About Goslarsche Zeitung

Goslarsche Zeitung

The Goslarsche Zeitung is the daily newspaper of the imperial city of Goslar at the foot of the Harz mountains in Lower Saxony, published by the Goslarsche Zeitung Karl Krause GmbH & Co. KG. The paper gives 1783 as its founding year, making it the eleventh-oldest daily newspaper in Germany, and it has been owned by the Krause family since 1900. Produced in its own printing house in Goslar at Bäckerstraße 31-35, the paper takes its national section from the Braunschweiger Zeitung but produces its own local section as an independent company within the Medienhaus Krause. With some 90,000 daily readers, it describes itself as the number one information and advertising medium in the district of Goslar.

Overview

The Goslarsche Zeitung appears Monday to Saturday as a subscription daily for Goslar and the surrounding Harz district. The paper's own account traces its origins to 15 December 1783, when Ernst Wilhelm Gottlieb Kircher announced his intention to publish a weekly paper under the name Goslarsche Polizey und Commercien-Zeitung for one hundred subscribers; after the town council initially refused the printing permission, Kircher succeeded in January 1800, a second weekly edition was added in 1813, and from 1 January 1889 Franz and Joseph Jäger published the paper daily under the title Goslarsche Zeitung that it bears to this day. The paper is produced in the publishing house's own printing plant in Goslar, usually with a front page designed differently from the Braunschweiger Zeitung's and increasingly featuring local topics as the lead story.

The readership of the Goslarsche Zeitung is the population of the UNESCO World Heritage city of Goslar and the surrounding Harz district: the citizens of the thousand-year-old imperial city, the employees of the district's tourism, health and service businesses, the miners' descendants of the Rammelsberg tradition, and the engaged citizens of the Harz towns' councils, clubs and churches. Goslar's identity, shaped by the imperial palace, the Rammelsberg mine and the half-timbered old town, gives the paper's local reporting a distinctive historical frame. The paper's readers include the commuters of the Harz foothills and the second-home owners who follow the region's affairs from afar.

History

The press history of Goslar begins in 1783 with Kircher's announcement, and the paper's own founding narrative reaches back to that year. After several changes of ownership, Franz and Joseph Jäger brought out the paper daily from 1889 under its current title. In 1900 Karl Krause of Stade acquired the majority of the company's shares; in 1925 he became the publisher of the Goslarsche Zeitung, and his son Walther succeeded him, holding the editor-in-chief's post from 1940. In 1943 the paper was merged by order of the Reich Press Chamber with another Goslar publication, the Neuesten Nachrichten; until the end of the Second World War it carried the name Goslarsche Zeitung only in its subtitle and was called Harzer Tageblatt, a designation the main edition still bears in its subtitle today.

After the war the paper resumed under the Krause family's ownership and developed into the leading daily of the Goslar district, maintaining its independence as a family-owned publishing house with its own printing plant. The publishing company, the Goslarsche Zeitung Karl Krause GmbH & Co. KG, has been registered in the Braunschweig commercial register under HRA 110075 since 23 February 1925, with its registered seat at Bäckerstraße 31-35 in Goslar. The paper's cooperation with the Braunschweiger Zeitung, from which it takes its national section while producing its own local section, follows the classic Kopfblatt model and has secured the paper's journalistic breadth while keeping editorial control of the local pages in Goslar.

Coverage and Content

The Goslarsche Zeitung covers the public life of Goslar and the Harz district with the thoroughness of a dedicated regional daily. The city council and the town administration form a core beat, as does the district administration of Goslar. The paper reports on the UNESCO World Heritage sites, the imperial palace, the Rammelsberg mine museum and the historic old town, on tourism as the district's defining industry, on the health and rehabilitation clinics of the Harz towns, and on the transport connections of the Harz foothills. 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, including the winter sports traditions of the Upper Harz, the churches and their congregations, the mining associations that preserve the Rammelsberg heritage, and the cultural life of the imperial city, from the Mönchehaus museum to the Christmas market in the historic old town. The national and international news, the business pages and the supra-regional sports coverage come from the Braunschweiger Zeitung's newsroom, while the Goslar newsroom increasingly sets its own local topics as the front-page lead. Family announcements, event listings and the classified and display advertising complete the daily.

Organization and Ownership

The Goslarsche Zeitung is published by the Goslarsche Zeitung Karl Krause GmbH & Co. KG, based at Bäckerstraße 31-35, 38640 Goslar, a family-owned publishing house that has belonged to the Krause family since 1900. The company is registered in the Braunschweig commercial register and continues as an active legal entity with more than a century of corporate history. The paper is produced in the publishing house's own printing plant in Goslar, a distinction that sets it apart from many regional dailies that have centralised their printing; the Medienhaus Krause, where the first Goslar daily appeared in 1889, presents itself as a publishing house on the way into the future, with the paper appearing in parallel as an online edition and in the social networks.

The paper takes its national section from the Braunschweiger Zeitung of the Funke group but produces its own local section as an independent company, a cooperation that preserves the Goslar paper's editorial autonomy while giving it the resources of a major regional daily. The paper's self-description emphasises continuity, topicality, independence and non-partisanship as the foundations of its market leadership in the district. Financial details of the privately held company are not publicly disclosed; the paper's economics rest on subscriptions, local advertising and its position as the district's leading advertising medium.

Digital Presence

The Goslarsche Zeitung is present online at goslarsche.de, where the paper's local journalism for Goslar and the Harz district is available digitally alongside the regional, national and international coverage. The site carries continuously updated local news from the imperial city, photo galleries and multimedia content, extending the daily's Harz reporting to readers on desktop and mobile devices. The paper maintains a YouTube channel where its video journalism circulates, and its journalists are active in the social networks.

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. For the readers of Goslar and the Harz district, the digital Goslarsche Zeitung is the online companion to the printed daily: the imperial city's news on the phone in the morning, the e-paper on the tablet in the evening, and the goslarsche.de portal as the continuous news service of the eleventh-oldest daily newspaper in Germany between editions.