About Forstzeitung

Forstzeitung

Forstzeitung is an Austrian forestry trade magazine published monthly in Vienna by the Österreichischer Agrarverlag. Its first issue appeared on 5 January 1883 as the Österreichische Forst-Zeitung, making it one of the oldest continuously published forestry periodicals in the German-speaking world. Today's monthly magazine has a circulation of about 3,500 copies, is distributed in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Italy, and reports on the forest, forestry and agriculture, forest technology, torrent and avalanche control and hunting, with coverage of the timber market and business and a changing monthly thematic focus. It has carried its present short name, Forstzeitung, only since 2004; its long title history runs through Österreichische Forst- und Jagdzeitung, Wiener allgemeine Forst- und Jagdzeitung, Allgemeine Forstzeitung and Der Gebirgsforst, back to Österreichische Forstzeitung in 1987. Articles from 1883 to 1939 are preserved in its article archive.

Founded on 5 January 1883

The Forstzeitung was founded in 1883 as the Österreichische Forst-Zeitung, with its first issue dated 5 January 1883, and it appeared until 1894 with the subtitle Illustrirte Zeitung für Forstwirtschaft und Holzhandel, Jagd und Fischerei — illustrated newspaper for forestry and the timber trade, hunting and fishing. It belonged to the great age of specialist press foundation in the Habsburg monarchy, when professionalising occupations — foresters among them — created journals to exchange knowledge, publish prices and official notices, and assert their standing. Surviving first-issue material, preserved in the Austrian National Library's ANNO archive of historical newspapers and periodicals, shows the journal in the world of the imperial forestry administration from its earliest pages.

One source variant should be noted honestly: an older version of the Austria-Forum article gives the founding as 1893, while the current reference record and the magazine's documented first issue date it to 5 January 1883. The 1883 date, supported by the surviving first issue and the article archive beginning in 1883, is the one followed here.

A century of changing titles

Few magazines document Austria's political history in their own name as completely as this one. In 1895 the journal was renamed Österreichische Forst- und Jagdzeitung; in 1920 it became the Wiener allgemeine Forst- und Jagdzeitung. During the Second World War it appeared from 1939 as Allgemeine Forstzeitung and from 1941 as Der Gebirgsforst. In 1945 it did not appear at all. From 1946 it was published as Allgemeine forst- und holzwirtschaftliche Zeitung until 1950, and then again as Allgemeine Forstzeitung. In 1987 it returned to its founding title, Österreichische Forstzeitung, and since 2004 it has appeared under the short modern name Forstzeitung.

Each change tracks its era: the imperial illustrated newspaper, the republican Viennese title, the wartime renamings and the silent year of 1945, the reconstruction title that joined forestry to the timber economy, and the confident return in 1987 to the name of 1883. A library catalogue that lists only one title will miss most of the run; researchers must search the whole sequence.

Weekly Fridays to monthly magazine

Until before the Second World War the journal appeared weekly and was always circulated on Fridays — the classic rhythm of a professional newspaper carrying prices, appointments and official announcements. After the war it appeared only monthly, the rhythm it keeps today. The change reflects the transformation of a forestry newspaper into a forestry magazine: monthly publication allows thematic focal issues, longer technical articles and colour reporting, while time-sensitive market information migrated increasingly to faster media — including, within the same publishing house, the weekly Holzkurier founded in 1952.

Since December 2019 many contents of the Forstzeitung have also been available on its online platform, forstzeitung.at, extending the monthly print cycle with a searchable digital presence.

What the Forstzeitung covers

The magazine's documented subject fields are forest and forestry, agriculture, forest technology, torrent and avalanche control — the Wildbach- und Lawinenverbauung that protects Alpine settlements — and hunting management. Its reporting comprises the timber market, business coverage and monthly changing thematic focuses. That mixture defines its reader: not an academic researcher alone and not a merchant alone, but the practising forestry professional who must follow markets, machinery, silviculture, protection against natural hazards and game management in one title.

The Alpine dimension distinguishes the Austrian title from forestry journals of flatter countries. Torrent and avalanche control, mountain forestry and the protective forest — the Schutzwald whose condition decides the safety of valleys and roads — are standing concerns of Austrian forestry and standing subjects of its oldest journal.

Readers: who reads the Forstzeitung

The magazine's own figures, reproduced in reference sources, describe its readership in unusual detail. Readers come 37 percent from forest enterprises, 19 percent from forestry authorities, 15 percent are forest owners, 12 percent belong to interest representations, 10 percent work in torrent and avalanche control and 7 percent are active in research institutes and schools. In age, 26 percent of readers are under 41, 32 percent are between 41 and 50, 28 percent between 51 and 60 and 14 percent over 60. The magazine states a regular reach of 14,000 readers on a circulation of about 3,500 copies — four readers per copy, the classic pattern of a professional journal passed around an office, a district forestry station or a family forest farm.

The same profile appears in the publisher's distribution: the magazine is sold in Austria and also in Germany, Switzerland and Italy, the Alpine and German-speaking forestry world to which Austrian mountain forestry is directly relevant. Older publisher material quoted a reach of 16,000 readers; the current reference figure is 14,000, and the difference is noted here so that neither number is quoted without its source vintage.

Editors and the advisory board

Reference sources name Robert Spannlang as editor-in-chief of the Forstzeitung, and since 2005 the editorial team has been supported by a seven-member editorial advisory board drawn from across countries — länderübergreifend — matching the magazine's Alpine distribution. An older version of the reference article named Andreas Fischer as editor-in-chief and a five-member board; editorships change over a 140-year life, and the current reference record is followed here, with the older state of the record noted so that readers meeting the Fischer name in older sources can place it.

The board structure is typical of a mature professional journal: practitioners and specialists from the magazine's several fields — forestry practice, authorities, protection engineering, research — advising a small professional editorial team in Vienna.

The Agrarverlag forestry family

The Forstzeitung is published by the Österreichischer Agrarverlag of Vienna, the publishing house founded in 1928 whose forestry and timber portfolio also includes Holzkurier, Holzbau Austria and, with the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, the Austrian Journal of Forest Science. The Agrarverlag acquired a title older than itself: the journal of 1883 came to a publisher of 1928 and has been maintained by it through the post-war decades. The house, owned since December 2023 by the Raiffeisen-Holding Niederösterreich-Wien, publishes dozens of agricultural and rural titles, and the Forstzeitung is its senior forestry voice.

Within that family the division of labour is clear. Holzkurier, the weekly, carries market speed; Forstzeitung, the monthly, carries forestry practice, technology, protection and policy in depth. A professional who reads both follows the tree from the mountain slope to the sawmill gate.

The archive, 1883 to 1939

The Forstzeitung's article archive covers 1883 to 1939, the run from its founding to the wartime renaming, and historical issues survive in the Austrian National Library's ANNO portal, where its nineteenth-century pages can be read today. For historians of forestry, of hunting, of the timber trade and of Alpine land use, that archive is a primary source of the first order: week by week, the journal recorded prices, pests, storms, laws, appointments and arguments of the monarchy's and the first republic's forest world.

The archive also disciplines modern writing about the title. Claims about its early decades can be checked against its own pages, and this profile's account of the founding era confines itself to what the reference record and the surviving first issues support.

Forestry in Austria and its oldest journal

Roughly half of Austria is forested, and forestry is at once an industry, a land-use system and a protective infrastructure for Alpine settlement. A journal founded in 1883 to serve that world has accompanied every transformation of it: the imperial forest administration, the republics, the dictatorship years visible in its own wartime titles, the mechanisation of harvesting, the storm and bark-beetle calamities of the climate era, and the current debate about the forest as carbon store and biodiversity refuge. The magazine's standing subjects — timber market and monthly themes, forest technology, torrent and avalanche control — are exactly the points where Austrian forestry touches money, machinery and public safety.

That is the significance of the Forstzeitung beyond its modest circulation of 3,500: it is the continuous professional memory of Austrian forestry, kept in print, without interruption except for the single missing year of 1945, for more than 140 years.

Current status

Forstzeitung continues to appear monthly in Vienna from the Österreichischer Agrarverlag, in print with a circulation of about 3,500 copies distributed across Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Italy, and online through forstzeitung.at, where much of its content has been available since December 2019. Under editor-in-chief Robert Spannlang, with its cross-border advisory board, it remains what it became in the course of its many names: the Austrian forestry profession's own magazine. Anyone citing it should remember the titles it lived under — a reference to the Österreichische Forst- und Jagdzeitung of 1900, the Allgemeine Forstzeitung of 1960 and the Forstzeitung of today is a reference to one and the same journal, founded on 5 January 1883.