About Essener Stadtmagazin

Essener Stadtmagazin

The Essener Stadtmagazin – published under the motto "Meine Stadt, mein Magazin" (my city, my magazine) – is the official city magazine of Essen, produced by the EMG – Essen Marketing GmbH. Distributed free to households with a print run of 80,000 copies, it appears several times a year as a glossy magazine that presents the Ruhr metropolis to its own citizens: district portraits, local personalities, business and economic topics, culture, events and lifestyle. With its mix of civic pride and service journalism, the Stadtmagazin functions as the city's calling card to its residents, telling the stories of Essen's neighborhoods, companies and cultural life in a visually rich, accessible format.

Overview

The Essener Stadtmagazin is published by the EMG – Essen Marketing GmbH, the city's marketing company, based at Kennedyplatz 5 in Essen. The magazine's editorial address is magazin@emg.essen.de, and its print run is stated as 80,000 copies – a distribution that reaches a large share of the city's households. The magazine appears in numbered issues through the year; the 2025 volume included at least three issues, published as digital flip editions alongside the print run.

The readership is the population of Essen itself: the magazine is written for the people who live in the city's districts, from Altenessen to Heisingen, from Schonnebeck to the city center. Its editorial program is organized into standing sections: "ZU HAUSE IN ESSEN" (at home in Essen) for district portraits and local personalities, "WIRTSCHAFT" (economy) for business topics, "LIFESTYLE" for consumer and leisure themes, "EVENTS" for the city's event calendar and reports, "KULTUR" (culture) for the arts, and "JUNG IN ESSEN" (young in Essen) for youth topics. This structure gives each issue a predictable rhythm while allowing the content to follow the city's life through the seasons.

The magazine's character is that of city marketing in magazine form: positive, visually rich and service-oriented. It presents Essen's strengths – its economic transformation, its cultural institutions, its green spaces and its neighborhood life – to an audience that experiences these strengths daily but may not always recognize them. The photography is a central element: professional photographers document the districts, the events and the personalities, giving the magazine a visual quality that distinguishes it from municipal information bulletins. Advertising from local businesses, sold through the Medienbüro Ruhr-Mitte, finances the free distribution and connects the magazine to the city's commercial life.

History

The Essener Stadtmagazin was created by the city's marketing company as an instrument of civic communication and city branding. Essen, the largest city of the Ruhr region, has undergone a profound structural transformation from coal and steel to services, energy, culture and education – a transformation that the city's marketing has worked to make visible both externally and internally. The Stadtmagazin addresses the internal audience: the citizens whose identification with their city is the foundation of its image.

The magazine's issues document this transformation in real time. District portraits trace the development of neighborhoods: the Altenessen conference, a citizen dialogue platform founded ten years ago that meets twice a year at the Zeche Carl cultural center, shows how residents engage to improve their district's image; Schonnebeck is presented through its artists and its famous "Filiale Nummer 1" of the Aldi empire; Heisingen through the civic engagement of its local associations. Economic coverage follows the city's business life, from interviews with the Stadtwerke's leadership on the heat transition to reports on new gastronomic highlights such as the market hall and the first Munich-style Hofbräuhaus in the Ruhr region opening at Willy-Brandt-Platz.

The digital flip editions, hosted on the city's webapps-extern.essen.de platform under "MeineStadtMeinMagazin", have made the magazine's archive accessible online, with issues from recent years available as browsable digital magazines. This digital layer extends the print magazine's reach and preserves its chronicle of the city's development.

Essen's transformation is the magazine's standing brief. The city was named European Green Capital in 2017, a recognition of its conversion from coal-and-steel metropolis to a city marketing its green spaces, its Baldeneysee lake, and its Grugapark. The Zeche Zollverein coal mine and coking plant, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2001, anchors the industrial-heritage tourism that the magazine's district portraits and event pages promote. As the Ruhr region's largest city, Essen competes for residents, students, and companies with an image built on livability — the civic pride the Stadtmagazin cultivates issue by issue.

Content and Sections

The "ZU HAUSE IN ESSEN" section is the heart of the magazine: long-form district portraits that introduce readers to neighborhoods and the people who shape them. These features combine reportage with service information, presenting local initiatives, cultural venues and recreational opportunities. Personalities from the city's life – from the cartoonist Thomas Plaßmann, one of only about 30 in Germany, who draws his daily caricatures in the middle of Essen, to district activists and artists – give the section its human dimension.

The "WIRTSCHAFT" section covers the city's economy: interviews with business leaders, reports on companies and economic developments, and features on the structural change that continues to shape Essen as an energy capital and service metropolis. "LIFESTYLE" addresses consumer topics, from gastronomy to leisure, while "EVENTS" previews and reviews the city's festivals, fairs and cultural happenings. The "KULTUR" section follows the city's rich cultural institutions – from the Folkwang Museum to the Philharmonie – and "JUNG IN ESSEN" speaks to younger readers.

A recurring theme is Essen's outdoor and recreational quality: features on the city's hiking trails, which earned international recognition when the European navigation platform Komoot honored the EMG's hiking campaigns with a Global Choice Award, present Essen as a hiking destination. The "Tag der Steige" (day of trails) and the stamp-collecting hiking routes with medals for children and pins for adults show how the magazine turns city-marketing initiatives into engaging stories. These features serve a dual purpose: they give residents ideas for their leisure time, and they build the city's image as a green, livable metropolis – an image that supports tourism, talent attraction and the pride of the citizens themselves.

Publisher and Organization

The publisher is the EMG – Essen Marketing GmbH, the city of Essen's marketing company, based at Kennedyplatz 5, 45127 Essen. The EMG is responsible for the city's tourism and location marketing, and the Stadtmagazin is one of its central instruments for addressing the city's own population. The editorial contact is magazin@emg.essen.de, with the EMG's management – including figures such as managing director Richard Röhrhoff, who appears in the magazine's pages – shaping the publication's direction.

Advertising sales are handled by the Medienbüro Ruhr-Mitte, with Marcel Pasch named as the contact, based at Jakob-Funke-Platz 1 in Essen. The magazine's production involves regional partners: proofreading by druckpartner GmbH in Mülheim an der Ruhr and printing by L. N. Schaffrath DruckMedien in Geldern. This regional production chain reflects the magazine's character as a product of and for the region.

Digital Presence

The digital presence of the Essener Stadtmagazin centers on the flip-book editions hosted at webapps-extern.essen.de/MeineStadtMeinMagazin/, where current and past issues are available as browsable digital magazines with page-by-page navigation. These digital editions make the magazine accessible beyond the print distribution and preserve its issues as a chronicle of the city's recent history.

The magazine is embedded in the EMG's broader digital marketing for the city of Essen, which includes the city's tourism portals, social media channels and event platforms. The Stadtmagazin's stories – district portraits, event previews, business features – are amplified through these channels, reaching audiences beyond the print readership. As a free city magazine with a print run of 80,000 and a digital archive, the Essener Stadtmagazin combines traditional print city marketing with digital accessibility: a glossy magazine for the coffee table and a browsable online chronicle of life in the Ruhr metropolis, produced by the city's own marketing company for the people who call Essen home.