Le Matin (France)

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Le Matin, office building on Boulevard Poissonnière, Paris, around 1890

Le Matin ( German  "Der Morgen" ) was a French daily newspaper that appeared in Paris from June 17, 1882 to March 1, 1883 and from February 26, 1884 to August 17, 1944 . The newspaper was initially moderately republican and was opposed to socialist ideas or Boulangism . Before the beginning of the First World War , the paper was one of the four major newspapers in France with a circulation of millions .

history

Title page from August 31, 1908
People crowd in front of the photos and reports posted by Le Matin on the occasion of Charles Nungesser and François Coli's crossing of the Atlantic in 1927

The sheet was founded by Alfred Edwards (1856-1914), a British journalist. With telegraphy, he introduced one of the new technologies of the time into the journalistic work of Le Matin .

The newspaper was modeled on the English-language daily newspaper The Morning News , which first appeared in Paris in 1882. Behind both titles was the US-led investor group Chamberlain & Co., from which the initiative for the newspaper was founded.

The seat of Le Matin was in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, at 6 Boulevard Poissonière, near the Porte Saint-Denis , while the editorial offices were in the neighboring houses 3 and 9. Buildings 6 and 9 have been preserved to this day.

In 1899, Maurice Bunau-Varilla, who had been a shareholder in Le Matin since 1897 , joined the newspaper's board of directors. From 1901 he became its president. The sheet had a circulation of 100,000 copies in 1900, 700,000 in 1910 and 1 million by 1914. This made it one of the four largest daily newspapers in France , along with its competitors Le Petit Journal , Le Petit Parisien and Le Journal .

The paper was of particular importance at the beginning of the First World War when it reported in November 1914 that the encryption method ( ÜBCHI ) used by the German army had been successfully deciphered . The Imperial General Staff then changed the method, but replaced it with the even less secure ABC cipher .

At the end of the 1930s, Le Matin still had a circulation of around 300,000 copies.

After the occupation of France by the German Wehrmacht , Le Matin reported faithfully to Vichy and, at the decisive instigation of the Chairman of the Board of Directors, Bunau-Varilla, even adopted a pro-German and right-wing extremist stance. The daily was therefore banned after the liberation of Paris on charges of collaboration with the enemy after it had appeared over a period of 62 years.

The Le Matin archive is now in the French National Archives.

Former Employees

  • Alfred Détrez
  • Jules-Théophile Docteur, President, General Manager (1930–1938)
  • Jules Hedeman
  • Henry de Jouvenel
  • Georges de Labruyière
  • Stéphane Lauzanne
  • Jules Madeline, Chairman of the Board of Directors (1903–1920)
  • Stefanie Landeis , France's first foreign correspondent in Berlin from 1934 to 1938
  • Jules Sauerwein
  • Maurice Sauvayre

literature

  • Dominique Pinsolle: Le Matin (1884-1944). Une presse d'argent et de chantage . Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes 2012. ISBN 978-2753517356

Web links

Commons : Le Matin  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Le Matin, Paris 1882-1883 . French National Library, Gallica digitization project . On: bnf.fr, accessed March 25, 2017
  2. Le Matin, Paris 1894–1944 . French National Library, Gallica digitization project . On: bnf.fr, accessed March 25, 2017
  3. René Le Cholleux: Revue biographique of notabilités françaises contemporaines . tome 3, Paris 1892, pp. 332-333.
  4. Dominique Pinsolle: Le Synthol, moteur de l'histoire . In: Le Monde diplomatique, August 2009. p. 3
  5. Stéphane Lauzanne: Un grand journal français: Le Matin - Son organization - Sa puissance - Son action (1924). From: journal-le-matin.over-blog.com, accessed on March 25, 2017