Born in 1825 in Bohemia as Henri-Georges Stephan Opper de Blowitz, he reinvented himself. By the time he landed his job as the London Times’s man in Paris in 1873, he was already a legend in the making. Not for writing flowery prose—but for getting the goods.
Blowitz published the whole thing before the ink was dry.
He got the text from a network of diplomats, spies, and flirty salon girls, then wired it to The Times. Pandemonium followed. Bismarck reportedly howled with rage. European governments screamed. The press cheered.
“I have always considered discretion to be the journalist’s first duty,” Blowitz wrote. “But when the interests of the public are at stake, discretion must bow to duty.”
Blowitz was a walking contradiction. He was short and round, often compared to a teapot. He wore a bowler hat, carried a cane, and spoke in rolling, theatrical sentences. He claimed to predict political upheaval by watching waiters’ behavior at cafés.
A visiting editor once said, “Blowitz did not write news—he became it.” Another editor joked that Blowitz “could smell a coup d’état like others smell bacon.”
He penned his memoirs in 1903, Memoirs of M. de Blowitz, a rollicking account full of dropped names, self-flattery, and veiled threats. It reads like a thriller and a brag at the same time.
When he died in 1903, The Times called him “the greatest political correspondent of his age.” The New York Herald said he “knew everything, and feared nothing.”
He was loud, brilliant, vain, relentless—and absolutely unforgettable. Henri Blowitz didn’t just cover history. He made it flinch.
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