About Geretsrieder Merkur

Geretsrieder Merkur

The Geretsrieder Merkur is the local daily newspaper of the town of Geretsried in the district of Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen, Upper Bavaria, appearing as the local edition of the Münchner Merkur. Published by the Münchener Zeitungs-Verlag GmbH & Co. KG in Munich, it serves Geretsried, Bavaria's youngest town, with local pages produced for its distribution area, combined with the national and international sections of the Munich parent paper. Together with its sister title, the Isar-Loisachbote of Wolfratshausen, it forms a single circulation unit with a sold circulation of 7,243 copies. The paper documents the daily life of a town shaped by post-war industry, the Isar and Loisach rivers, and the Alpine foothills.

Overview

The Geretsrieder Merkur appears Monday to Saturday as the Merkur's local edition for Geretsried and its surroundings in the northern part of the district of Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen. Its circulation is reported jointly with the Isar-Loisachbote of Wolfratshausen, the historic daily of the neighbouring town, with which it forms a single unit: together the two titles sell 7,243 copies (IVW 1/2026, Monday to Saturday), a decline of 20 percent since 1998, with a subscription share of 76.7 percent that testifies to the loyalty of the readership. The pair belongs to the family of Merkur local editions for the Munich surrounding districts, alongside the Dachauer Nachrichten, the Ebersberger Zeitung, the Starnberger Merkur, the Tölzer Kurier and the other Kopfblätter of the group.

The readership of the Geretsried edition is the population of Bavaria's youngest town, which received its town charter in 1970 and has grown to some 25,000 inhabitants: the employees of the town's industrial estates, the commuters who work in Munich, Wolfratshausen or Bad Tölz, the families of the town's post-war housing estates, and the engaged citizens of a young town's clubs, churches and local council. Geretsried's identity is shaped by its history as a post-war industrial settlement, by the Isar and Loisach rivers that frame the town, and by the Alpine foothills that rise to the south. The paper's local pages are the medium in which this young town's public life is conducted.

History

The Geretsrieder Merkur belongs to the publishing family of the Münchner Merkur, whose own history began on 13 November 1946, when the first edition appeared under the title Münchner Mittag with a licence from the American military government. The Merkur was the second newspaper licensed in Munich after the Süddeutsche Zeitung and grew into one of Bavaria's leading dailies with a conservative editorial orientation. As the paper expanded into the districts surrounding Munich, it developed the system of local editions that characterises the group: locally titled papers with their own local sections, produced by local editorial teams, sharing the Munich-produced national section.

The Geretsried edition established itself as the town's local daily within this structure, building a newsroom rooted in the young town and a subscriber base among its households. Its sister title, the Isar-Loisachbote, looks back on a much longer history: founded on 29 September 1886, when Albert Schwankl bought the Wolfratshauser Wochenblatt and established the Isar-Loisach Bote, it appeared after the Second World War from 1948 with a Wolfratshausen local page of the Münchner Merkur, and in 1949 Georg Schwankl junior became a co-publisher of the Münchner Merkur. In 2016 the publisher merged the local editorial teams of the Münchner Merkur and its sister paper tz, and in 2018 the two Ippen papers were brought together in the Merkur tz Redaktions GmbH. The Geretsrieder Merkur continues within this consolidated structure as the town's local paper.

Coverage and Content

The local section of the Geretsrieder Merkur covers the public life of Geretsried and its surroundings with the thoroughness of a dedicated local paper. The town council and the town administration form a core beat, as do the neighbouring municipalities and the district administration in Bad Tölz. The paper reports on the town's industrial estates and their development, on the retail trade and the town centre, on schools and childcare in the growing town, and on the transport connections to Munich, Wolfratshausen and Bad Tölz. The courts, the police and the emergency services are covered as a matter of course.

The paper follows the community life of the area: the volunteer fire services, the sports clubs and their leagues, the churches and their congregations, the cultural associations and the traditional festivals of the Bavarian Alpine foothills. The Isar and Loisach rivers, the town's natural frame, appear in the paper's reporting on flood protection, nature conservation and local recreation. The national and international news, the business pages and the supra-regional sports coverage come from the Münchner Merkur's Munich newsroom. Family announcements, event listings and the classified and display advertising complete the daily, making the Geretsried paper the marketplace and the noticeboard of the town.

Organization and Ownership

The Geretsrieder Merkur is published by the Münchener Zeitungs-Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, based at Paul-Heyse-Straße 2-4 in Munich, the publishing company of the Münchner Merkur and the tz. The publishers are Dirk Ippen and Alfons Döser, and the editor-in-chief of the Münchner Merkur is Georg Anastasiadis. The local edition is produced by the Merkur's local editorial team for the Geretsried area, working within the group's editorial structure; the historic Wolfratshausen editorial office of the Isar-Loisachbote at Pfaffenrieder Straße 9 in Wolfratshausen serves the combined edition, which is printed at the Penzberg printing centre.

The two titles, the Geretsrieder Merkur and the Isar-Loisachbote, form a single circulation and advertising unit within the group, allowing advertisers to reach the northern Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen district with one booking. The group's business model rests on the combination of the Munich-produced national section with the locally produced editions, concentrating the district papers' own resources on local reporting in line with the publisher's strategy. The paper maintains its own online presence at geretsriedermerkur.de alongside the joint merkur.de portal. Financial details for the individual local editions are not disclosed separately.

Digital Presence

The Geretsrieder Merkur appears digitally on merkur.de, the joint portal of the Münchner Merkur and its local editions, among the most-visited regional news sites in Germany, and maintains its own site at geretsriedermerkur.de. The portals carry continuously updated news from Geretsried and the Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen district alongside the Munich, Bavarian, national and international coverage of the Merkur newsroom, with photo galleries, video and live tickers. The paper's local reporting is available in the sites' local sections, in mobile apps and in the e-paper edition that reproduces the printed paper page for page.

The paper maintains a social media presence, including its Facebook page, where the town's news circulates among readers who encounter the Merkur primarily online. As a subscription daily, much of the digital content is reserved for registered and paying readers, while breaking news and selected local stories remain freely accessible. For the readers of Geretsried and the surrounding communities, the digital Merkur is the online companion to the printed local edition: the town's news on the phone in the morning, the e-paper on the tablet in the evening, and the merkur.de portal as the continuous news service for the Alpine foothills between editions. The combined Geretsried-Wolfratshausen edition's digital offering keeps Bavaria's youngest town connected to its paper across print and screen, from the Isar meadows to the Alpine foothills.