Edward Steinkopff

Edward Steinkopff (c1838-28 February 1906), was a German entrepreneur and art collector who lived much of his life in Britain. He co-founded the Apollinaris mineral water company, and was the proprietor of the London evening newspaper St James's Gazette. He spent much of his life in Glasgow and London.

He was born Eduard August Carl Friedrich Steinkopff, possibly in Frankfort, and may have been Jewish. He started on a commercial career which took him as a comparatively young man to Glasgow, where he worked as a trader in the German-owned chemical trading firm of Leisler, Bock & Co. which specialised in potash, iodine and soap. Steinkopff gave a "touching devoted gratitude" for the rest of his life. He was afterwards in business for himself as a commission merchant, living at 204 West Regent Street, Glasgow, and in c1878 in St. Vincent Street (or Place). He later leased Dargavel House in Erskine, Renfrewshire, about a mile distant from Bishopton railway station.

Ernest Hart, editor of the British Medical Journal, dined in 1872 with George Smith (a partner in Smith, Elder & Co.) and recommended Apollinaris, a German naturally sparkling mineral water, to Smith. Steinkopff, backed by Smith, formed the Apollinaris company in the UK to sell the water in 1873 or 1874. Smith later founded the Dictionary of National Biography.

Steinkopff was chairman of the company during the period of its development, with Julius Prince as managing director. Apollinaris soon attained an un-paralleled position, becoming the leading natural table-water in the world. It was Otto von Bismarck's favourite mineral water.

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