About Omnibusspiegel

Omnibusspiegel

The Omnibusspiegel is the specialist journal for bus construction and bus transport in past and present, published by the Dieter Hanke Verlag in Bonn. Unlike the industry's management-oriented titles, the Omnibusspiegel cultivates the historical and technical depth of the bus world: vehicle development, type histories, driving reports and tests, company portraits and company histories. With the motto "we have our ear to the industry," it serves the bus enthusiasts, historians, operators and manufacturers who care about where the omnibus comes from as much as where it is going.

Overview

The Omnibusspiegel — full title "Omnibusbau und Omnibusverkehr in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart" (bus construction and bus transport in past and present) — is a German-language specialist journal (ISSN 0724-7664) from the Verlag Dieter Hanke, Am Weitgarten 37, 53227 Bonn (telephone 0228-944 28 53, info@omnibusspiegel.de). The journal appears in print and online, with full-text availability documented from 2006 in the Electronic Journals Library. Its self-description defines the programme: the specialist journal for omnibuses, bus construction and bus transport, with news on vehicle development, type history, driving reports and tests, company portraits and company history. The target group spans the historically interested bus professionals, the operators, the manufacturers and the enthusiast community. The imprint of a 2021 issue lists the publisher and editorial management as Dieter Hanke personally, with the advertising rate card no. 38 of 1 January 2021 in force — the structure of a classic one-man specialist publishing house, where the publisher is the editor-in-chief, the author and the salesman in one.

History

The Omnibusspiegel is the creation of Dieter Hanke, the Bonn bus publicist who built a specialist publishing house around his passion for the omnibus. The journal's numbering — the 2021 issue 21-9, the 2020 content overview — documents continuous publication into the 2020s, and the imprint's reference to decades of rate cards indicates a long-established title. Hanke's publishing model is the enthusiast-expert journal: deep type histories researched from company archives, driving reports from the manufacturer's test track, and company portraits that double as industrial history. The journal has documented the bus industry's recent history as it happened: the Ikarus City Pioneer's new design at the start of production, tested in the Emsland; the Hübner company's history; the articulated bus's first production examples. The Ikarus story illustrates the method: at the start of the year the Hungarian e-bus received its new design, and the Omnibusspiegel was there in the Emsland to find out how it drives — the driving report as historical documentation, capturing the vehicle at the moment of its market entry. The Hübner history, promised as a look back at the company's story, shows the other pole: the company portrait as industrial archaeology, reconstructing the firms that built the buses of the past. The 11880 business directory lists the operation under "bus companies" and "newspaper publishers" in Bonn-Oberkassel — the publisher's dual identity as a transport enthusiast and a media entrepreneur. The directory's service list — bus travel, minibus rental, air-conditioned coaches, scheduled buses, vintage-bus hire, day trips, club outings — reads like the enthusiast's fantasy of what a bus publisher could also be, and hints at the milieu in which the journal lives: the Rhineland bus scene, where the publisher's address in Oberkassel is itself a landmark. In a media landscape dominated by the Munich management titles, the Omnibusspiegel has held the historical-technical niche: the journal for readers who want to know how the Setra or the Ikarus drove, not just how the bus company is managed.

Coverage and Content

The content pillars are vehicle development, type history, driving reports and tests, and company portraits and histories. The driving reports put new and historic buses through their paces: the Ikarus City Pioneer test in the Emsland, with photos by Kirsten Krämer, treated the Hungarian e-bus's handling at the start of its production run. The type histories reconstruct model lineages from the archives — the articulated bus's first production examples, the Hübner story. Company portraits present the manufacturers and operators as historical subjects, with names and initials marking the authors' contributions and the editorial note that signed articles do not necessarily reflect the editorial opinion. The 2020 content overview shows the range: production starts, design changes, test drives, company histories. The journal's copyright notice asserts the classic specialist-press terms: reproduction only with express written permission, no liability for unsolicited contributions, the sender's declaration of publication rights. The advertising is the industry's own: bus manufacturers, component suppliers and service providers addressing the historically and technically interested readership. The rate card no. 38 of 2021 governs the print advertising business.

Organization and Ownership

The Omnibusspiegel is published by the Verlag Dieter Hanke, Am Weitgarten 37, 53227 Bonn-Oberkassel — a one-man specialist publishing house in which the publisher, Dieter Hanke, is also the editorial manager. Telephone 0228-944 28 53, fax 0228-44 52 80, email info@omnibusspiegel.de, web omnibusspiegel.de. The imprint's formulation — "Verlag und Redaktionsleitung: Dieter Hanke" — captures the structure: no editorial staff list, no corporate group, just the publisher-editor and his contributors. The commercial model is the enthusiast specialist journal: subscriptions and single-copy sales (10.80 euros per issue per the 2021 imprint, ISSN 0724-7664), plus advertising from the bus industry sold on rate card no. 38. The Electronic Journals Library lists the publisher as "Verlag Dieter Hanke" with full-text online and print editions, journal ID 489356, in the mechanical-engineering subject area. The business directory's classification under both "bus companies" and "publishers" reflects the operation's scale: a publishing house that is also, in the directory's eyes, a bus business — the enthusiast's enterprise, where the love of the omnibus and the business of publishing it are the same thing.

Digital Presence

The digital home is omnibusspiegel.de, the portal carrying the journal's self-description, news on vehicle development, type histories, driving reports and company portraits. The site's metadata — keywords from "omnibusspiegel" to "fahrbericht," "typengeschichte" and "unternehmensportraits," the geo-position of Bonn, the copyright "©2014 Omnibusspiegel Verlag Dieter Hanke" — documents a TYPO3-based specialist portal built by beckermedia. The Electronic Journals Library records the online full text from 2006, making the journal's recent decades digitally accessible to subscribing institutions. Archived issues circulate in the enthusiast community as PDFs — the 2021 Ikarus City Pioneer presentation, the 2020 content overview — shared through bus-history sites such as trasco-ikarus.de. Between the print journal, the online full text and the portal, the Omnibusspiegel maintains a modest but complete digital presence for a one-man publishing house. The motto holds for the digital age as well: "Wir haben das Ohr an der Branche" — we have our ear to the industry — from Bonn-Oberkassel to the bus historians and operators everywhere. The journal's distinction in the German bus-media landscape is its historical consciousness: where the Munich titles manage the industry's present, the Omnibusspiegel preserves its past and tests its future — the type history and the test drive in the same issue. For the readers who care about the omnibus as a machine and as a cultural object, Dieter Hanke's Bonn journal remains the address: the specialist press as a labour of love, published from Am Weitgarten 37 since the days when the rate cards were still numbered in the thirties, for the bus world in past and present, ""Omnibusbau und Omnibusverkehr" — in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, from Bonn, every issue, year after year."