Louis Jent (publisher)

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Louis Jent as major

Franz Louis Jent (born November 10, 1810 in Neuchâtel ; † August 27, 1867 in Solothurn ; resident in Safenwil ) was a Swiss publisher and bookseller .

Life

Jent was born into modest circumstances as the son of Alexander Samuel Jent and the Philipine born Bohau. Barely two years old, he lost his father. In the crisis years of 1817/1818, the misery caused by rising prices and hunger drove the family from Neuchâtel to the home community of Safenwil. Later the mother moved to Aarau , where she found a slightly better livelihood and where Louis Jent attended primary school. The boy was noticed by the bookseller Heinrich Remigius Sauerländer (1776-1847), who enabled him to attend the Aarau Cantonal School and then took him to his apprenticeship . Later he sent him to Fürth for further training . After his return to Solothurn, Jent became managing director of the newly established Sauerland branch . Together with the printer Franz Josef Gassmann (1755–1802) he founded the Jent & Gassmann publishing house, which not only published the weekly paper for friends of beautiful literature and patriotic history, the political- satirical Postheiri and the Disteli calendar , but also scientific ones and works of fiction .

Until 1850, Jent was the actual publisher of Jeremias Gotthelf , who also made the Bernese poet known in Germany . He asked Gotthelf not to use pure German consistently, but rather to preserve the uniqueness of Gotthelf's language as much as possible with all due consideration for the German readers.

In 1841 he took over the Sauerland branch and in 1849 opened a publishing branch in Bern .

In 1847, some Swiss abroad in London , led by Andreas Rudolf von Planta , had the idea of ​​a federal newspaper, a national, liberal but independent federal central body. In the politically turbulent weeks before the outbreak of the Sonderbund War, they missed a paper that would have presented the events at home to foreign countries and the Swiss living abroad objectively and from the point of view of the whole of Switzerland. After his election to the National Council the following year, Rudolf von Planta warmed up some of the new federal parliamentarians, most of them from Eastern Switzerland, for his idea. In their search for a suitable publisher, they came across Louis Jent, who was ready to found a newspaper in the spirit of the initiators, to finance it alone and to guarantee its independence to the outside world. As publisher of the Confederation Jent subsequently became one of the most important Swiss publisher personalities of the 19th century. With the support of Plantas, he won two people from Eastern Switzerland as first editors and partners, Johann Karl Tscharner from Graubünden and Abraham Roth from Thurgau . Shortly afterwards they were joined by another Bündner, Andreas von Sprecher.

The first sample number of the Bund was published on September 10th, the second on September 19, 1850, the first regular number on October 1, 1850. By the turn of the century, the Bund had five full-time editors and until Jents' death in 1867 those for the time unusually high edition of 6000 copies. After Jent's death, his widow took over as co-publisher and publisher at the Jent & Reinert book printing company. From 1874 the sons Adolf and Hermann took their place.

The bookstore was sold in 1898 to Louis Jent's former apprentice Adolf Lüthy; this resulted in the Lüthy Balmer Stocker bookshop .

Private

Louis Jent was married to Sophie, born Reinert (1822–1907), daughter of the radical politician and lawyer Johann Baptist Reinert , and had two sons, Gustav Adolf (1846–1894) and Hermann Ludwig (1850–1915). Louis Jent participated as a radical and Canton Aarau captain of the volunteer corps trains of Solothurn irregulars.

literature

  • Johann Karl Tscharner: The "Bund". From October 1st, 1850 to October 1st, 1875. Bern 1875.
  • 140 years of «Der Bund». In: The Bund. October 1, 1990 (supplement).
  • Paul Schaffroth: Sturm und Drang. From the past of the Stadtbernischen press (1500–1900). Bern 1991, p. 233 f.
  • The Bund. Special edition 160 years. September 23, 2010 (archived in newsnetz.ch ; PDF; 1.7 MB).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Max Grütter: Three generations of publishers. Louis Jent. In: 1850-1950. The Bund. Anniversary edition for the centenary. October 7, 1950, p. 7 f.
  2. ^ Max Grütter: Longitudinal section through 100 years of the "Bund". In: 1850-1950. The Bund. Anniversary edition for the centenary. October 7, 1950, p. 5.
  3. ↑ Gustav A. Lang: The "Bund" in the history of the Bern press. In: The Bund. September 30, 2000 (special issue), p. 33.
personal data
SURNAME Jent, Louis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jent, Franz Louis (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss publisher and bookseller
DATE OF BIRTH November 10, 1810
PLACE OF BIRTH Neuchâtel
DATE OF DEATH August 27, 1867
Place of death Solothurn