Emīlija Benjamiņa

Emīlija Benjamiņa (sometimes transcribed Emilija Benjamin) (10 September 1881 — 23 September 1941 Solikamsk labor camp, Soviet Union) became the richest person in pre-World War II Latvia. She was the universally acknowledged "Press Queen" of the country and became one of the wealthiest women in Europe at the time.

Born Emīlija Simsone, she was the middle daughter of Andris Simsons and Ede Usinš. Simsons was a low level bureaucrat on whose salary the family could barely make its ends meet. Both of her sisters were stage artists, the eldest, Mina (stage name Tusnelda) was an opera singer, while the youngest, Annija (Aicher) was an actress who made a name for herself in both the Latvian and German language theater.

Unlike her sisters, Emīlija early on, was attracted to the press and to business and started working at the age of 17, as an advertising agent and theater critic, for the German language newspaper, Rigaer Tagesblatt, which was owned by one of the prominent members of this Imperial Russian city's Jewish community, Blankenstein.

She married young and became Emīlija Elks. Unfortunately that marriage did not turn out to be the dream that she had envisioned. Elks became an alcoholic and was reported to have beaten her.

Sometime in 1904 or 1905 Emīlija met a man named Anton Benjamiņš. He was 21 years older than Emilija and had by that time in his life been a schoolteacher and a failed shop owner. Because he had become bankrupt, he came to Riga to look for work, which he found as the reporter on Latvian issues of the Rigaer Tageblatt. At the time, he also was married to someone else.

Over time Emīlija Elks and Benjamin took over the practical running of the Rigaer Tagesblat. Emīlija ran the business, while Benjamiņš was the editor. In 1909, Emīlija divorced Elks. For Benjamiņš however that step would prove to be much more complicated and time consuming as his existing spouse did not agree and they had three children.

In 1911 Emīlija and Benjamiņš decided to live together. And, on 8 December, Emīlija founded her own newspaper using funds she had obtained from her divorce settlement. She also persuaded all the Latvian speaking journalists at the various German and Russian language newspapers in Riga to work for her, initially free of charge, to get a truly Latvian newspaper off the ground. Jaunākās Ziņas (The Latest News) was the first, mass distribution newspaper to be published in the Latvian language; Emīlija, as Emīlija Elks, was the publisher and Benjamiņš was her editor-in-chief. Emīlija's business sense and Anton's dedication to hard work soon bore fruit and Jaunākās Ziņas blossomed. It employed many who would go on to be important names in the development of Latvian literature and culture and indeed of the written Latvian language itself, including the writer Kārlis Skalbe, the linguist Jānis Endzelīns.

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