course with success.

In 1898, Nast got a job on the editorial staff of Collier's Weekly from his former fellow student Robert Collier and stayed there until 1907. During this time he also began publishing his own books and co-founded Lippincott's Monthly Magazine with Robert M. McBride . In 1902 he married Clarisse Coudert, a fashion designer with whom he had a daughter and a son. The couple separated in 1919 and divorced in Paris in 1925 .

Nast's grave in Hawthorne

After Nast left Collier's Weekly , he bought Vogue magazine and made it one of the top fashion journals in the United States. With the help and support of Frank Crownshield, his acquisition of Vanity Fair magazine soon became a huge success.

In 1928 Nast married Leslie Foster (* 1908), a granddaughter of George W. Baxter , and had a daughter with her. The couple divorced in 1932; The reason for the divorce was apparently Nast's relationship with the writer Helen Brown Norden , with whom Nast lived until 1936.

By founding Condé Nast Publishing , Nast was able to spread his journals and magazines even further. In addition, publishers were founded in Argentina, Germany ( Condé-Nast-Verlag ), Great Britain and France. Nast was almost ruined by the global economic crisis and could no longer build on his earlier economic successes until the end of his life.

Condé Montrose Nast died on September 19, 1942 in New York at the age of 69 and was buried in the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne .

literature

• Condé Montrose Nast . In: American Publishers , Vol. 1/2 (1986), ISSN  0887-9230 .
• Edwin Emery: History of the American Newspaper Publishers Association . Greenwood Press, Westport, Conn. 1970 (reprint of the Minneapolis 1950 edition)

Web links

• Condé Montrose Nast in the database of Find a Grave (English)