
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 10, 1995                   TAG: 9503100081
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CAMBRIDGE, MASS.                                 LENGTH: Short

MODERN PR'S DEVELOPER DIES AT 103

Edward Bernays, who laid the cornerstones of modern public relations by selling America on everything from presidents to Ivory soap, died Thursday. He was 103.

Bernays, who opened his first public relations agency in 1919 and still was working well into his 90s, died at his home, his daughter Doris Held said.

Among those whose images and products he promoted were opera singer Enrico Caruso, car maker Henry Ford and inventor Thomas Edison. He worked on various programs for every president from Calvin Coolidge in 1925 to Dwight Eisenhower in the late 1950s.

Bernays yearned to make public relations a recognized profession - in his phrase, ``the engineering of consent'' - and launched an active campaign to legitimize the field.

Bernays was born Nov. 22, 1891, in Vienna, Austria; one of his uncles was Sigmund Freud.

During World War I, he worked as a government propagandist for the Department of War, gaining insight in molding public opinion that he used when he opened his public relations business in 1919.

by CNB