About Straßenkreuzer

Straßenkreuzer

Straßenkreuzer – Das Sozialmagazin is a street newspaper appearing eleven times a year in the greater Nuremberg area, sold on the street by poor and homeless people. Its distribution area corresponds roughly to the Nuremberg planning region, and with 12,000 to 21,000 copies per issue it is one of the larger German street papers. Founded in 1994, it appears in a circulation of 12,000 to 18,000 copies per issue, with a double issue in August and September, and is also available as a PDF. The eleven-issue rhythm, unusual among German street papers, gives the magazine a near-monthly presence on the region's streets throughout the year. Its editorial concept emphasizes journalistic professionalism: each issue takes up a focus topic illuminated from different perspectives, with contents created mostly voluntarily by well-known journalists and photographers of the region, and two pages reserved for the vendors' own writing workshop.

Overview

Straßenkreuzer appears eleven times a year in the Nuremberg metropolitan region, covering Nuremberg, Fürth, Erlangen, and surroundings, roughly the Nuremberg planning region. The magazine is sold for 3.40 euros; vendors buy the copies for 1.70 euros and keep the difference, so that half of every sale stays directly with the seller. Around 50 regular vendors sell the magazine in the greater Nuremberg, Fürth, and Erlangen area. The regular sale of the magazines is meant to offer vendors a professional perspective and to enable a re-entry into social life, with the vendor ID marking the seller as part of a recognized social project. A vendor ID is issued to people whose income does not exceed the Hartz IV (basic security) level, the threshold that defines the magazine's target group of the poor and unhoused. The regular sale is intended to offer vendors a professional perspective and a re-entry into social life.

The magazine is independent: it finances itself through sales, advertising, and donations, and is carried by the charitable association Straßenkreuzer e. V. Two pages of each issue are reserved for the "Schreibwerkstatt" (writing workshop), where vendors, warming-room visitors, and other citizens meet regularly in the editorial office to develop topics and write texts, a participatory format that few German street papers maintain with such consistency over the years. The contents are created by known journalists and photographers of the greater region, mostly on a voluntary basis, a civic engagement that has sustained the magazine's quality for three decades and that makes the Straßenkreuzer a joint project of the region's media professionals and its poorest residents.

History

Straßenkreuzer was founded in 1994, in the wave of street paper foundings that swept Germany in the mid-1990s, following the example of Munich's BISS (1993) and Hamburg's Hinz&Kunzt. A national atlas study of the German street paper landscape counted more than thirty independent local street papers, and the Straßenkreuzer established itself among the professionally produced city and social magazines with changing focus topics, in which homelessness and poverty are treated as themes alongside general interest journalism. It established itself as the social magazine of the Nuremberg region, building a stable vendor network and a professional editorial concept that set it apart from purely charitable publications. The magazine has appeared continuously since, reaching its current form of eleven issues a year with a summer double issue, a remarkable continuity in a media landscape where many street papers have folded.

The association Straßenkreuzer e. V. carries the magazine as a charitable project, independent of party politics and religious affiliation. The association's leadership passed from the long-time predecessor Ilse Weiß to Klaus Schwiewagner, who describes the work as a task and joy of his life. Over the decades, the magazine has documented the social life of the region from the perspective of its poorest residents, while also addressing general interest topics through its focus themes. Its vendors have become familiar figures in Nuremberg, Fürth, and Erlangen, and the magazine's presence on the streets is itself a statement about who belongs to the city's public sphere and whose voice counts in it, a daily reminder in the pedestrian zones of Franconia's cities.

Coverage and Content

Each issue of Straßenkreuzer takes up a focus topic that is illuminated from different perspectives: social issues, but also culture, city life, and general interest themes treated with journalistic professionalism. The editorial concept deliberately sets store by journalistic professionalism rather than by charity appeal: readers are to buy the magazine because it is good, and the social purpose rides along with the journalism. The "Schreibwerkstatt" pages give vendors and warming-room visitors their own voice, with texts developed in regular editorial meetings where sellers, warming-room visitors, and other citizens gather in the editorial office to work out topics and write texts together. The workshop turns the magazine's subjects into its authors. The professional contributions by regional journalists and photographers give the magazine a quality that readers buy for its content, not only for charity, and the focus-topic structure gives each issue a coherence that rewards regular reading.

The magazine thus serves a double function: it is a source of income and social re-entry for its vendors, and a regional magazine with a distinctive perspective for its readers. Its independence, financed by sales, advertising, and donations, protects its editorial line, and its advertisers, by placing ads in a street paper, publicly commit to the social project and position themselves as engaged businesses.

Organization and Ownership

Straßenkreuzer is published by the charitable association Straßenkreuzer e. V. of Nuremberg. The magazine is independent and finances itself through sales, advertising, and donations. Vendor IDs are issued to people whose income does not exceed the basic security level. The association also runs the "SchichtWechsel" alternative city tours, in which vendors guide visitors not to the sights of the city but to the institutions that matter from the perspective of poverty: the vendors know what it means to be poor, homeless, or addicted, and they report in their tours from life on the street, on drug addiction and prevention, and on the situation of women. For fifteen years the association has also offered the free "Straßenkreuzer-Uni," a winter-semester lecture program for the community that brings education to people the universities rarely reach. Like all print media, the association struggles with risen production costs and with finding an answer to digital editions and digital payment, since the analog sale is a central purpose of the magazine that would be lost in a click-to-buy transaction; the association continues to depend on donations to bridge the gap. Financial details are not publicly confirmed.

Digital Presence

Strassenkreuzer.info is the magazine's website, presenting the current issue, the association's projects from the writing workshop to the city tours, and the donation channels that keep the work going. The magazine is also available as a PDF. Social media channels extend the magazine's reach in the region.

The Social Magazine of Franconia

For three decades, Straßenkreuzer has been the greater Nuremberg area's social magazine: a street paper that treats its vendors as entrepreneurs and its readers as citizens, giving poverty a professional journalistic voice in the heart of Franconia. From the writing workshop to the alternative city tours to the free university, it has built a social infrastructure around the magazine that outlasts any single issue.