About Allgäuer Zeitung

Allgäuer Zeitung

The Allgäuer Zeitung — the AZ — is the daily newspaper of the Allgäu, the Alpine foothill region of southwestern Bavaria. Published in Kempten, the region's largest town, it appears Monday through Saturday in eight local editions that stretch from Füssen at the Austrian border to Memmingen in the north and from the Westallgäu to the Ostallgäu. With a sold circulation of 71,960 copies, it is the dominant newspaper of the Allgäu and one of the stronger regional dailies in Bavaria, published by the Allgäuer Zeitungsverlag — a media group owned jointly by the Mediengruppe Pressedruck and the Waldburg-Zeil family.

Overview

The Allgäuer Zeitung is a subscription daily appearing Monday through Saturday, aimed at the households of the Allgäu and central Swabia. Its eight local editions cover the region's distinct sub-landscapes: the Kempten edition (as the Kempter Tagblatt, with around 15,879 copies the largest single edition), Füssen at the foot of the Alps, Kaufbeuren with the Buchloer Zeitung, Marktoberdorf in the Ostallgäu, the Memminger Zeitung in the north, the Allgäuer Anzeigeblatt of Immenstadt in the upper Allgäu, and Der Westallgäuer, published jointly with the Holzer publishing house of Weiler.

The paper's pages are produced by the group's central newsroom in Kempten, with local newsrooms serving the individual editions. The Kempten newsroom produces the national and regional section, while the edition newsrooms write the local pages for their towns and valleys. Online, the paper lives at allgaeuer-zeitung.de, the group's news site, and at all-in.de, the regional portal that has offered the Allgäu's news overview online for more than 20 years.

The Allgäu is a region of strong identity — the Alpine foothills, the dairy farming, the tourism of the Alps and the lakes — and the paper reads like its chronicle: the district politics of the Oberallgäu, Ostallgäu, and Unterallgäu, the winter sports of Oberstdorf, the festivals and customs of the villages, and the economy of a region where tourism, agriculture, and mid-size industry meet. The paper's journalists cover a territory where the local and the global intersect daily — where a village council debates a hiking trail in the morning and the world watches a ski jump in the afternoon — and the Allgäuer Zeitung's regional pages are the forum where the Allgäu talks to itself about both.

History

The name Allgäuer Zeitung reaches back to 1848, when Josef Huber — owner of the Kösel printing house — founded the Konstitutionelle Blätter aus dem Allgäu as a counterweight to the radically oriented Kempter Zeitung. By 1853 at the latest the paper called itself the Allgäuer Zeitung, appearing in the Kösel-Verlag as an "organ of Catholic journalism" with predominantly church and religious reporting directed against Bismarck's church-political efforts. After Prussia's victory over Austria in 1866, the paper ceased publication.

In 1874 the Allgäuer Zeitung was refounded, again in the Kösel-Verlag, as a consciously Catholic press; from 1894 it appeared twice daily for some years. In 1934, in the course of the Nazi coordination of the media, the Allgäuer Zeitung was closed, and the regime-compliant Allgäuer Tagblatt — appearing since 1933 — became the only newspaper in Kempten. On 27 April 1945 the Allgäuer Tagblatt appeared for the last time, as American troops marched into Kempten.

The modern paper first appeared in 1945, published until October 1968 under the title Der Allgäuer. It grew into the daily of the Allgäu and central Swabia, building its network of local editions and, in 1968, entering a working partnership with the Memminger Zeitung for the joint publication of a home newspaper for the Memmingen area. In November 2022 the Eberl Medien publishing business and digital agency were transferred to the Allgäuer Zeitungsverlag, extending the group's footprint.

Coverage and Content

The Allgäuer Zeitung's content follows the division of labor of the group model. The Kempten central newsroom produces the national and regional section — federal and state politics, the Bavarian state politics from Munich, the economy, culture, sports — while the edition newsrooms write the local pages: the town councils, the district administrations, school and education news, court reporting, and the clubs, churches, and volunteer organizations of the Allgäu's towns and villages.

The paper pays particular attention to the Alpine economy of its region: the winter sports of Oberstdorf and the Allgäu Alps, the summer tourism of the lakes and mountains, the dairy farming that shapes the foothill landscape, and the mid-size industries of Kempten, Kaufbeuren, and Memmingen. The paper covers the seasonal rhythms of a tourism region alongside the everyday business of the district towns, and its sports pages follow both the local clubs and the international winter sports events that the Allgäu hosts.

The paper's advertising sections serve the businesses of the Allgäu, and its classified and family-announcement pages remain among the most-read parts of the paper. The group's free weeklies, Hallo Allgäu and extra, extend its reach to non-subscriber households, and the Griaß di' Allgäu experience magazine promotes the region across the German-speaking world.

Organization and Ownership

The Allgäuer Zeitung is published by the Allgäuer Zeitungsverlag GmbH of Kempten. The Mediengruppe Pressedruck of Augsburg and the Waldburg-Zeil family each hold 50 percent of the company — a joint ownership that links the Allgäu paper to the Augsburg-based group behind the Augsburger Allgemeine, the Main-Post, and the Südkurier, while keeping the founding family's stake. The editors-in-chief are Sascha Borowski and Markus Raffler; the managing directors are Thomas Huber and Bernd Riffel.

The media group employs more than 800 permanent and 400 freelance staff, with around 90 trainees and students in 18 professions and 1,100 deliverers — one of the larger employers of the Allgäu. Its headquarters is the Allgäuer Medienzentrum on the Heisinger Straße in Kempten, where the paper is printed and where the studios for television and radio, the allgäu mail postal service, and the group's printing and data technology operations are housed. The group's services include the allgäu mail postal service, the OYA media multichannel agency, the allgäu.tv regional television station, and RSA Radio.

The sold circulation of 71,960 copies (IVW 2/2026) across the eight editions makes the Allgäuer Zeitung the dominant newspaper of its region — a position it has held through the postwar decades, adapting from the Der Allgäuer of 1945 to the multimedia group of the present.

Digital Presence

Online, the Allgäuer Zeitung is at allgaeuer-zeitung.de, the group's news site, and at all-in.de, the regional portal that has offered the Allgäu's news overview for more than 20 years. The leisure and events portal allgäuweit.de is the largest of its kind in the region. Readers can access the paper as an ePaper, and the group's digital offerings include apps and newsletters.

The group's digital agency, rta.design, serves external companies' media presence, and the allgäu.tv station provides moving images from the region while RSA Radio broadcasts around the clock. On social media, the group's titles maintain channels that distribute local stories, extending the reach of the Kempten and edition newsrooms beyond the printed paper's circulation area.

For the readers of the Allgäu, the Allgäuer Zeitung remains the daily paper of their region: a newspaper whose name reaches back to 1848, whose modern form began in 1945, and whose eight editions cover the Alpine foothills from Füssen to Memmingen. In a region with one of the strongest local identities in Germany, it continues the tradition of the regional daily — written in Kempten, printed in Kempten, and read across the Allgäu.