About Augustin

Augustin

Augustin is a German-language street newspaper published in Vienna, Austria. It was founded in 1995, with its first issue appearing in October of that year, and it describes itself, with deliberate irony, as the first Austrian boulevard newspaper. Sold on the streets of Vienna and the surrounding area by homeless people, people in poverty, asylum seekers and others excluded from the labour market, it was created so that its vendors could earn an income of their own: of its cover price, one half is kept by the vendor and the other half finances the association's social work, editorial office and projects. The paper receives no subsidies and no press funding. Its name honours Marx Augustin, the legendary Viennese folk singer of the plague year 1679 remembered in the song O du lieber Augustin. Founded by Robert Sommer, Erika Parzer and Max Wachter out of the earlier street newspaper project Uhudla, which dated from 1991, Augustin became Austria's best-known street paper, a fixture of Vienna's alternative media scene, and a member of the International Network of Street Papers.

Founding in 1995

Augustin arose in 1995 as one of Austria's first street newspapers, emerging from the street newspaper project Uhudla, which had been founded in 1991. Its founders were Robert Sommer, Erika Parzer and Max Wachter. Sommer, a journalist who had worked for many years on the Volksstimme before becoming a freelance writer in 1991, served as a co-founder and editor of Augustin from October 1995 and for years ran its writing workshop for homeless people, psychiatric survivors, asylum seekers and people released from prison, encouraging them to write down and articulate their own experiences. The paper's premiere came in October 1995, and the association behind it marked the thirtieth anniversary in 2025 with a major exhibition at the Wien Museum, Mehr als eine Zeitung — More than a Newspaper — running from September to November 2025, which presented the vendors themselves, three decades of covers and a look behind the scenes of the association. The paper modelled itself on international examples, above all The Big Issue in London, adapting the street paper principle — sold by the people it exists to support — to Vienna.

The street paper model

The economics of Augustin are the economics of street papers worldwide, run with a strict rule of independence. Vendors buy or receive the paper and sell it at a cover price recorded in reference sources as three euros; one half of the sale price remains with the vendor as earned income, and the other half finances the social work, the editorial operation and all of the association's projects. Crucially, Augustin receives no subsidies whatsoever and no state press promotion, a point its reference entries emphasise: the project lives from sales and from private support. The familiar cry of its vendors — Augustin! Neuer Augustin! — at street corners, underground stations and supermarket entrances is part of Vienna's everyday soundscape. That model gives people in precarious housing and income situations something that welfare systems rarely provide: a legal, self-directed way to earn money in public, with a recognisable product and regular customers. Vendor portraits published by the International Network of Street Papers show sellers who have sold the paper for many years, including migrants whose low pensions or lack of a work permit leave street selling as their practical means of supporting themselves and their families.

Growth, frequency and reach

The paper's acceptance in Vienna was high from the start, and reference accounts record that its circulation grew eightfold within ten years. At the beginning of 1996 it sold barely 10,000 copies a month; by 2010 up to 30,000 copies per issue, or 60,000 a month, were being sold. Since January 2007 Augustin has appeared every fourteen days, except in July, August and December, with issues of 48 pages. Reference listings of Austrian street papers give a print run of about 17,500 for the paper in more recent listings. Sales later declined, as they did for print media generally, and in May 2012 the paper launched a distinctive support scheme: the Augustin Liebhaber, or lovers, several hundred named supporters — 333 at the scheme's launch as recorded in reference sources — who sustain the independent social and media project with a monthly contribution of twenty-five euros. That mixture of street sales and a solidarity subscription base is characteristic of the paper's economics: it monetises the goodwill of readers who want the project, and not only the individual issue, to survive.

More than a newspaper: the association's social work

From its beginning, the association behind Augustin did more than publish. Its social workers support vendors daily and persistently with the practical problems of precarious life: dealings with authorities, finding suitable glasses, and the organisation of activities such as table tennis tournaments. Its best-known public action is the Opferball, the Victims' Ball, a counter-event to the Vienna Opera Ball that has attracted international attention as a satirical inversion of Viennese high society — a ball for those whom the Opera Ball's world excludes. The writing workshop associated with Robert Sommer gave vendors and other marginalised people a route into the paper's pages as authors, so that Augustin has always combined professional journalism with texts by the people whose lives it reports. This combination — editorial office, sales network and social work in one association, financed without public money — is what the Wien Museum's anniversary exhibition meant by calling Augustin more than a newspaper: the paper is the visible tip of a small, durable social institution built around Vienna's homeless and poor population.

Content and editorial character

Editorially, Augustin combines social reporting with culture, city coverage and a well-known events and classifieds section. Its self-description as the first Austrian boulevard newspaper is a provocation aimed at Vienna's commercial tabloids: it claims the accessibility, humour and street presence of a popular paper while directing them at the subjects the popular press ignores or treats as problems — poverty, homelessness, migration, housing, welfare bureaucracy and the everyday culture of the districts. Alongside reported features it carries contributions from its writing workshop and from the alternative cultural scene, and its covers have become a recognisable part of the city's visual landscape. The paper is a fixture of Vienna's alternative media scene, listed alongside Vienna's other independent and street publications, and it belongs to the International Network of Street Papers, the global association that connects more than a hundred street papers and commits its members to using the proceeds of street sales for the support of their vendors. In 2019 Augustin was awarded the Dr Karl Renner Prize, one of Austria's established journalism honours, recorded in its reference entry.

Vienna's street paper landscape

Augustin does not stand alone, and its history is part of a small Austrian street paper movement. Reference listings of Austrian street newspapers include the 20er in Innsbruck, Apropos in Salzburg, Kupfermuckn in Linz, Megaphon in Graz — whose first issue also appeared in October 1995 and which is described in some listings as Austria's earliest street newspaper — and marie in Vorarlberg, among others. Augustin itself grew out of the Uhudla project of 1991, and its own literature calls it one of Austria's first street newspapers; claims to be the very first depend on how the earlier Uhudla and the simultaneous Graz launch are counted, and this profile records the overlap rather than awarding an absolute priority. What is not in dispute is Augustin's national profile: it is the street paper of the capital, the one most often cited as the Austrian example of the genre, and a member, through the international network, of a worldwide movement that began with papers such as Street News in New York in 1989 and The Big Issue in London. Its vendors sell in Vienna and the Vienna region, and its concerns — Viennese housing, Viennese welfare offices, Viennese street life — are intensely local.

Thirty years on

The thirtieth anniversary in 2025 offered a public stocktaking. The Wien Museum exhibition presented vendors in their own words: sellers who use their income to pay rent and food, who have sold the paper for thirteen or twenty-one years, and who describe the work in terms of eye contact and giving passers-by a smile as much as in terms of money. The exhibition's framing acknowledged that in thirty years the media landscape had changed as profoundly as the city's population structure — print sales have fallen across the market, and the composition of Vienna's precarious population has been reshaped by successive waves of migration and asylum. Augustin's response across those decades has been institutional rather than technological: keep the fortnightly paper, keep the vendor network, keep the social work, and add supporter schemes when sales soften. The paper that began in October 1995 as an experiment in importing the street paper idea to Vienna has become one of the city's durable social institutions, recognised by a journalism prize and a museum exhibition alike.

Augustin today

Today Augustin continues to be published in Vienna as a German-language street newspaper appearing every fourteen days outside the summer and December breaks, sold by homeless and marginalised vendors who keep half of the cover price, and produced by an association that receives neither subsidies nor press funding. It carries social reporting, culture, city life and its familiar service and classifieds pages, with contributions from professional journalists and from writers of its own workshop tradition. Three decades after Robert Sommer, Erika Parzer and Max Wachter founded it out of the Uhudla project, the paper named after Vienna's plague-year balladeer remains what its founders built: a source of earned income and public voice for people at the edge of the labour and housing markets, and a standing reminder, cried aloud on the city's streets, that poverty in Vienna has faces, names and something to say.