Wolff's Telegraphic Bureau

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Wolffs Telegraphisches Bureau ( WTB ) was founded in Berlin in 1849 by the publishing and news entrepreneur Bernhard Wolff . Wolff was the owner of the Berlin “ National-Zeitung ” and, after the telegraph was released for private messages in 1849, he published the first price list in his newspaper , which came by telegram from Frankfurt am Main and London . Because of the high costs, Wolff agreed with other Berlin newspaper publishers and private individuals on a joint subscription to the stock market news . So on November 27, 1849 the "Telegraphische Correspondenz-Bureau (B. Wolff)" was created, which was later renamed "Wolffs Telegraphisches Bureau" (WTB).

history

In November 1849 Bernhard Wolff tried that for publication in the National Gazette telegrams received by resale to exploit, turning them first newspapers outside offered (later in) Berlin. Since this quickly proved to be a viable business model, he was able to found his company, briefly called Wolffsches Bureau , in the same year .

On May 1, 1865, Wolff's Telegraphic Bureau was converted into a limited partnership at the request of the highest government agencies and with the participation of banks . It came into the possession of monarchical-conservative banks. In addition, it came under the influence of Otto von Bismarck's press policy . The influence of politics was cemented in a secret contract dated June 10, 1869 between the WTB and the Prussian State Ministry . In order to give preference to the use of the telegraph office and a subsidy of 100,000 thalers a year , WTB undertook to give priority to official dispatches and to submit other dispatches to the authorities upon request before dissemination ( preliminary censorship ).

At first the WTB only distributed commercial, but soon also political news. Cartel agreements were concluded with the British news agency Reuters and the French Havas on January 17, 1870 . Here the market was divided. WTB took over the northern and eastern European region, Reuters limited itself to the British Empire and Havas to southern Europe and South America. With this contract, the Reuters offices in Berlin, Frankfurt and Hanover under cover names also became the property of WTB. The cartel agreements (later also with the American Associated Press ) ran until 1934.

Before the First World War , the WTB was one of the largest companies of its kind. It had agencies and sole agents in all parts of the world, from whom it received news and to which it delivered news. The cost of telephone and telegraph charges was estimated at 900,000 marks at the beginning of the 20th century , and the cash turnover was stated at 3.5 million marks. In Germany alone 300 people were employed, whose personnel costs amounted to 750,000 marks at the beginning of the 20th century (this corresponds to approx. 5,210,000 euros today). The share capital was one million marks. Thousands of articles in the German Reichsanzeiger cite WTB as the source. The later newspaper publisher Axel Springer completed his traineeship at the WTB.

After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, the WTB was nationalized on January 1, 1934 and the Telegraphen-Union (TU) belonging to the Hugenberg Group under the leadership of Goebbels' confidante Alfred-Ingemar Berndt . Both went on in the newly founded state German news office .

literature

  • Rudolf Stöber: German press history. From the beginning to the present (= UTB 2716). 2nd, revised edition. UVK-Verlags-Gesellschaft, Konstanz 2005, ISBN 3-8252-2716-2 .

Individual evidence

  1. a b Meyer's Large Conversation Lexicon . 6th edition. Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig / Vienna 1909 ( zeno.org [accessed on November 27, 2019] encyclopedia entry “Telegraphenbureaus”).
  2. a b Wilke, Jürgen (2008): Fundamentals of the history of media and communication. Cologne et al .: UTB, p. 246f.
  3. This figure was based on the template: Inflation is determined, has been rounded to a full 10,000 euros and compares the year 1900 with January 2020.