About Kraichgau Stimme

Kraichgau Stimme

The Kraichgau Stimme is the regional edition of the Heilbronner Stimme for the Kraichgau around Eppingen in the district of Heilbronn, Baden-Württemberg. Appearing as one of the six main and local editions of the Heilbronn daily, designated "KS", it serves the towns and villages of the Kraichgau with local pages produced for its distribution area, combined with the regional, national and international sections of the Heilbronner Stimme. Its predecessor was the Eppinger Zeitung, and the edition covers Bad Rappenau, Eppingen, Gemmingen, Hüffenhardt, Ittlingen, Kirchardt, Siegelsbach and Sulzfeld. It is the paper of the half-timbered town of Eppingen and the Kraichgau's villages.

Overview

The Kraichgau Stimme appears Monday to Saturday as the Heilbronner Stimme's regional edition for the Kraichgau. The Heilbronner Stimme appears in six main and local editions that differ only on a few pages of the local section: the Heilbronn city edition, the district editions North, West and East, the Hohenloher Zeitung for the Hohenlohe district, and the Kraichgau Stimme for the south-western district. The paper is published by the Heilbronner Stimme GmbH & Co. KG, part of the Stimme Mediengruppe, the umbrella brand created in 2021 for the group's diversified businesses in printing, logistics, digital agency and investments.

The readership of the Kraichgau Stimme is the population of the Kraichgau's towns and villages: the citizens of the half-timbered town of Eppingen, the employees of the region's breweries, machine builders and Mittelstand companies, the commuters who work in Heilbronn, and the engaged citizens of the municipalities' councils, clubs and churches. The region's identity is shaped by the Kraichgau's rolling hills, by the half-timbered old towns, by the wine and the agriculture, and by the Fachwerk town's history. The paper's local pages are the medium in which this region's public life is conducted.

History

The Kraichgau Stimme belongs to the publishing family of the Heilbronner Stimme, one of the great post-war foundations of the south-west German regional press. The Heilbronner Stimme was founded in 1946 by Paul Distelbarth and Hermann Schwerdtfeger; the first edition appeared on 28 March 1946 with licence number 31 of the US military government. In the following years the publishing house established itself as the leading information medium in the Heilbronn-Franconia region, and from the 1950s it expanded its distribution area by founding regional local editions, including the Hohenloher Zeitung and the Kraichgau Stimme.

The edition's predecessor, the Eppinger Zeitung, was first printed in 1899 in the Brettener Straße in Eppingen and shaped by the publisher Fritz Luz; in February 2001 a district edition of the Heilbronner Stimme appeared with the subtitle Sulzfelder Nachrichten, which then merged into the Kraichgau Stimme regional edition. In 2019 the media company launched the "Stimme.Z" transformation project, and in 2021 it created the Stimme Mediengruppe umbrella brand, bundling the group's subsidiaries and making the transformation from a pure newspaper publisher to a modern service and media house visible. The Kraichgau Stimme continues within this group as the regional edition for the Kraichgau.

Coverage and Content

The Kraichgau Stimme covers the public life of the Kraichgau's towns and villages with the thoroughness of a dedicated regional edition. The town councils of Eppingen, Bad Rappenau and the other municipalities and their administrations form a core beat, as does the Heilbronn district administration. The paper reports on the region's Mittelstand economy, from the Palmbräu brewery founded in 1835 to the Dieffenbacher machine builder and the Shure microphone distribution, on the half-timbered old towns and their preservation, on agriculture and the wine, and on the transport connections to Heilbronn. The courts, the police and the emergency services are covered as a matter of course.

A distinctive theme of the paper's reporting is the Fachwerk town's heritage: Eppingen's half-timbered old town, the town's development concept looking to 2045 and the Mittelzentrum question, the cultural life of the Kraichgau's villages and the traditional festivals. The paper follows the community life of the area: the volunteer fire services, the sports clubs and their leagues, the churches and their congregations, and the associations of the Kraichgau's towns. The regional, national and international news comes from the Heilbronner Stimme's newsroom. Family announcements, event listings and the classified and display advertising complete the edition.

The paper's Eppingen beat gives particular attention to the half-timbered town's development: the town's development concept looking to 2045, the Mittelzentrum question pursued since 2007, and the preservation of the Fachwerk old town are followed with the continuity of a local daily. The paper covers the Kraichgau's village festivals and the traditional events of the half-timbered towns, the region's wine villages and the agricultural calendar, and the local clubs' anniversaries with detailed reporting. The region's Mittelstand companies, from the breweries to the machine builders, are followed as the economic backbone, and the paper reports on the skilled-labour question and the vocational training of the district. Like the other Heilbronner Stimme editions, the Kraichgau paper reports on the volunteer fire services and the emergency responders, on the schools and kindergartens, and its readers' letters and service pages give the Kraichgau's citizens a direct voice.

Organization and Ownership

The Kraichgau Stimme is published within the Heilbronner Stimme publishing operation of the Heilbronner Stimme GmbH & Co. KG, part of the Stimme Mediengruppe. The managing directors of the Heilbronner Stimme GmbH & Co. KG are Tilmann Distelbarth and Marc Becker, and the editor-in-chief is Uwe Ralf Heer, in office since 2006, with deputies Markus Merz and Tanja Ochs. The group's headquarters are in Heilbronn, and its businesses include the newspaper, the advertising papers such as echo, the logistics operations and a modern printing centre for own and external products.

The group's structure combines the shared national and regional sections produced in Heilbronn with the regional editions' own newsrooms, following the classic edition model of the German regional press. The Stimme Mediengruppe's transformation project has diversified the company into a service and media house, with the newspaper at its journalistic core. Financial details for the individual regional editions are not disclosed separately; the group's economics rest on subscriptions, regional advertising and the digital revenues of the stimme.de portal.

Digital Presence

The Kraichgau Stimme appears digitally on stimme.de, the news portal of the Heilbronner Stimme, which has served the Heilbronn, Kraichgau and Hohenlohe region since 1996 as one of the first digital newspaper offerings in southern Germany. The portal is operated by the Heilbronner Stimme's editorial team in Heilbronn as part of the publishing house's overall newsroom, and it includes the stimme.de website, the Stimme app and the Stimme online channels on third-party platforms such as Instagram and Facebook. The portal records around 261,000 page impressions per day in 2025, and the regional citizen portal meine.stimme allows the region's citizens to place their own 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. For the readers of Eppingen and the Kraichgau, the digital Kraichgau Stimme is the online companion to the printed regional edition: the half-timbered town's news on the phone in the morning, the e-paper on the tablet in the evening, and the stimme.de portal as the continuous news service for the Heilbronn-Franconia region between editions.