About Lahrer Zeitung

Lahrer Zeitung

The Lahrer Zeitung is the regional daily newspaper of Lahr on the western edge of the Black Forest in Baden-Württemberg, published by the Lahrer Zeitung GmbH. First published in 1794 and appearing daily except Sundays and holidays with a sold circulation of 6,317 copies, it is one of the oldest dailies in south-western Germany. The paper takes its national pages from the Schwarzwälder Bote Mediengesellschaft, the publishing house of the Schwarzwälder Bote, while producing its local pages in Lahr. Its editorial office is at Kreuzstraße 9 in the city centre. Lahr is one of the few German cities with three daily newspapers.

Overview

The Lahrer Zeitung appears Monday to Saturday as the regional daily for Lahr and its surroundings. Its sold circulation stands at 6,317 copies, a decline of 56.2 percent since 1998, in the long retreat of the German regional press. The paper is published by the Lahrer Zeitung GmbH, a limited-liability company registered in the Freiburg commercial register with a share capital of 120,100 euros, whose corporate purpose is the operation of the Lahrer Zeitung publishing house and various weeklies in the paper's core distribution area. The managing director is Ute Ulrike Lambart of Horb am Neckar.

The readership of the Lahrer Zeitung is the population of Lahr, a city of some 49,000 inhabitants: the citizens of the former garrison town, the employees of the logistics companies around the airfield, the commuters who work in Offenburg or Freiburg, and the engaged citizens of the city's councils, clubs and churches. Lahr's identity is shaped by the Black Forest foothills, by the chrysanthemum festival, by the Storchenturm and the historic old town, and by the city's position between Offenburg and Freiburg. The paper's local journalism is the medium in which this three-paper town's public life is conducted.

History

The Lahrer Zeitung was first published in 1794, in the era of the late Enlightenment's flourishing press, and it has served the city of Lahr as its daily newspaper ever since. The paper documented the city's history through the Napoleonic era, the Grand Duchy of Baden, the German Empire, two world wars and the post-war decades. The publishing company, the Lahrer Zeitung GmbH, was established with a partnership agreement of 27 December 1990, first registered on 29 January 1991, continuing the paper's publishing tradition in corporate form.

The paper's modern history is defined by its cooperation with the Schwarzwälder Bote Mediengesellschaft of Oberndorf am Neckar, from which the Lahrer Zeitung takes its national pages while maintaining its own publishing company and its local editorial office in Lahr. The Schwarzwälder Bote, founded in 1835, is the regional daily of the Black Forest and the Upper Neckar, with a sold circulation of 82,675 copies, eighteen local editorial offices and fourteen local editions, nineteen together with the partner publishers including the Lahrer Zeitung. Since the beginning of 2026 the editor-in-chief of the Schwarzwälder Bote is Ulrich Becker, who is also the editor-in-chief of the Südwest Presse. The Lahrer Zeitung continues as the daily of the Black Forest's western edge, its 1794 founding making it one of the oldest newspapers in Baden-Württemberg.

Coverage and Content

The Lahrer Zeitung covers the public life of Lahr and its surroundings with the thoroughness of a dedicated regional daily. The city council and the city administration form a core beat, as does the Ortenau district administration in Offenburg. The paper reports on the Lahr airfield and the logistics economy, on the development of the former Canadian base areas, on the chrysanthemum festival that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors each autumn, on the schools including the Scheffel-Gymnasium founded in 1804, the oldest secondary school between Karlsruhe and Freiburg, and on the transport connections to Offenburg, Freiburg and Strasbourg. The courts, the police and the emergency services are covered as a matter of course.

A distinctive theme of the paper's reporting is Lahr's three-paper competition: the Lahrer Zeitung of the Schwarzwälder Bote group, the Badische Zeitung's Lahr edition and the Lahrer Anzeiger of the Mittelbadische Presse give the city an unusually competitive local press market. The paper follows the community life of the area: the volunteer fire services, the sports clubs and their leagues, the churches and their congregations, and the cultural associations and traditional festivals, from the old town festivals to the carnival. The national and international news comes from the Schwarzwälder Bote's newsroom. Family announcements, event listings and the classified and display advertising complete the daily.

The paper's chrysanthemum beat is one of its most distinctive: the autumn festival that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors to Lahr, with its flower displays and cultural programme, is followed from the first planting to the final weekend. The paper covers the Scheffel-Gymnasium's traditions, the city's oldest secondary school, and the Klinikum Lahr's role as an academic teaching hospital of the University of Freiburg. The development of the former Canadian base, the logistics parks and the airfield's future are recurring subjects of the local reporting. The district's village festivals and the jubilees of the volunteer fire services are documented with the thoroughness of a local daily. Like the other Schwarzwälder Bote partner papers, the Lahrer Zeitung reports on the schools and kindergartens, on the churches and their congregations, and its readers' letters and service pages give the city's citizens a direct voice.

Organization and Ownership

The Lahrer Zeitung is published by the Lahrer Zeitung GmbH, based at Kreuzstraße 9 in Lahr, a limited-liability company with a share capital of 120,100 euros. The managing director is Ute Ulrike Lambart. The company's corporate purpose is the operation of the Lahrer Zeitung publishing house and various weeklies in the paper's core distribution area, and it may establish branches and acquire or participate in similar companies. The paper takes its national pages from the Schwarzwälder Bote Mediengesellschaft mbH, the publishing house of the Schwarzwälder Bote, while producing its local pages as an independent company.

The Schwarzwälder Bote Mediengruppe's products include the Schwarzwälder Bote daily, the Lahrer Zeitung, the Oberbadische, the Kinderbote children's paper, the WOM weekly, the schwarzwaelder-bote.de portal, the Waldrausch magazine and the Schwarzwald Gäste Journal, with subsidiaries including the Druckzentrum Südwest printing centre. Financial details of the privately held companies are not publicly disclosed; the paper's economics rest on subscriptions, regional advertising and the digital revenues of the lahrer-zeitung.de portal.

Digital Presence

The Lahrer Zeitung is present online at lahrer-zeitung.de, where the paper's local journalism for Lahr is available digitally alongside the regional, national and international coverage. The portal carries continuously updated local news from the city on the Black Forest's edge, photo galleries and multimedia content, extending the daily's reporting to readers on desktop and mobile devices. The paper is published as an e-paper reproducing the printed edition page for page, serving subscribers who read the daily on tablet or desktop.

As a subscription daily, much of the digital content is reserved for registered and paying readers, while selected local stories remain freely accessible. The Schwarzwälder Bote group's digital products include the schwarzwaelder-bote.de portal with its e-paper and services, newsletters and breaking-news alerts for the region. For the readers of Lahr, the digital Lahrer Zeitung is the online companion to the printed daily: the city's news on the phone in the morning, the e-paper on the tablet in the evening, and the lahrer-zeitung.de portal as the continuous news service for the Black Forest's western edge between editions.