About Lichtungen

Lichtungen

Lichtungen is a magazine for literature, art and cultural criticism — Literatur, Kunst und Zeitkritik in its own German subtitle — published in Graz, Styria, since 1979. It appears quarterly, in print, and it has survived for more than four and a half decades by doing three things consistently: publishing new German-language writing with a deliberate emphasis on young and emerging authors, presenting visual art inside the magazine itself rather than merely writing about it, and maintaining an international outlook that has made its city and country partnerships, especially with southern and eastern Europe, the best-known feature of its programme. Its documented sold circulation is modest, around 1,100 copies, but circulation alone understates its role: Lichtungen is one of the long-established literary magazines through which Graz sustains its reputation as a city of literature.

The magazine's home is Graz, and that location is not incidental. Graz is home to manuskripte, founded in 1960, to Perspektive and Sterz, both founded in 1977, and to Schreibkraft, founded in 1998. Lichtungen, founded in 1979, belongs to the second wave of that Graz magazine culture — younger than manuskripte, but old enough to have its own history, its own generations of editors, and a 40th anniversary that it celebrated in 2019. Reference listings record its international standard serial number as ISSN 1012-4705, its language as German, its headquarters as Graz, and its current editorial leadership under the Graz author Andrea Stift-Laube, who took over in a relaunch in 2019.

Founding by Otto Eggenreich in 1979

Lichtungen was founded in 1979 by Otto Eggenreich. The founding date places its birth in a fertile period for Austrian literary magazines: Sterz and Perspektive had both been founded in Graz two years earlier, and across Austria association-based literary publishing was expanding the space available to new writing. Where some of those titles defined themselves by avant-garde doctrine or by cultural politics, Lichtungen defined itself from the start by a triad — literature, art and Zeitkritik, criticism of the times — that allowed each issue to combine new literary texts, a visual-art component, and essays engaging with contemporary questions.

The magazine's name, Lichtungen, means clearings — places in a forest where the trees open and light falls. As a title for a literary magazine it suggests exactly the function its editors have repeatedly claimed for it: to open a space, to let light in on writing and art that might otherwise remain in shadow, and in particular to clear a place where younger authors can first become visible. That interpretation is consistent with the magazine's documented editorial aim of promoting young authors and giving them a possibility of publication, an aim stated in reference accounts and repeated in the magazine's own descriptions of itself in professional directories.

The Jaroschka era and the shape of the magazine

For many years Lichtungen was edited by the Graz author Markus Jaroschka. Reference accounts credit Jaroschka with shaping the magazine over a long period — Graz literary histories describe the Lichtungen as the magazine that Jaroschka made big, gross gemacht in the German phrase — and his long editorship gave the title continuity of taste and of networks. Under that long stewardship the magazine's characteristic structure settled into place: new literary writing as the core, an art section presenting young artists and artists' collectives who design both the cover and the interior art pages of an issue, and Zeitkritik essays rounding out each number.

That structure deserves attention because it makes Lichtungen more than an anthology of texts. The art component is not decoration: the artists presented in an issue shape its visual identity, cover included, so that each number is also a small exhibition in print. The critical essays, meanwhile, keep the magazine in conversation with its moment — the Zeitkritik element of the subtitle — rather than allowing it to become a purely inward-looking literary workshop product. Professional listings for the magazine, such as the Netzwerk Lyrik journals directory, summarise the same profile: an internationally oriented journal for literature, art and Zeitkritik based in Graz, with international literature and a curated art section as its emphases.

Promoting young authors, publishing established names

A stated goal of Lichtungen is to promote young authors and to give them an opportunity to publish. Alongside those new names, the magazine also publishes internationally renowned writers. That double commitment — first publication and early publication for the emerging, alongside work by the established — is a classic literary-magazine formula, and it serves both parties: younger writers gain credibility and readers by appearing in serious company, and established writers gain a venue that is attentive, well edited and connected to a living local scene. Directories note that each issue also contains a cross-section of contemporary German-language literature, Gegenwartsliteratur, so an issue typically mixes the Graz and Austrian scene with writing from the wider German-speaking world.

The practical importance of such a venue in Austria should not be underestimated. The Austrian book market is small compared with Germany's, and many Austrian writers publish their books with German houses. Literary magazines at home therefore carry a disproportionate share of the work of literary formation: they are where a young Styrian, Viennese or Salzburg writer can first appear in print, be read by editors and festival organisers, and begin to build the publication record on which stipends, prizes and book contracts later depend. Lichtungen has performed that function continuously since 1979, which means several generations of Austrian writers have passed through its pages early in their careers.

International partnerships: cities, countries and South and East Europe

The feature for which Lichtungen is particularly known is its international city and country co-operations, with a focus on southern and eastern Europe. Issue by issue and project by project, the magazine has presented literary scenes from other countries to German-language readers — reference accounts describe presentations ranging across the United States, Cuba and many parts of Europe as far as Belarus — with the sustained emphasis on the south and east of the continent. For a Graz magazine this orientation has a geographic logic: Styria borders Slovenia, Graz has historic ties across the former Yugoslav and Habsburg spaces, and Austrian literature has repeatedly renewed itself through contact with the literatures of its southern and eastern neighbours.

These partnerships also distinguish Lichtungen within Austria. Many literary magazines are international in the weak sense that they will print a translated text when one arrives; Lichtungen made international exchange a structural feature, building issues around the literature of a city or a country in co-operation with partners there. The scholarly and cultural value of that work is cumulative: over decades, such issues form a record of literary contact — who was translated, who was introduced, which scenes were in dialogue — that researchers of central and south-eastern European literature can use, and that helped to position Graz as a mediating city between German-language literature and the literatures to its south and east.

The 2019 relaunch under Andrea Stift-Laube

In 2019, the year of its 40th anniversary, Lichtungen was relaunched under the Graz author Andrea Stift-Laube. Reference accounts record that since the 2019 relaunch the magazine has been led by Stift-Laube as editor-in-chief, that it was modernised in content and in appearance, and that the writer Clemens J. Setz was won as a guest contributor for a regularly appearing column titled Poesie an unvermuteten Stellen — poetry in unexpected places. Setz, himself one of the most prominent Austrian writers of his generation and a Graz author, brought a recognisable voice and a playful brief: a column devoted to finding poetry where one would not expect it.

The editorial structure recorded in current listings has Andrea Stift-Laube as editor-in-chief, with Astrid Kury responsible for the art section as its curator, and Helwig Brunner also named among the publishers in directory listings; Brunner, a Graz author and editor, had earlier been a co-editor of the magazine. Since issue 175 in autumn 2023, according to publisher records for the Graz house that took over its e-book production, Lichtungen has also appeared as an e-book edition, extending the print quarterly into digital form. That combination — a print magazine with a forty-year archive, a refreshed design and leadership, and a digital edition — is how a small literary title adapts without abandoning the form that defines it.

Frequency, circulation and the economics of a literary quarterly

Lichtungen appears four times a year. Its sold circulation is documented at about 1,100 copies. Those two figures, taken together, describe the economics of the serious literary magazine in Austria with unusual honesty: this is publishing sustained by subscriptions, by single-copy sales to a committed readership, and by the public cultural funding that Austrian federal, provincial and city authorities provide to literary journals, rather than by advertising or mass newsstand sale. A circulation of 1,100 would be a failure for a consumer magazine; for a literary quarterly it is a workable, even typical, scale — comparable titles in the same Austrian group range from around 500 copies upward — because the readership is concentrated among writers, critics, teachers, librarians, booksellers and dedicated readers whose attention matters more to a literary culture than raw numbers do.

It is also why longevity itself is an achievement worth recording. A quarterly that has appeared since 1979 has produced, at four issues a year, well over 170 issues across its history, through changes of editor, funding climate and reading habit. Each relaunch, such as that of 2019, is a point at which such a magazine might instead have closed — as its Graz contemporary Sterz did, ending regular publication in 2014. Lichtungen's continuation after 2019, with new leadership and a modernised appearance, is therefore part of its story: the magazine renewed itself at forty rather than becoming a memorial to its own past.

Lichtungen among the Graz magazines

Set beside its Graz siblings, Lichtungen's identity comes into focus. manuskripte is the elder, avant-garde-founded title devoted exclusively to first publications. Perspektive is the doctrinally avant-garde title, critically engaged with the literary field itself. Sterz was the cultural-political title with the large non-commercial circulation. Schreibkraft is the feuilleton magazine, appearing twice a year. Lichtungen is the international and art-conscious title: the one that pairs each issue's literature with a designed art presence, that builds country and city partnerships, and that explicitly understands the promotion of young authors as its mandate. The Graz scene is stronger for having all of these, because a young writer in the city can find, within a few streets, magazines of genuinely different character — and Lichtungen's clearing, to return to its name, is the one deliberately opened toward southern and eastern Europe and toward the visual arts.

General accounts of Graz as a capital of literature list Lichtungen as one of the established fixtures of that status, alongside manuskripte and schreibkraft. That standing, earned over four decades, rests not on circulation but on consistency: of appearance, of editorial purpose, and of service to writers at the start of their careers and to readers who want to encounter foreign literary scenes in German.

Reading Lichtungen today

For a reader coming to Lichtungen now, the practical facts are these. It is a German-language quarterly from Graz, edited by Andrea Stift-Laube with Astrid Kury curating the art section, publishing new literary writing with an emphasis on younger authors, a cross-section of contemporary German-language literature, curated visual art that shapes each issue's cover and interior, and Zeitkritik essays. Its website is lichtungen.at, where current issues, its archive and its international partnership projects are presented. Its recorded print ISSN is 1012-4705. It marked forty years in 2019 and continues in print and, since 2023, in e-book form.

The limits of this profile should be stated as plainly as its facts. The summary sources available do not provide a complete index of every issue's contents, a full list of every author and artist published since 1979, or audited year-by-year circulation figures, and none have been invented here. What they do establish — foundation in 1979 by Otto Eggenreich, the long Jaroschka editorship, the art and Zeitkritik structure, the young-author mandate, the south- and east-European partnerships, the 2019 relaunch under Andrea Stift-Laube with Clemens J. Setz's column, and the roughly 1,100-copy quarterly circulation — is enough to place Lichtungen accurately: a durable, internationally minded clearing in Austrian literary life, still open.