About Mit Vergnügen

Mit Vergnügen

Mit Vergnügen is a digital city magazine based in Berlin, describing itself as "Das digitale Stadtmagazin für Berlin." Founded in 2010 by Matze Hielscher and Pierre Türkowsky as a party-SMS distribution list, it grew into a leading Berlin lifestyle publication with editorial teams also in Hamburg, Munich, and Cologne, reaching around one million monthly readers. Its mix of daily personal city tips, recommendation lists, and humorous first-person texts about urban life made it the city's friendliest media voice — a magazine that entertains, inspires, and informs. After eight years online, the brand also moved offline, including a 2019 book on Berlin published with the independent publisher The Gentle Temper. In the crowded field of Berlin city media, Mit Vergnügen stands out as the purely digital native: the city magazine that began as a text message.

Overview

Mit Vergnügen operates as a digital-first city magazine, publishing daily editorial content about Berlin's bars, restaurants, cafés, clubs, parks, shops, and neighborhoods. Its signature format is the personal recommendation: editors and contributors reveal their favorite spots in Berlin, writing idiosyncratic and humorous texts about life in the city. Beyond the daily tips, the magazine produces listicles ("11 Anzeichen, dass es Zeit ist, zurück nach Berlin zu ziehen"), interviews with chefs, bar owners, and cultural figures, and long-form city reporting — such as the spring 2020 series documenting how Berlin's gastronomy scene was coping with the coronavirus crisis.

The editorial stance is affectionate and insider-driven: the magazine positions itself as the friend in the big city ("dein Freund in der Großstadt"), addressing readers who live in Berlin and those who miss it. The tone is conversational, often first-person, and consistently enthusiastic about the city — a deliberate contrast to the more ironic or program-guide style of the legacy Berlin city magazines. The target audience is the urban millennial and Gen Z readership that plans its leisure by smartphone, complemented by a large ex-Berliner diaspora that keeps following the city from afar.

Beyond Berlin, Mit Vergnügen runs editorial teams in Hamburg, Munich, and Cologne, replicating the city-guide model in Germany's other major metropolises. The Berlin edition remains the flagship and the brand's home market, where the magazine claims the position of the leading city magazine. The business model is advertising and branded content: native advertising, event partnerships, and the offline extensions such as the book program.

History

Mit Vergnügen began in 2010, founded by Matze Hielscher and Pierre Türkowsky. The first incarnation was a party-SMS mailing list — a text-message distributor telling subscribers where the good parties were. From that humble beginning, the project grew into a website and then a full digital city magazine: editors began daily revealing their favorite spots and writing their own distinctive, funny texts about city life.

The growth phase of the 2010s saw the magazine professionalize: a growing editorial team, expansion to Hamburg, Munich, and Cologne, and a readership that climbed to around one million monthly readers. The brand's voice — personal, enthusiastic, deliberately anti-guidebook — became its trademark, distinguishing it from the established Berlin city magazines like tip and Zitty that had dominated the print era. Mit Vergnügen never built a print circulation; it grew up entirely in the social-media and smartphone era, distributing its content through Facebook, Instagram, newsletters, and search.

In 2019, after eight years as an online-only brand, Mit Vergnügen moved offline: the book "Mit Vergnügen: Berlin für alle Lebenslagen" was published by The Gentle Temper GmbH & Co. KG, the independent Berlin publisher founded in 2016 by Karolina Rosina and Nils Kraiczy, which focuses on design, travel, and culture. The 336-page guide (ISBN 978-3947747115) translated the brand's recommendation aesthetic into print. The corona crisis of 2020 became an editorial turning point: the magazine's documented reporting on Berlin's gastronomy — interviews with café and pizzeria founders like the Cheers Kiez Pizza team in Prenzlauer Berg — showed a more journalistic side, covering the industry's struggle in real time.

Coverage and Content

The content of Mit Vergnügen is organized around the city as a living space. Food and drink form the largest beat: new restaurant openings, café recommendations, bar guides, and the ever-changing gastronomy landscape of the Berlin neighborhoods. Nightlife coverage traces the magazine's party-SMS origins: clubs, parties, and the venues that define Berlin's weekends. Neighborhood guides — Kiezporträts from Prenzlauer Berg to Neukölln to Wedding — give readers the granular geography of the city, while culture coverage takes in exhibitions, concerts, cinema, and the creative scenes.

Service journalism is a core competence: listicles on moving to Berlin, the best spots for every occasion, seasonal guides (Christmas markets, summer lakes, festival weekends), and practical city knowledge delivered in the magazine's warm tone. The interview formats give space to the people who make the city's hospitality and culture: chefs, founders, bartenders, and artists, often in long conversational formats. The 2020 coronavirus series exemplified the magazine's capacity for sustained reporting on a beat, following gastronomes through the lockdown weeks.

The regional editions in Hamburg, Munich, and Cologne mirror the Berlin model with local editorial teams, each adapting the Mit Vergnügen voice to its city's rhythms. Across all editions, the content philosophy is consistent: personal recommendations over neutral reviews, enthusiasm over criticism, and the city experienced at street level rather than from the tourist balcony.

Organization and Ownership

Mit Vergnügen was founded in 2010 by Matze Hielscher and Pierre Türkowsky. The founder Hielscher is also known publicly as the host of the Hotel Matze podcast, one of Germany's best-known interview podcasts, and the magazine's personal voice carries his imprint. The brand operates editorial teams in Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, and Cologne, with Berlin as the headquarters and flagship edition.

The 2019 book was published by The Gentle Temper GmbH & Co. KG, an independent Berlin publisher with a focus on design, travel, and culture, founded in 2016 by Karolina Rosina and Nils Kraiczy. The partnership reflects the brand's positioning at the intersection of city life, design, and culture.

Circulation-style reach figures for the current year are not independently confirmed beyond the publisher's own statement of around one million monthly readers. The commercial model is that of a digital city publisher: display and native advertising, branded content partnerships with brands and venues, event collaborations, and the offline extensions such as the book. The team of editors who reveal their favorite spots daily form the editorial core of the operation.

Digital Presence

Mit Vergnügen is a digital native: its home is mitvergnuegen.com, where the Berlin edition publishes daily under the tagline "Das digitale Stadtmagazin für Berlin." The site runs on WordPress and is built for social distribution: the short, visual, list-friendly formats travel natively on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, where the brand's city tips reach readers far beyond the website's own traffic. The @mitvergnuegen social accounts are integral to the editorial product, not an afterthought.

The brand's newsletters and the original party-SMS DNA live on in the push-style communication: the magazine reaches readers where they plan their evenings — on the phone. The offline book of 2019 demonstrated that the digital-native brand could translate its aesthetic to print, and the editorial teams in four cities give the digital presence a local grounding that national lifestyle portals lack. Mit Vergnügen's digital identity is the city itself experienced in real time: the friend in the big city, in your pocket, telling you where to go tonight.