wn and
important Western journal, the _Chicago Daily News_. To-day many
papers published in the United States are represented in Berlin by
special correspondents. The influx of newcomers has been mostly
from German-language papers, printed in such Teutonic centres as
Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Milwaukee, etc. Journals like the
_Illinoiser Staats-zeitung_, of Chicago, which for years past has
barely been able to keep its head above water, have suddenly found
themselves affluent enough to maintain correspondents in Europe
who, for their part, scorn lodgings less pretentious than those of
the _de luxe_ Hotel Adlon in Unter den Linden.

The bright star in the American journalistic firmament in Berlin is
Karl Heinrich von Wiegand, the special representative of the _New
York World_. The _New York World_ is not pro-German, but von
Wiegand is of direct and noble German origin. Apart from his
admitted talents as a newspaper man, his Prussian "von" is of no
inconsiderable value to any newspaper which employs him. Von
Wiegand, I believe, is a native of California. Persons unfriendly
to him assert that he is really a native of Prussia, who went to
the United States when a child. Wherever he was born, he is now
typically American, and speaks German with an unmistakable
Transatlantic accent. He is a bookseller by origin, and his little
shop in San Francisco was wiped out by the earthquake. About
forty-five years of age, he is a man of medium build, conspicuously
near-sighted, wears inordinately thick "Teddy Roosevelt
eye-glasses," and is in his whole bearing a "real" Westerner of
unusually affable personality. Von Wiegand claims, when taunted
with being a Press agent of the German Government, that he is
nothing but an enterprising correspondent of the _New York World_.
I did not find this opinion of himself fully shared in Germany.
There are many people who will tell you that if von Wiegand is not
an actual attache of the German Press Bureau, his "enterprise"
almost always takes the form of very effective Press agent work for
the Kaiser's cause. He certainly comes and goes at all official
headquarters in Germany on terms of welcome and intimacy, and is a
close friend of the notorious Count Reventlow.

My personal opinion, however, is that he is above all a journalist,
and an exceedingly able one.

Von Wiegand's liaison with the powers that be in Berlin has long
been a standing joke among his American colleagues.