About Hanauer Anzeiger

Hanauer Anzeiger

The Hanauer Anzeiger (HA) is a German daily newspaper published in Hanau, Hesse, and ranks as the third-oldest German daily newspaper with a complete editorial staff. Its first edition appeared on 27 September 1725, giving the paper a publishing history of three centuries. The paper is published by the Hanauer Anzeiger GmbH & Co. KG and appears on working days with a sold circulation of around 12,272 copies. Since 1 January 2020 it has belonged to the Mediengruppe Offenbach-Post, and since the spring of 2015 its titles have been printed in the Offenbach-Post's printing plant. The editor-in-chief is Yvonne Backhaus-Arnold, and the publisher is Thomas Bauer. The paper's digital home is its website at hanauer.de.

Overview

The Hanauer Anzeiger is published on working days as a subscription daily in the Rhenish format typical of German regional newspapers. Its distribution area is Hanau, the Brothers Grimm city at the confluence of the Kinzig and the Main, and the surrounding Main-Kinzig district, one of the most populous districts in Hesse. The paper covers the full programme of a regional daily: local reporting from Hanau and the district, Hessian state politics, German and international news, business, culture and sport.

The paper's extraordinary age gives it a distinctive position in the German press landscape. Founded as an advertising sheet in 1725, it developed over the centuries into a full daily newspaper reporting on world events as well as local affairs, and it has accompanied Hanau through the Prince-Bishopric era, the Napoleonic period, the German Empire, two world wars and the post-war reconstruction. Few German newspapers can claim such continuity, and the Hanauer Anzeiger's three-hundred-year history is a central part of its identity.

The audience is the population of Hanau and the Main-Kinzig district: households that value a daily paper with deep local roots and three centuries of presence in the city. The paper competes in Hanau with the Hanau-Post, the Hanau edition of the Offenbach-Post, which belongs to the same media group since 2020 but operates as a separate editorial title.

History

On 27 September 1725 the Hanauer Anzeiger was first published as an advertising sheet, at the time under the name Wöchentliche Hanauer Frag- und Anzeigungs-Nachrichten. The first edition is said to have been printed in 180 copies, and the paper appeared every Thursday. The annual subscription cost one guilder. Alongside official announcements, it carried advertisements of all kinds. The first printer of the Hanauer Anzeiger was Johann Jacob Beausang, whose office stood on the south side of what is now Freiheitsplatz in central Hanau. In its early years the paper printed mainly advertisements; gradually the scope expanded to include local reporting.

Over the 18th and 19th centuries the paper grew with the city: the small-format sheet of the 1700s became a larger-format paper in the mid-19th century, and from 1871 the HA was a classic daily newspaper with news from Hanau, the region, Germany and abroad. The paper thus chronicled Hanau's transformation from a residence town of the Counts of Hanau into an industrial city, the railway age, the First World War, the Weimar Republic and the Nazi era. During the Second World War the publishing house was badly hit in the destruction of Hanau and had to close for a time; only in September 1949 was a general licence granted that permitted the printing of a new newspaper.

The post-war era brought the paper under the leadership of the Bauer family. Horst Bauer joined the publishing house in 1951 and took over its management in 1968 after the death of his father-in-law Paul Nack. In 1970 he founded the Hanauer Wochenpost advertising paper, in 1974 he took over the Langenselbolder Zeitung, and from 1985 he led the company together with his son Thomas. Horst Bauer, who died in 2007, was a prominent figure in the German newspaper industry, serving on the board of the Association of Hessian Newspaper Publishers and as president of the Hanau-Gelnhausen-Schlüchtern chamber of industry and commerce from 1982 to 1994.

The structural consolidation of the regional press reached Hanau in the 2010s: since the spring of 2015 the publishing house's newspapers and weeklies have been printed in the Offenbach-Post's printing plant, and on 1 January 2020 the Hanauer Anzeiger joined the Mediengruppe Offenbach-Post, securing the historic title's future within a larger media group while preserving its editorial identity.

Coverage and Content

The Hanauer Anzeiger covers Hanau and the Main-Kinzig district with the full programme of a regional daily. The local section reports from the city council and the district administration, urban development in the growing Rhine-Main city, the regional economy with Hanau's industrial employers, the Brothers Grimm heritage and the cultural institutions of the city, schools and education, health care, the police blotter and court reporting, club and association life, church news, culture and events, and local sport. Readers find coverage of the issues that shape daily life in the district, from building projects and transport to school policy and local festivals.

The national and international pages cover Hessian state politics, German federal politics, world news, the economy, features, culture and national sport. Since 2015 the paper has drawn its national editorial content from the Offenbach-Post, the daily of Offenbach am Main, within the media group's editorial cooperation. Weekend editions carry expanded magazine content, background features and service journalism.

The paper's website extends the print product online with current reporting from Hanau and the district, and the paper has long offered its readers the combination of thorough local journalism and comprehensive national coverage that defines the German regional daily.

Organization and Ownership

The Hanauer Anzeiger is published by the Hanauer Anzeiger GmbH & Co. KG. The publisher is Thomas Bauer, continuing the Bauer family's leadership of the publishing house, and the editor-in-chief is Yvonne Backhaus-Arnold. Since 1 January 2020 the publishing house has belonged to the Mediengruppe Offenbach-Post, the media group behind the Offenbach-Post daily and the Hanau-Post, Hanau's other daily title.

The paper has been printed in the Offenbach-Post's printing plant since the spring of 2015. Distribution follows the subscription model with delivery on working days across Hanau and the Main-Kinzig district. The sold circulation of around 12,272 copies reflects the paper's position as a historic but mid-sized regional daily in a competitive market. The integration into the Mediengruppe Offenbach-Post provides the paper with the backing of a larger media group in printing, distribution and digital infrastructure, while the Hanauer Anzeiger retains its own editorial staff and its three-hundred-year-old identity as Hanau's historic daily newspaper.

Digital Presence

The digital home of the Hanauer Anzeiger is its website at hanauer.de, which presents current reporting from Hanau and the Main-Kinzig district online. Readers can follow the paper's local journalism on the website and through the e-paper edition, which reproduces the printed paper page for page for reading on tablets, smartphones and computers.

The portal operates on the paid-content model standard in the German regional press: full article texts are generally reserved for subscribers, while headlines and teasers are visible to all visitors. On social media, the paper's channels share local headlines and engage with readers from Hanau and the district, extending the reach of one of Germany's oldest newsrooms into the digital environment. For a paper with three centuries of history, digital channels serve both longtime subscribers who prefer to read on their phones and former residents who have moved away from the Hanau area but want to stay connected to their home city. The printed Hanauer Anzeiger remains the core product, carrying forward a publishing tradition that began in 1725.