L'Auto

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L'Auto , initially L'Auto-Vélo , was a French sports daily and appeared from 1900 to 1944.

The newspaper was founded on October 16, 1900 as a competitor to the leading sports newspaper Le Vélo, initially as L'Auto-Vélo . One of the most important investors was Albert Jules Graf de Dion , co-founder of the car and commercial vehicle manufacturer De Dion-Bouton , who had been severely attacked by Vélo editor Pierre Giffard (1853-1922) several times in the wake of the Dreyfus Affair . In his papers, he assumed that de Dion had abused his political position as a deputy for his business goals. After de Dion had clearly won the reliability trip organized by Giffard's Le Petit Journal from Paris to Rouen on July 22, 1894, Giffard had nevertheless relegated him to second place with flimsy justification. Giffard's insult had already led to the founding of the Automobile Club de France (ACF) by the Count de Dion in November 1895 and to the professionalization of motorsport in France.

In addition to personal reasons, there were also business and political reasons for the newspaper project. Giffard actually controlled the lucrative advertising market for motor vehicles. However, he was obliged to his financier, Alexandre Darracq (1855–1931), and therefore preferred Darracq products, especially over De Dion-Bouton. Among the businessmen who de Dion was able to win to finance L'Auto-Vélo , Dreyfus critics such as the tire manufacturer Édouard Michelin (1859-1940) and the automobile industrialist Adolphe Clément (1855-1928) belonged. De Dion's foray into the newspaper industry also paid off financially for the donors. The editor-in-chief was Clément's former cyclist and advertising manager, Henri Desgrange . He said on the front page of the newspaper: “In L'Auto-Vélo there will never be any talk of political questions. Dear readers, whether you are for or against ..., you already know who, do not expect L'Auto-Vélo to go into it. ”The new daily reported predominantly on sport , especially motorsport , and that general daily events.

In 1903 the name of the newspaper had a court order, the Giffard had obtained as a result, because of plagiarism in L'Auto to change, resulting in a decline in sales resulted. To counteract this development, Desgrange resorted to the idea of ​​journalist Géo Lefèvre to organize a stage race , the Tour de France . However, he himself did not put much hope in the project, as he himself saw the future in motor racing , which was initially reflected in the reporting, which was banned to the back of the page. But in the course of the tour, the number of copies sold increased from 20,000 to 63,000 copies. In the course of the tour there were numerous irregularities, which is why the regulatory Union Vélocipédique Française (UVF) subsequently disqualified the first four drivers - Maurice Garin , César Garin , Lucien Pothier and Hippolyte Aucouturier . This process led the organizer Henri Desgrange to write in an article in: “The Tour de France is over, and the second edition is, I fear, the last. She perished from her own success, from the blind passions she unleashed. ”He suggested that others should organize the tour in the future; his newspaper should concentrate in the future on the automobile sport. However, when car races were banned from city to city such as Paris – Madrid because of numerous deaths, Desgrange decided to organize the Tour de France the following year.

In the following decades the close connection between the editorial and tour management in the person of Henri Desgrange and later Jacques Goddet remained and only came to an end with the suspension of the race in 1940, when the Wehrmacht only entered France in May and June 1940 as a result of the western campaign of the Wehrmacht Combat operations were drawn into it and finally divided into an occupied part and a part politically dependent on Nazi Germany. In the course of the liberation of France from German occupation, the newspaper was finally banned on August 17, 1944 due to its collaboration with the German occupiers. In 1946 the sports newspaper L'Équipe was founded as the journalistic successor with Jacques Goddet as director and many other former L'Auto journalists. From 1947, this magazine then again organized the Tour de France.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Bird: De Dion Bouton. 1971, pp. 49-50.
  2. ↑ Benjo Maso : The Sweat of the Gods. The history of cycling . Covadonga, Bielefeld 2011, ISBN 978-3-936973-60-0 , p. 29 f .
  3. ↑ Benjo Maso: The Sweat of the Gods. The history of cycling . Covadonga, Bielefeld 2011, ISBN 978-3-936973-60-0 , p. 35 f .
  4. ↑ Benjo Maso: The Sweat of the Gods. The history of cycling . Covadonga, Bielefeld 2011, ISBN 978-3-936973-60-0 , p. 36 .
  5. ↑ Benjo Maso: The Sweat of the Gods. The history of cycling . Covadonga, Bielefeld 2011, ISBN 978-3-936973-60-0 , p. 38 .

literature

  • Anthony Bird: De Dion Bouton. First automobile Giant (= Ballantine's Illustrated History of the Car. Marque Book. No. 6). Ballantine Books, New York NY 1971, ISBN 0-345-02322-6 (English).