Egon Jacobsohn, the other raging reporter

 

                      Egon Jacobsohn with young Willy Czerwinski

 

Noted journalists from the Weimar Era are Egon Erwin Kisch, "the raging reporter", Kurt Tucholsky and of course Carl von Ossietzky (not to mention the fictional Samuel Katelbach, from Babylon Berlin).

A lesser known name today, but a notorious one in his time, is Egon Jacobsohn (1895-1969). He didn't have the litterary ambitions of Tucholsky and he was not engaged in politics like Ossietzky or Kisch. But he was a creative and very innovative journalist.

Jacobsohn was born in Kochstrasse, the heart of Berlin press world at the time. His father was a cigar dealer and his mother an actress. He was also nephew to the famous Berlin comedian duo Anton and Donat Herrnfeld, who directed an Yiddish Theater near Alexanderplatz.

Jacobsohn started his own film magazine, the Filmhölle, revealing scandals in the silent German film.

He worked for the Ullstein publishing house, first at the Berliner Morgenpost, then as editor of the local section of "B.Z. am Mittag", where he recruited a young man from Vienna called Billy Wilder.... He interviewed Asta Nielsen and Henny Porten, Conan Doyle and Albert Einstein. He even interviewed Fritz Haarmann, the Vampire of Hannover, before the police managed to do so.

He was not only an admired reporter - he became news himself as he appeared in a wide range of disguises: as waiter, croupier, tramp, sausage vendor, barrel- organ player, fireman, or even burglar. He could claim to the title of "inventor" of undercover-journalism. In 1919 he had a spectacular idea : the Berliner Morgenpost would publish a "wanted" poster of a suspected murderer and offer a thousand marks for his arrest. The first who recognized the wanted person would receive the sum. That was unprecedented in the press, not only in Berlin but probably in the whole world.

And the suspect, whose portrait appeared not only in the press, but also on posters all over Berlin, was none other than Egon Jacobsohn himself…

In the end, it was a 13-year-old boy named Willy Czerwinski who recognized him - and pocketed the reward.

Following the coming to power of Hitler on 30 January 1933, Jacobsohn, a Jews, a famous journalist whose name was in a death-list, lived in clandestinity until he succeeded in escaping to London, where he took on a new identity as the journalist Egon Jameson. As such, he wrote a number of books. He died in London in 1969.