BLOWITZ, HENRI GEORGES STEPHAN ADOLPHE DE (1825-1903), Anglo-French journalist, was born, according to the account given in his memoirs, at his father's château in Bohemia on Dec. 28 1825. Young Blowitz became acquainted in Paris with M. de Falloux, minister of public instruc tion, who appointed him teacher of foreign languages at the Tours Lycee, whence, after some years, he was transferred to the Mar seilles Lycee. In 1859 he resigned his post, but remained at Mar seilles, devoting himself to literature and politics. In 186g information which he supplied to a legitimist newspaper at Mar seilles with regard to the candidature of M. de Lesseps as deputy for that city led to a demand for his expulsion from France. He was, however, allowed to remain, but had to retire to the country. In 1870 his predictions of the approaching fall of the empire caused the demand for his expulsion to be renewed. While his case was under discussion the battle of Sedan was fought, and Blowitz applied for naturalization as a French subject. Once naturalized, he went to Marseilles. Thiers employed him in col lecting information at Versailles and then offered him the French consulship at Riga. But Laurence Oliphant, then Paris corre spondent of The Times, for which Blowitz had already done some occasional work, asked him to act as his regular assistant for a time. In 1873 Blowitz became chief Paris correspondent to The Times, and became famous in journalism and diplomacy.
In 1875 the duc de Decazes, then French foreign minister, showed Blowitz a confidential despatch from the French ambas sador in Berlin (in which the latter warned his government that Germany was contemplating an attack on France), and requested the correspondent to expose the German designs in The Times. Blowitz's most sensational journalistic feat was achieved in 1878, when his enterprise enabled The Times to publish the whole text of the treaty of Berlin at the actual moment that the treaty was being signed in Germany. In 1877 and again in 1888 Blowitz rendered considerable service to the French Government by his exposure of internal designs upon the Republic. He died on Jan. 18 1903.
My Memoirs, by H. S. de Blowitz, was published in 1903.