About Servus in Stadt & Land

Servus in Stadt & Land

Servus in Stadt & Land is a monthly German-language home and lifestyle magazine for the southern German-Austrian cultural region, first published in Austria in 2010 by Red Bull Media House. Based in Wals-Siezenheim, in the state of Salzburg, it is the print companion brand to ServusTV, the television channel that Red Bull developed from Salzburg TV. The magazine celebrates the beauties of the homeland on every page: tradition, nature, handicraft, regional food, Alpine living and the joy of life, under the idea of living simply and well. Separate Austrian and German editions are published, and in Austria the Servus brand has grown into a family that includes a cookery magazine, a garden magazine, a children's magazine and an e-commerce marketplace.

Its commercial scale is exceptional for a magazine launched in 2010. Austrian audit figures for the second half of 2016 recorded a sold circulation of 125,027 copies and a distributed circulation of 143,526 copies for the Austrian edition, while the German edition recorded a sold circulation of 62,088 copies in the second quarter of 2017. Publisher media material has described readership of around 430,000. In 2025, Austrian trade reporting still identified Servus in Stadt & Land as the strongest-circulation title among Austria's monthly and less frequent magazines. A Heimat magazine, a magazine of homeland and home, founded in the digital era and reaching six-figure paid circulation, is a notable phenomenon in European publishing, and this profile explains its documented basis.

Launched in Austria in 2010

Servus in Stadt & Land was first published in Austria in 2010. The timing followed Red Bull's transformation of Salzburg TV, founded in 1995, into ServusTV in 2009, both owned by Red Bull Media House GmbH, the media subsidiary of Red Bull GmbH headquartered in Wals-Siezenheim near Salzburg. The magazine and the channel were conceived as companions: the same brand world of Austrian landscape, tradition and quality of life, expressed in print as well as on screen. A German edition followed in 2012, extending the concept to Bavaria and then to Germany as a whole.

Monthly editions with different content are published for Austria, for Bavaria and for Germany overall. That regionalisation is central to the Servus idea. A homeland magazine cannot be placeless: its readers identify with specific valleys, towns, dialects, dishes and customs, and the Austrian and German editions adapt their content accordingly while sharing the brand's visual language and values. The Austrian edition, catalogued under the journal identifier ZDB 2606555-1, is the original and the subject of this profile, though the German edition, ZDB 2660080-8, is a substantial publication in its own right.

Red Bull Media House in Wals-Siezenheim

The publisher is Red Bull Media House, based in Wals-Siezenheim, Salzburg. Red Bull Media House was founded to produce the content through which the energy-drink company connects with audiences, spanning television, print, film, digital media and music. Within its print portfolio, Servus in Stadt & Land sits alongside The Red Bulletin, the nature and knowledge magazine Terra Mater Magazin, the mountaineering magazine Bergwelten and the revived theatre magazine Die Bühne. Servus is the portfolio's homeland and lifestyle flagship, and by circulation its most successful Austrian print product.

Editors-in-chief recorded for the Austrian edition are Gundi Bittermann, with Klaus Kamolz as deputy, while the German edition has been edited by Christl Rauner. The Servus operation is part of a wider Salzburg media cluster created by Red Bull's presence in Wals-Siezenheim and Fuschl am See, an unusual decentralisation in Austrian media, which is otherwise heavily concentrated in Vienna. That a Salzburg-published magazine became Austria's strongest monthly is itself part of the Servus story: its subject is the rural and small-town Austria that Vienna-based media often treat as a subject rather than as their home.

The Servus Idea: Homeland, Tradition and Good Living

Servus in Stadt & Land is described in German reference listings as a Heimatmagazin, a homeland magazine, for the south German-Austrian cultural area, and by its publisher as a premium-quality monthly showing on every page the beauties that represent the homeland: tradition, nature, handicraft, the pleasure of life and enjoyment. Its stated invitation to readers, wherever they are at home, is to satisfy a desire to find their own roots, and to pause and reflect on the important things, not casually but at leisure. The brand line Einfach. Gut. Leben., simply live well, summarises the proposition.

The content follows from that idea. Rural traditions and seasonal customs, traditional crafts and the people who practise them, nature and the Alpine landscape, regional food and recipes, gardens, houses and regional building culture, and portraits of people living deliberately in Stadt und Land, in town and country, fill the magazine. The title itself, Servus, the traditional Austrian and Bavarian greeting used for both hello and goodbye, signals warmth and regional belonging. In a media market dominated by speed and metropolitan concerns, Servus deliberately offers slowness, permanence and place.

Circulation and Market Leadership

The audited figures document Servus's rise to the top of the Austrian monthly market. For the second half of 2016, the ÖAK recorded 125,027 sold copies and 143,526 distributed copies in Austria. The German edition's IVW figures for the second quarter of 2017, 62,088 sold and 63,588 distributed, show that the concept travelled, particularly in Bavaria, whose cultural region the magazine shares with Austria. Red Bull Media House media kits cited a readership of about 430,000, consistent with the multiple readers per copy typical of a magazine kept and shared in households.

Trade reporting in 2025, drawing on Austrian print-run statistics, continued to identify Servus in Stadt & Land as the highest-circulation publication among monthly and less frequently appearing magazines in Austria. That durability, fifteen years after launch, separates Servus from a launch-era success story. Lifestyle magazines commonly spike and fade; Servus instead settled into the routines of its readers, many of them subscribers, and held a market-leading position through the same period in which much of Austrian print was contracting. Its performance is regularly cited in discussions of Red Bull's media strategy as evidence that brand-funded publishing can sustain genuinely popular editorial products.

The Wider Servus Brand Family

In Austria, the Servus name extends well beyond the monthly magazine. Under the same umbrella brand appear Servus Gute Küche, a cookery magazine, Servus Unser Garten, devoted to gardens, Servus Kinder, a children's magazine, and Servus am Marktplatz, an e-commerce platform for regional products. The extensions follow logically from the parent magazine's content: readers who cook from its pages, garden in its spirit and raise children in its region can be served by dedicated products, and regional producers introduced editorially can sell through the marketplace.

The television companion remains the largest sibling. ServusTV, broadcasting from Wals-Siezenheim since its 2009 rebrand, carries the same homeland, nature, culture and service themes to a broadcast audience in Austria, and its programming and the magazine cross-refer. Together, magazine, channel, specialist offshoots and marketplace form one of the most complete brand ecosystems in Austrian media, all originating from a regional Salzburg television station acquired by Red Bull and relaunched in 2009, with the print magazine following in 2010.

Readership and Cultural Meaning

Servus addresses readers who value regional identity, craft quality and a slower, more rooted way of life, whether they live in the countryside or in cities, as the title's pairing of Stadt and Land, town and country, explicitly acknowledges. Its success has been interpreted in Austrian media commentary as a counter-movement: against globalised, screen-paced culture, a beautifully produced monthly about one's own region offers reassurance and pride. The magazine treats rural life not as backward but as a repository of skills, from woodwork and baking to herbal knowledge, that urban readers increasingly wish to learn.

That positioning also explains the magazine's advertising and commercial environment, which centres on food, home, garden, travel within the region, and quality regional products. The premium production values noted by the publisher, strong photography, generous formats and careful design, position each issue as an object to keep rather than a disposable read, reinforcing the subscription relationship. For a directory, the cultural point is the essential one: Servus in Stadt & Land demonstrated, from 2010 onward, that a newly launched print magazine about tradition could become a market leader in a small European country.

Digital and Print Working Together

Servus operates as more than a printed monthly. The Austrian and German web presences under the Servus brand publish regional stories, recipes, craft instructions and garden guidance between issues, while ServusTV On, the streaming platform launched by the channel in 2022, carries the companion television world on demand. For a magazine whose promise is slowness and print permanence, digital services are used for utility and continuity rather than for speed: readers find the current issue's recipes, regional producers and craft suppliers online, and the marketplace converts that attention into purchases from the regions the magazine celebrates. The monthly print issue remains the flagship product and the centre of the subscription relationship.

Publishing Details

Servus in Stadt & Land is published monthly in German by Red Bull Media House GmbH, with its Austrian home in Wals-Siezenheim, state of Salzburg. The Austrian edition dates from 2010 and the German edition from 2012, with a Bavarian edition among the regional variants. Recorded editors-in-chief for Austria are Gundi Bittermann and, as deputy, Klaus Kamolz; Christl Rauner has edited the German edition. Audited benchmarks are 125,027 sold copies in Austria in the second half of 2016 and 62,088 sold copies in Germany in the second quarter of 2017. The magazine maintains Austrian and German web presences under the Servus brand, alongside the ServusTV and marketplace services.

Public information about Servus is good on launch, ownership, structure and audited circulation, thinner on internal editorial history and on year-by-year financial performance, which Red Bull does not publish at title level. This profile accordingly confines itself to the documented record. That record is sufficient to define the magazine clearly: a monthly homeland and lifestyle magazine created in Austria in 2010 by Red Bull Media House as the print companion to ServusTV, published from Wals-Siezenheim in separate Austrian and German editions, and established, by audited circulation, as Austria's leading monthly magazine.