Joseph Pulitzer

Born in 1847 as Pulitzer József (name order by Hungarian custom) in Makó, about 200 kilometers south-east of Budapest, he was the son of Elize (Berger) and Fülöp Pulitzer (born Politzer). The Pulitzers were among several Jewish families living in the area and had established a reputation as merchants and shopkeepers. Joseph's father was a respected businessman, regarded as the second of the "foremost merchants" of Makó. Their ancestors emigrated from Police (German: Pullitz) in Moravia to Hungary at the end of the 18th century.

In 1853, Fülöp Pulitzer was rich enough to retire. He moved his family to Pest, where he had the children educated by private tutors, and taught French and German. In 1858, after Fülöp's death, his business went bankrupt, and the family became impoverished. Joseph attempted to enlist in various European armies for work before emigrating to the United States.

American Civil War service

Pulitzer tried to join the military but was rejected by the Austrian Army. He then tried to join the French Foreign Legion to fight in Mexico but was similarly rejected, and then the British Army, and was again rejected. He was finally recruited in Hamburg, Germany, to fight for the Union in the American Civil War in August 1864. Pulitzer could not speak English when he arrived in Boston Harbor in 1864 at the age of 17, his passage having been paid by Massachusetts military recruiters. Learning that the recruiters were pocketing the lion's share of his enlistment bounty, Pulitzer left the Deer Island recruiting station and made his way to New York.

Pulitzer was paid $200 to enlist in the Lincoln Cavalry on September 30, 1864. He was a part of Sheridan's troopers, in the 1st New York Cavalry Regiment in Company L, joining the regiment in Virginia in November 1864, and fighting in the Appomattox Campaign, before being mustered out on June 5, 1865. Although he spoke German, Hungarian, and French, Pulitzer learned little English until after the war, as his regiment was composed mostly of German immigrants.

After the war, Pulitzer returned to New York City, where he stayed briefly. He moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, for the whaling industry, but found it was too boring for him. He returned to New York with little money. Flat broke, he slept in wagons on cobblestone side streets. He decided to travel by "side-door Pullman" (a freight boxcar) to St. Louis, Missouri. He sold his one possession, a white handkerchief, for 75 cents.

When Pulitzer arrived in the city, he later recalled, "The lights of St. Louis looked like a promised land to me." There his German was as useful as it was in Munich, because of the large ethnic German population, due to strong immigration following the European revolutions of 1848. In the local German-language newspaper Westliche Post, Pulitzer saw an advertisement for a mule hostler at Benton Barracks. The next day he walked four miles and got the job, but held it for only two days. He quit due to the poor food and the whims of the mules, stating "The man who has not cared for sixteen mules does not know what work and troubles are." Pulitzer had difficulty holding jobs; he was too scrawny for heavy labor and likely too proud and temperamental to take orders.

He worked as a waiter at Tony Faust, a famous restaurant on Fifth Street. It was frequented by members of the St. Louis Philosophical Society, including Thomas Davidson, the German Henry C. Brockmeyer; and William Torrey Harris. Pulitzer studied Brockmeyer, who was famous for translating the German philosopher GWF Hegel, and he "would hang on Brockmeyer's thunderous words, even as he served them pretzels and beer." He was fired after a tray slipped from his hand and a patron was soaked in beer.

Pulitzer spent his free time at the St. Louis Mercantile Library on the corner of Fifth and Locust, studying English and reading voraciously. He made a life-long friend there in the librarian Udo Brachvogel. He often played in the library's chess room, where Carl Schurz noticed his aggressive style. Pulitzer greatly admired the German-born Schurz, an emblem of the success attainable by a foreign-born citizen through his own energies and skills. In 1868, Pulitzer was admitted to the bar, but his broken English and odd appearance kept clients away. He struggled with the execution of minor papers and the collecting of debts. That year, when the Westliche Post needed a reporter, he was offered the job.

Soon after, Pulitzer and several dozen men each paid a fast-talking promoter five dollars after being promised good-paying jobs on a Louisiana sugar plantation. They boarded a steamboat, which took them downriver thirty miles south of the city, where the crew forced them off. When the boat churned away, the men concluded the promised plantation jobs had been a ruse. They walked back to the city, where Pulitzer wrote an account of the fraud and was pleased when it was accepted by the Westliche Post, edited by Emil Preetorius and Carl Schurz, evidently his first published news story. On March 6, 1867, Pulitzer became a naturalized American citizen.

Declining health and resignation

Pulitzer's health problems (blindness, depression, and acute noise sensitivity) caused a rapid deterioration, and he had to withdraw from the daily management of the newspaper. He continued to manage the paper from his New York mansion, his winter retreat at the Jekyll Island Club on Jekyll Island, Georgia, and his summer vacation retreat in Bar Harbor, Maine. After he hired Frank I. Cobb (1869–1923) in 1904 as the editor of the New York World, the younger man resisted Pulitzer's attempts to "run the office" from his home. Time after time, they battled each other, often with heated language.

When Pulitzer's son Ralph took over administrative responsibility in 1907, Pulitzer wrote a carefully worded resignation. It was printed in every New York paper except the World. Pulitzer was insulted but slowly began to respect Cobb's editorials and independent spirit. Their exchanges, commentaries, and messages increased. The good rapport between the two was based largely on Cobb's flexibility. In May 1908, Cobb and Pulitzer met to outline plans for a consistent editorial policy but it wavered on occasion. Pulitzer's demands for editorials on contemporary breaking news led to overwork by Cobb. Pulitzer sent him on a six-week tour of Europe to restore his spirit. Cobb continued the editorial policies he had shared with Pulitzer until Cobb died of cancer in 1923. In a company meeting, Professor Thomas Davidson said, "I cannot understand why it is, Mr. Pulitzer, that you always speak so kindly of reporters and so severely of all editors." "Well", Pulitzer replied, "I suppose it is because every reporter is a hope, and every editor is a disappointment." This phrase became an epigram of journalism.

Marriage and family

In 1878 at the age of 31, Pulitzer married Katherine "Kate" Davis (1853–1927), a woman of high social standing from Georgetown, District of Columbia. She was five years younger than Pulitzer, from an Episcopal family, and rumored to be a distant relative of Jefferson Davis. They married in an Episcopal ceremony at the Church of the Epiphany in Washington, D.C. He did not reveal his Jewish heritage to Katherine or her family until after their marriage, to her shock.

Of seven children, five lived to adulthood: Ralph, Joseph Jr. (father of Joseph Pulitzer III), Constance Helen (1888–1938), who married William Gray Elmslie, D.D. Edith (1886–1975), who married William Scoville Moore, and Herbert, eventually his brother Ralph's partner at the Post. Their daughter, Katherine Ethel Pulitzer, died of pneumonia in May 1884 at age 2. On December 31, 1897, their oldest daughter, Lucille Irma Pulitzer, died at the age of 17 from typhoid fever. An Irish immigrant named Mary Boyle largely raised the children while their parents were busy. Pulitzer's grandson Herbert Pulitzer Jr. was married to the American fashion designer and socialite Lilly Pulitzer.

Following a fire at his former residence, Pulitzer commissioned Stanford White to design a limestone-clad Venetian palazzo at 11 East 73rd Street on the Upper East Side; it was completed in 1903. Pulitzer's thoughtful seated portrait by John Singer Sargent is at the Columbia School of Journalism that he endowed. The family continued to be involved in the operation of the Post-Dispatch and other newspapers under the Pulitzer Publishing Company until selling them to Lee Enterprises in 2005. The Pulitzer group also comprised television stations, which would ironically be sold to Hearst Communications, owned by the descendants of William Randolph Hearst.

In the Westliche Post building, Pulitzer made the acquaintance of attorneys William Patrick and Charles Phillip Johnson and surgeon Joseph Nash McDowell. Patrick and Johnson referred to Pulitzer as "Shakespeare" because of his extraordinary profile. They helped him secure a job with the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad. His work was to record the railroad land deeds in the twelve counties in southwest Missouri where the railroad planned to build a line. When he was done, the lawyers gave him desk space and allowed him to study law in their library to prepare for the bar.

Pulitzer displayed a flair for reporting. He would work sixteen hours a day – from 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. He was nicknamed "Joey the German" or "Joey the Jew". He joined the Philosophical Society and frequented a German book store where many intellectuals hung out. Among his new group of friends were Joseph Keppler and Thomas Davidson.

Missouri State Representative

Pulitzer joined Schurz's Republican Party. On December 14, 1869, Pulitzer attended the Republican meeting at the St. Louis Turnhalle on Tenth Street, where party leaders needed a candidate to fill a vacancy in the state legislature. After their first choice refused, they settled on Pulitzer, nominating him unanimously, forgetting he was only 22, three years under the required age. However, his chief Democratic opponent was possibly ineligible because he had served in the Confederate army. Pulitzer organized street meetings, called personally on the voters, and exhibited such sincerity along with his oddities that he had pumped a half-amused excitement into a campaign that was normally lethargic, subsequently winning 209–147. His age was not made an issue and he was seated as a state representative in Jefferson City at the session beginning January 5, 1870. During his time in Jefferson City, Pulitzer voted in favor of the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment and led a crusade to reform the corrupt St. Louis County Court.

His fight against the court angered Captain Edward Augustine, Superintendent of Registration for St. Louis County. Their rivalry became so heated that on the night of January 27, Augustine confronted Pulitzer at Schmidt's Hotel and called him a "damned liar." Pulitzer left the building, returned to his room, and retrieved a four-barreled pistol. He returned to the parlor and approached Augustine, renewing the argument. When Augustine advanced on Pulitzer, the young Representative aimed his pistol at the Captain's midriff. Augustine tackled Pulitzer, and the gun fired two shots, tearing through Augustine's knee and the hotel floor. Pulitzer suffered a head wound. Contemporary accounts conflict on whether Augustine was also armed. While in Jefferson City, Pulitzer also moved up one notch in the administration at the Westliche Post. He eventually became its managing editor, and obtained a proprietary interest.