About Glaube und Heimat

Glaube und Heimat

Glaube und Heimat, styled Glaube+Heimat, is the weekly church newspaper for the Evangelische Kirche in Mitteldeutschland (EKM) and the Evangelische Landeskirche Anhalts, published from Weimar in Thuringia. First issued on April 15, 1924, it ranks among the oldest Protestant church newspapers in Germany and celebrated its 102nd anniversary in 2026. The paper appears weekly with reports, features, and interviews from church and cultural life across Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt, and parts of Brandenburg and Saxony, combining regional parish coverage with national and international reporting viewed through a Christian lens. Published by the Evangelischer Presseverband in Mitteldeutschland e.V. and produced by the Wartburg Verlag GmbH, it serves as the communication platform for congregations in central Germany, complemented by the digital portal meine-kirchenzeitung.de and a digital edition with mobile apps.

Overview

Glaube und Heimat is a weekly newspaper appearing every week with a mix of current reporting, features, and interviews. Its distribution area stretches from the Börde to the Rhön and from the Wipper to the Mulde, covering Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia as well as parts of Brandenburg and Saxony. The editorial program bundles information on church-district life: weekly reports and features from the Kirchenkreise, news from Germany and the world with a Christian perspective, background on social debates, faith in everyday life, and orientation on questions of life.

The paper describes itself as the communication platform for congregations, giving space both to church-wide topics and to the remarkable volunteer engagement in local parishes. Special series have included a centenary documentation in 2024, when the paper retraced church and contemporary history through more than 4,000 issues spanning nine decades, from the founding of the Thuringian regional church through the Weimar Republic, the Nazi era, the division of Germany, and reunification. The digital edition offers the paper as an e-paper with apps for Android and iOS, and the portal meine-kirchenzeitung.de publishes selected articles online.

History

The first issue of Glaube und Heimat appeared on April 15, 1924, founded as a Sunday paper for the Protestant home. The unusual title goes back to Karl Schönherr's 1910 drama "Glaube und Heimat," which dramatized the expulsion of Protestants from Tyrol during the Counter-Reformation; in 1924, vicars from the Altenburger Land proposed the play's title for the new church newspaper, and the name has been kept for a century. The paper thus carries a title rooted in the history of Protestant displacement and confession.

Through the Weimar Republic and the Nazi era, the paper served Thuringian Protestants, and after 1945 it continued in the GDR, navigating the tensions between state and church that repeatedly surfaced in its pages: the Jugendweihe controversy, the case of Oskar Brüsewitz, and the church-state summit of March 1978 all found reflection in its reporting. After German reunification, the paper became the weekly for the newly formed Evangelische Kirche in Mitteldeutschland, created from the merger of the Thuringian and Saxon church provinces, and for the Evangelische Landeskirche Anhalts. In 2024 the paper marked its centenary with a year-long historical series and a scenic reading of Schönherr's drama in the foyer of the Deutsches Nationaltheater in Weimar, where the play had premiered shortly after its first performance.

Coverage and Content

The newspaper's content is organized around church life in central Germany: reports from parishes and church districts, portraits of volunteers and church workers, and coverage of synods, church leadership, and diaconal institutions. Supra-regional pages, including the current-affairs page, the faith-and-everyday-life page, and the one-world page, are produced in editorial cooperation with Der Sonntag of Leipzig. Beyond church news, the paper reports on cultural life, social debates, and international topics with a Christian perspective, and offers orientation on questions of faith and life.

Recurring formats include the Blickpunkt commentary page, series on regional church history, and seasonal special editions such as the Easter edition. The paper gives prominent space to reader contributions and congregational announcements, reinforcing its role as a community medium. Investigative or adversarial journalism is not its mode; instead, the paper practices a constructive church journalism that informs, connects, and encourages. The centenary series of 2024, researched from the paper's own archive by Dietlind Steinhöfel, demonstrated the depth of its documentary function, turning a century of weekly issues into a chronicle of central German Protestantism.

Organization and Ownership

Glaube und Heimat is published by the Evangelischer Presseverband in Mitteldeutschland e.V., the Protestant press association for central Germany, and appears in the Wartburg Verlag GmbH. The editorial team works from two locations: the main office in Weimar at Johann-Sebastian-Bach-Straße 1a, and a second office in Magdeburg at Am Dom 2. The editor-in-chief is Willi Wild, who is legally responsible for content. The Weimar editorial team includes Beatrix Heinrichs as chief of staff, Dr. Claudia Crodel, Uwe Kraus, and André Poppowitsch, with editorial assistants and a production team handling layout.

The paper's financing rests on subscriptions and church-related advertising, typical for the German church-press sector. Unlike commercial newspapers, its mission is defined by its publisher's church mandate rather than by market competition, which has allowed it to maintain a weekly print rhythm while many regional papers have cut frequency. Detailed circulation figures are not publicly confirmed in the sources reviewed. The publisher also operates the digital portal meine-kirchenzeitung.de, which serves the paper and its sister publications.

Readership and the Church Press Landscape

Glaube und Heimat belongs to the distinctive German genre of the Kirchenzeitung, the church newspaper: subscription weeklies published by or for the Protestant regional churches and Catholic dioceses, a press segment with roots in the 19th century. Its readers are predominantly committed church members, many of them volunteers in parishes, church councils, and diaconal institutions, for whom the paper is both a source of information and an affirmation of belonging. The paper's formula of congregational news, devotional content, and Christian commentary on current affairs has remained remarkably stable across a century, even as the surrounding media landscape transformed.

Like all church newspapers, Glaube und Heimat faces structural headwinds: declining church membership in eastern Germany, an aging subscriber base, and competition from free digital church communication. Its response has been to emphasize what print still does best for this audience, a curated weekly package that arrives in the mailbox and is read at length, while building digital bridges through the e-paper, the portal, and apps. The centenary celebrations of 2024, with the historical series drawn from the paper's own archive and the Weimar theater reading, were as much a statement of institutional self-confidence as a look backward: few German newspapers of any kind can point to an unbroken century of weekly publication through republic, dictatorship, division, and reunification.

Digital Presence

The digital home of the paper is meine-kirchenzeitung.de, a portal carrying current articles, topic pages, and series from the print edition, alongside service content for subscribers. The digital edition is available as an e-paper for PC and laptop browsers and through dedicated apps for Android and iOS, with promotional free issues such as the Easter edition offered to attract new readers. Registration with an email address gives access to the digital issues.

On social media, the paper and its portal maintain presences where articles, series, and event notices are shared, reaching younger church members beyond the print subscriber base. Newsletters and the portal's topic pages extend the weekly rhythm into daily digital touchpoints. The combination of a century-old print tradition with a modern e-paper and app offering reflects the paper's effort to remain the communication platform for central German congregations in a media environment where church affiliation and print readership are both in long-term decline.