SONNEMANN, LEOPOLD

SONNEMANN, LEOPOLD (1831–1909), German banker, newspaper publisher, politician; founder and owner of the Frankfurter Zeitung. He was born in the town of Hochberg, Bavaria, to a traditional Jewish family. Following the death of his father in 1853, Sonnemann successfully turned the family's cloth-trade business into an international banking house. In 1856, at the age of 25, he joined forces with another Frankfurt banker, H.B. Rosenthal, in establishing a liberal financial paper, Frankfurter Geschäftsbericht, later renamed Frankfurter Handelsblatt. In 1859, the paper was transformed into the Neue Frankfurter Zeitung and, in 1866, into the Frankfurter Zeitung (fz), by then published in Sonnemann's Frankfurter Societaets-Druckerei. In 1867, he became sole proprietor and editor. Under his direction, the fz soon developed into one of the leading liberal dailies in Germany. Deeply impressed as a boy by the revolutionary events in 1848/49, Sonnemann was one of the founders of the Volkswirtschaftlicher Kongress (German Economic Congress), to which he reported on banking and stock exchange systems until 1885. From 1871 to 1876 and from 1878 to 1884, he was a member of the Reichs tag, representing the Deutsche Volkspartei (Southern German Democratic Party). He was also a member of the Frankfurt city council. In his will, he asked that the Frankfurter Zeitung remain a liberal voice, and so it continued until it was closed on the personal instructions of Hitler in 1943.

bibliography:

H. Simon, Leopold Sonnemann (Ger., 1931). add. bibliography: A. Giesen (ed.), Zwölf Jahre im Reichs tage. Reichstagsreden von Leopold Sonnemann (1901); Wininger 5 (1930), 571–2; E. Kahn, in: lbiyb, 2 (1957), 228–35; K. Gerteis, Leopold Sonnemann (1970); W.E. Mosse, in: lbiyb, 15 (1970), 125–39; B.B. Frye, in: lbiyb, 22 (1976), 143–72; A. Estermann, Dokumente zu Leopold Sonnemann (1995).

[Lawrence H. Feigenbaum /

Johannes Valentin Schwarz (2^nd ed.)]