About Merian

Merian

Merian is a German travel magazine published in Hamburg and the oldest still-existing German-language travel periodical. First issued in July 1948, it spent more than seven decades as a monothematic monthly — each issue devoted to a single country, region or city — before a 2023 relaunch reshaped it into a six-times-yearly magazine built around changing focus themes, special destinations, hotels and new forms of travel. Across all its eras, the brand has stood for thoroughly researched, lavishly illustrated travel journalism with literary ambition.

Overview

For most of its history, the Merian concept was unique in German magazine publishing: every issue treated one geographic subject — a country, part of a country, a group of countries or a city — in articles, reportages and essays, usually richly illustrated. A single issue would survey the geography, economy, politics, history and literature of the region, alongside its museums, art and culture and its gastronomy, giving readers a complete portrait in one volume. Since the 2023 relaunch, the magazine instead combines a focus theme with several travel destinations in Germany, Europe and on other continents, with particular attention to exceptional destinations, hotels and emerging ways of travelling.

History

Merian was developed — in both text and illustration — by its first publisher, Heinrich Leippe, and appeared from July 1948 under the Hamburg house of Hoffmann und Campe. The name honours the Basel engraver Matthäus Merian, who in the seventeenth century published illustrated descriptions of cities; his multi-volume Topographia Germaniae, with its 1,486 copper engravings and more than two thousand individual views of towns, castles and monasteries, was one of the great publishing enterprises of its age and remains a model of combining precise observation with visual splendour. The modern magazine consciously continues that inheritance: reportages, essays and interviews, extensively researched and opulently illustrated.

Until 2000 the magazine was published by Hoffmann und Campe; since then it has appeared in the Jahreszeiten Verlag of the Ganske publishing group, with the editorial office remaining in Hamburg. A curiosity of the early decades is the volume numbering: until 1974 the issues were numbered in Roman numerals by volume year, and because the first issue appeared in July 1948, volumes I through IV each ran from July to the following June. Volume V is a truncated half-volume of only six issues ending with the December 1952 number; from 1953 the monthly numbering was synchronised with the calendar year, and from 1975 the volume is given in Arabic numerals rather than Roman. The very earliest issues, from 1948 to 1953, were fitted with a paper belly band (Bauchbinde) to enliven sales — six centimetres high, individually lettered per title, and rarely preserved today.

The editorship has changed hands several times in the modern era: Andreas Hallaschka led the magazine from 2002 to 2016, followed by Hansjörg Falz, and since 2024 Tinka Dippel has been the responsible editor-in-chief. The 2023 relaunch under publisher Sebastian Ganske — who became CEO of the Jahreszeiten Verlag in 2023 — gave the magazine a new look and the new multi-topic concept, ending 75 years of the one-region-per-issue formula while keeping the premium positioning.

Content and Concept

The classic Merian issue was a small monograph: a deep, many-sided portrait of one place, assembled from the disciplines of geography, economics, politics, history, literature, art history and gastronomy. Many popular issues were revised in text and image at intervals of several years and reissued — Berlin, for example, appeared in 12/1949, 11/1959, 1/1970, 7/1989, 6/1998, 9/2001, 3/2005 and 11/2007 — so that the series documents not only the historical development of its subjects but also the changing editorial emphases, photographic reception and literary reflection across the decades.

A hallmark of the magazine has been the calibre of its contributors. Essays were regularly commissioned from significant travel writers and literary figures: Theodor Heuss wrote on Heilbronn (3/1952), Ernst Jünger on Paris (5/1954), Gerhard Nebel on the Eifel (4/1954), Hermann Kesten on the Franconian Jura (8/1962), Friedrich Torberg on Prague (2/1974) and Herbert Rosendorfer on Munich (12/1982). More recent issues have featured the novelist Jan Weiler (4/2024), the journalist Nils Minkmar (3/2025) and the writer Katja Trippel (1/2026). The illustration drew on established travel and calendar photographers such as Christian Heeb and Eberhard Grames, while outstanding full-page picture spreads were occasionally entrusted to a single photographer — Guido Mangold's Munich portfolio in the December 1982 issue being one example.

Special editions outside the regular series have marked notable occasions: in 1987 a special on 100 Jahre Automobil for the fortieth volume year; in 1990 a special on the GDR plus five issues on each of the five new federal states; in 1993 an issue for 150 years of Hamburg's Thalia Theater. The compact Merian Scout guides served individual destinations until 2024, and since 2025 the monothematic special Merian Select has appeared, produced in cooperation with destination partners.

Coverage and Audience

Merian addresses affluent, culturally curious travellers — readers who plan journeys around art, history, landscape and cuisine rather than around price. The magazine's premium claim is expressed in production values as much as in content: heavy paper, generous photography and long-form texts. The current cover price is 11.90 euros per issue, with an annual print subscription for the six yearly issues at 59.40 euros; subscriptions are sold through the publisher's online shop and app in print, digital and combination packages, with trial subscriptions available for newcomers. On-sale dates are fixed well in advance — for example, the 2026 issues were scheduled for 6 February, 10 April and 12 June — reflecting the careful planning of a low-frequency premium title.

Beyond the magazine, the brand built a substantial book programme. The compact Merian live! travel guides appeared in bookshops from 1993 to 2019 and were repeatedly honoured with the ITB Book Award; the Merian aktiv leisure guides, the literary travel books Merian porträts – Eine Stadt in Biographien and the Merian momente series extended the brand onto the bookshelf. Editorial responsibility for the book lines lay with Travel House Media, which merged with the publisher Gräfe und Unzer in 2016. A collected retrospective, Das große Merian-Buch edited by Manfred Bissinger, was published by Hoffmann und Campe in 2008.

Ownership

Merian is published by the Jahreszeiten Verlag in Hamburg, part of the Ganske Verlagsgruppe. The group's history reaches back to 1907, when Richard Ganske founded the Kiel reading circle "Leserkreis Daheim". His son Kurt Ganske built the business after the Second World War, founding the Jahreszeiten Verlag for upmarket magazines — Merian among its first titles from June 1948 — and acquiring the Hamburg traditional book publisher Hoffmann und Campe, the house that had once published Heinrich Heine. After Kurt Ganske's death in 1979 his son Thomas Ganske took over; in 2001 he bundled all the companies into the holding Ganske Verlagsgruppe GmbH. Thomas Ganske's son Sebastian Ganske joined the management of the Jahreszeiten Verlag in 2019 and became its CEO in 2023, leading the 2023 realignment of Merian.

Within the Jahreszeiten portfolio, Merian stands alongside the other premium brands Der Feinschmecker, Architektur & Wohnen and the German edition of Robb Report — a cluster of titles aimed at readers with high disposable income and a taste for the well-made. Licensed versions of the group's magazines and commissioned productions, such as the BMW magazine, appear in many countries.

Digital Presence

The magazine's website, merian.de, functions as the brand's digital home: it presents current issues with their on-sale dates, subscription and single-issue ordering, a detailed FAQ, and the publisher's newsletter. The Merian podcast "Reisen beginnt im Kopf" (travel begins in the mind), together with the brand's social-media channels and newsletter, rounds out what the publisher calls the brand's premium portfolio. While the printed magazine remains the core product — six carefully produced issues a year — the digital channels extend its reach between issues and serve the subscription business. After more than 75 years, the magazine that began as the post-war German reader's window on the world continues to define what a German travel magazine can be: unhurried, erudite and visually ambitious.