About Gießener Anzeiger

Gießener Anzeiger

The Gießener Anzeiger is the historic daily newspaper of the university city of Gießen in central Hesse, first published in 1750 as the Giesser Wochenblatt. As the fourth-oldest newspaper in Germany and the eleventh-oldest still-existing newspaper in the world, it is a living monument of press history, published today by the GA Media GmbH & Co. KG within the Zeitungsholding Hessen of the Ippen group. Appearing Monday to Saturday with a sold circulation of 7,299 copies, the paper serves the city and district of Gießen with local journalism rooted in more than 270 years of continuous publication. Its history mirrors the ruptures of German history: founded in the age of Enlightenment, banned under the Nazis, its printing house destroyed in the war, and reborn in the Federal Republic.

Overview

The Gießener Anzeiger appears Monday to Saturday as a subscription daily for the city and district of Gießen. Its sold circulation stands at 7,299 copies (IVW 2/2026), a decline of 80.4 percent since 1998 that reflects the severe structural pressures on the historic title; the distributed circulation is reported at 42,784 copies with a reach of 0.14 million readers. The paper is published by the GA Media GmbH & Co. KG within the Zeitungsholding Hessen, the Hessian holding of the Ippen newspaper group, which also encompasses the Hessische/Niedersächsische Allgemeine, the Frankfurter Rundschau and the Frankfurter Neue Presse with its local editions.

The readership of the Gießener Anzeiger is the population of the university city and its district: the students and staff of the Justus Liebig University, the employees of the university hospital and the public administration, the settled burghers of the old university town, and the readers who have remained loyal to the historic title through its transformations. In the Gießen newspaper market, the Anzeiger competes with the younger Gießener Allgemeine Zeitung, founded in 1946; the rivalry of the two dailies, the 270-year-old Anzeiger and the post-war Allgemeine, is one of the distinctive features of the central Hessian media landscape.

History

The Gießener Anzeiger was founded in 1750, when Johann Philipp Krieger presented the Giesser Wochen-Blatt to the "inclined reader". The paper was discontinued in the same year and refounded in 1764; its predecessor is thus the eleventh-oldest still-existing newspaper in the world. In 1829 the book and lithographic printer Georg Daniel Brühl took over the printing and editing of the paper, and in 1834 he founded the Brühlsche book and lithographic printing house, linking the fortunes of the company with the Brühl name to this day. In the early 20th century the printing house acquired state-of-the-art typographic machines, a sixteen-page rotary press and illustration machinery, and, favoured by the proximity of the universities of Gießen and Marburg, became one of the few printing houses in Europe to master scientific formula typesetting.

In 1943 the Gießener Anzeiger was banned by the Nazis, and in 1944 and 1945 the printing house was completely destroyed by bombing. Yet the printing house and the publishing company recovered rapidly, and after the lifting of the licensing requirement the Gießener Anzeiger reappeared in 1949. The post-war decades brought modernisation: one of Germany's first web offset presses arrived at the end of the 1960s, the conversion from hot-metal to computer-controlled typesetting followed, and in 1997 Brühl became the first German printing house to receive FSC certification.

The modern corporate history began in 2003, when the Verlagsgruppe Rhein-Main of Mainz acquired a majority stake in the Gießener Anzeiger Verlags GmbH & Co. KG, becoming the sole owner in 2014 after renaming itself VRM. On 31 December 2017 the paper closed its own printing house for economic reasons. In August 2021 the VRM group sold the Gießener Anzeiger and its associated titles to the Mittelhessische Druck- und Verlagsgesellschaft, the Ippen-group publisher of the rival Gießener Allgemeine; in exchange the VRM acquired the Nassauische Neue Presse from Ippen. Until the takeover on 1 October 2021 the Anzeiger had maintained a full editorial office in Gießen producing its own national pages; it had been the main edition of the Zeitungsgruppe Zentralhessen, with the Kopfblätter Kreis-Anzeiger, Usinger Anzeiger, Gelnhäuser Tageblatt (closed 31 March 2017) and Oberhessische Zeitung of Alsfeld. The paper continues within the Zeitungsholding Hessen under editor-in-chief Burkhard Bräuning.

Coverage and Content

The Gießener Anzeiger covers the public life of the city and district of Gießen with the thoroughness of a dedicated regional daily. The city council and the lord mayor's office form a core beat, as does the district administration and the regional council of Gießen. The paper reports on the Justus Liebig University and the university hospital, on the development of the university city, on the transport connections to Frankfurt, Marburg and Kassel, and on the local economy: the medium-sized manufacturers, the retail trade and the service sector of the administrative centre. The courts, the police and the emergency services are covered as a matter of course.

The paper follows the community life of the region: the volunteer fire services, the sports clubs and their leagues, the churches and their congregations, the student associations and the cultural institutions of the university city, from the Stadttheater to the museums and the historic old town. The paper's publishing house has a tradition of regional historical publishing, including the volumes on eight hundred years of Gießen's history. The national and international news, the business pages and the supra-regional sports coverage round out the daily. Family announcements, event listings and the classified and display advertising complete the paper.

Organization and Ownership

The Gießener Anzeiger is published by the GA Media GmbH & Co. KG within the Zeitungsholding Hessen, the Hessian newspaper holding of the Ippen group, which is majority-owned by the publisher Dirk Ippen. The holding's titles include the Hessische/Niedersächsische Allgemeine of Kassel, the Frankfurter Rundschau, the Frankfurter Neue Presse with its local editions Höchster Kreisblatt and Taunus-Zeitung, the Mittelhessische Druck- und Verlagshaus with the Gießener Allgemeine Zeitung, the Alsfelder Allgemeine, the Wetterauer Zeitung, the Kreis-Anzeiger and the Usinger Anzeiger, the GA Media with the Gießener Anzeiger, and the Verlagsgesellschaft Vogelsberg with the Lauterbacher Anzeiger and the Oberhessische Zeitung.

The editor-in-chief of the Gießener Anzeiger is Burkhard Bräuning. The paper's 2003 separation into two legally independent companies, the Brühlsche Universitätsdruckerei and the newspaper publishing house, both led by Wolfgang Maaß, marked the reorganisation of the historic Brühl enterprise for the modern media age. The sale of the paper from the VRM group to the Ippen group in 2021, in a swap that also moved the Nassauische Neue Presse in the opposite direction, was one of the notable transactions of the German regional press consolidation. Financial details for the individual titles are not disclosed separately.

Digital Presence

The Gießener Anzeiger has developed into a media house with its own online presences for all its newspaper titles and e-paper editions. Its portal giessener-anzeiger.de carries the paper's local journalism for the university city and its district alongside the regional, national and international coverage, with continuously updated news, photo galleries and multimedia content. The paper is published as an e-paper reproducing the printed edition page for page, serving subscribers who read the daily on tablet or desktop.

As a subscription daily, much of the digital content is reserved for registered and paying readers, while selected local stories remain freely accessible. The paper's journalists are active on social media, where the Gießen reporting circulates among the university city's students and the region's residents. For the readers of Gießen, the digital Anzeiger is the online companion to the printed daily: the university city's news on the phone in the morning, the e-paper on the tablet in the evening, and the giessener-anzeiger.de portal as the continuous news service of the 270-year-old title between editions, carrying the historic masthead into the platform age.