Heinrich Mercy

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Heinrich Mercy (born August 26, 1826 in Heidelberg , † December 26, 1912 in Graz ) was a bookseller and publisher from Germany and active in Prague , as well as the founder and editor of the newspaper Prager Tagblatt .

Heinrich Mercy (1912)

Education and career

Heinrich Mercy, born in Heidelberg , devoted himself to the book trade from an early age. He spent his apprenticeship years in the Grand Duchy of Baden , Offenburg and Heidelberg. In 1845 he came to Prague for the first time for a short time , where he worked in the Calve bookstore . Further years of apprenticeship and traveling took him through southern Germany and Austria , to the cities of Karlsruhe , Innsbruck , Vienna and finally to Italy . In Verona , where he ran the branch of the former Munster bookstore , he not only got to know Italian and French literature, but also to appreciate the “southern agility and grace of the mind”. He returned to Prague in the early 1850s.

Together with a friend, he bought the bookstore of Mayregg's successors and, after taking Austrian citizenship, became the sole owner of the company in 1853. He managed to give the company great popularity and a good name very soon. Through constant contact with his customers, he gained insight into their intellectual interests and needs and based on this experience came up with the plan to found an innovative newspaper.

Foundation and history of the Prager Tagblatt

PragerTagblatt-19140729-morning edition

In the newspaper industry in the mid-19th century, the "common people" classes were as good as excluded from the press . It was extremely costly to produce a paper, and the newspaper as a commercial factor had not yet developed. Back then, the newspaper was aimed exclusively at well-heeled audiences. Heinrich Mercy, however, created a newspaper that should be accessible to everyone, a newspaper that should pay for itself through advertisements and not demand anything from the reader: this was the Mercysche Anzeiger, founded in 1854 . After the Whitsun uprising in Prague and the subsequent October uprising in Vienna in 1848, absolutist Austria was not yet particularly well-disposed towards the press and therefore imposed considerable taxes on both the general text and the news as well as the advertising section. This newspaper stamp paralyzed the emergence of a free Austrian press landscape and made it de facto impossible to found cheap popular newspapers. The now extremely popular Mercysche Anzeiger had to be discontinued for financial reasons. Heinrich Mercy realized that he had no chance this way, but found a way out by founding a newspaper, the Prager Morgenpost , which appeared only three times a week, i.e. the newspaper , and enclosed the advertising section. But even this plan was prevented by the strict Austrian press and censorship authority by deriving from the inclusion of the theater ticket in the newspaper a stamp duty. As a result, Heinrich Mercy was ultimately forced to forego the plan of a popular newspaper that was affordable for everyone, but not a newspaper itself. He therefore redesigned the "Morgenpost" into a successful political newspaper with a liberal tendency. However, this positive development ended when the political situation in Bohemia worsened after the introduction of the February constitution in 1861 . The politically poorly educated population did not like the need to openly admit to current issues, to deal more with the country's politics than before. As it had become very political, the paper was no longer well received. Heinrich Mercy therefore preferred to let the newspaper go up in David Kuh's national-liberal daily messenger from Bohemia .

The many attempts to obtain an inexpensive people's paper with a liberal tendency had brought Heinrich Mercy considerable material losses and forced him to sell his general bookstore. He only kept the branches he had founded in Leitmeritz and Teschen , the printing press and the publishing house . The company's business premises were in the old Wanke'schen house in Zeltnergasse from 1852 to 1871, and from then on in the former “Tagblatt” house in Herrengasse 16. Between 1865 and 1873, technical operations were modernized and high-speed pressing and steam operation were introduced . The positive economic development of the printing and publishing company finally prompted Heinrich Mercy to resume his old plan to found a newspaper in December 1876. The Prager Tagblatt finally owed its life to this new undertaking with Julius Gundling as the editor in charge , which in the 1870s initially appeared once a day on only 8-10 small pages. There were only a few employees in the editorial office and no Sunday supplement. The humorous tone of the political part and the excellent reporting made the paper a surprise success in the first few months of its publication. No other journal had managed to secure such an extensive readership in such a short time. The paper's attitude was liberal and downright anti- Bismarck , but also hostile to Catholicism and Social Democracy . Mercy's efforts in intelligence and the commercial part also gave the paper a solid economic backbone.

Under the direction of his son Dr. Wilhelm Mercy, the Prager Tagblatt subsequently developed with well-known leading editors such as Karl Tschuppik, Max Brod and Rudolf Thomas into the largest liberal-democratic German-language daily newspaper in Bohemia and was considered one of the best German-language daily newspapers at the time.

Publisher of the Austrian Archduke Ludwig Salvator of Austria-Tuscany

Heinrich and Wilhelm Mercy were the most important publishers of the important Austrian Mediterranean explorer Archduke Ludwig Salvator of Austria-Tuscany and accompanied his work from 1870 to 1916 (posthumous publication of the last work Auslug- und Wachttürme Mallorca ). The works - in contrast to the publisher of Leo Woerl  - published anonymously by Mercy were mostly produced in a maximum of 1000 (sometimes splendid) editions, which were then published by the publisher following instructions from the Archduke and a. were sent to members of the imperial family and the nobility, international scientists and research institutions, libraries and universities. Prague artists such as Bedřich Havránek and wood cutters such as Johann Šimáně and Johann Jass were responsible for the artistic decoration of these works.

The following works by Ludwig Salvator have been published by Mercy in Prague :

  • The Serbs on the Adriatic . 1870-1878
  • The Gulf of Buccari-Porto Rè . 1871 ( dedicated to Her Majesty Empress Elisabeth )
  • Levkosia , capital of Cyprus . 1873
  • Yacht trip to the Syrte . 1874
  • A few words about the Kaymen . 1875
  • A drive in the Gulf of Corinth . 1876 ​​( dedicated to Crown Prince Rudolf )
  • A flower from the golden land or Los Angeles . 1878
  • The caravan route from Egypt to Syria . 1879
  • To the world without wanting . 1881
  • Bizerta and its future . 1881
  • Hobarttown
  • the capital of Tasmania . 1886
  • Loose leaves from Abazia . 1886
  • The Aeolian Islands . 1893-1896
  • Shipwreck or a midsummer night's dream . 1894
  • Columbretes . 1895
  • Benzert . 1897
  • Cannosa . 1897
  • Alboran . 1898
  • Ustica . 1898
  • Bougie
  • the pearl of North Africa . 1899
  • Giglio Island . 1900
  • Panorama of Alexandrette . 1901
  • Summer days in Ithaca . 1903
  • Zante . 1904
  • Winter days in Ithaca . 1905
  • Catalina Homar . 1905
  • Across the strait of the Stagno strait . 1906
  • Parga . 1907
  • Notes on Levkas . 1908
  • The rock festivals of Mallorca - history and legend . 1910
  • The Calamotta Canal . 1910
  • Something about world exhibitions . 1911
  • Porto Pi - In the Bay of Palma . 1914
  • Songs of the Trees - Winter Dreams in my garden in Ramleh . 1914
  • Tenderness expressions and affectionate words in the Friulian language . 1915
  • Lookout towers and watchtowers in Mallorca . 1916 (published posthumously).

Personal and personality

In private, Heinrich Mercy was considered a simple person. His marriage to Rosa Mercy (born 1858) had three children: the successor of Heinrich Mercy and owner of the Prager Tagblatt, Kaiserlicher Rat Wilhelm , Mathilde , who later became the wife of the lawyer and music writer Ritter von Belsky and Emmy . The family lived in the former palace of Albrecht Hložek von Žampach , not far from Prague's Hradcany . It is an early baroque building that was remodeled from an older Renaissance building at the end of the 17th century and is now the residence of the Austrian ambassador in Prague. At the age of seventy-one, Heinrich Mercy retired to Graz , where he died.

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Mercy, Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Booksellers and publishers
DATE OF BIRTH August 26, 1826
PLACE OF BIRTH Heidelberg
DATE OF DEATH December 26, 1912
Place of death Graz