Leopold Sonnemann

Publisher and editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung, Sonnemann also served as a deputy to the Reichstag and was a founding member of the German People's Party.

He built upon his family business and amassed enough wealth by 1856 to purchase a Bavarian market publication, the Neue Frankfurter Zeitung.

Rechristening it to simply Frankfurter Zeitung, Sonnemann devoted himself wholeheartedly to the paper as owner, editor, and contributing writer.

Though he could be clinically described as a social democrat, Sonnemann projected a highly individualized political presence which was regarded by contemporaries as somewhat esoteric.

[5] The Frankfurter Zeitung was kept running by Sonnemann's coterie, providing an alternative national media outlet for the German left.

Sonnemann was "a large, portly man, with whiskers like Lord Dundreary ," wrote an English contemporary, but "he dresses with a neatness and elegance quite un-Teutonic." [ 1 ]