About Murnauer Tagblatt

Murnauer Tagblatt

The Murnauer Tagblatt is a daily newspaper serving the market town of Murnau am Staffelsee and the surrounding area in the Garmisch-Partenkirchen district of Upper Bavaria. Published from Monday to Saturday, it is the Murnau edition of the Garmisch-Partenkirchner Tagblatt, itself a local edition of the Münchner Merkur. Together, the Garmisch-Partenkirchner Tagblatt and the Murnauer Tagblatt report sold circulation of 12,381 copies, serving the Alpine foothill communities north of Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

Overview

The Murnauer Tagblatt appears six days a week, covering Murnau am Staffelsee, a market town of around 12,000 people on the Staffelsee lake at the edge of the Alps, and the neighboring communities including Eschenlohe, Großweil, Ohlstadt, Uffing, Riegsee, Seehausen, Spatzenhausen, and Schwaigen. Its local pages are produced by the paper's Murnau editorial team, reachable at redaktion@murnauertagblatt.de, while the national and international mantle comes from the Münchner Merkur's central editorial operation in Munich. The paper is delivered to subscribers each morning in the familiar Merkur layout.

The combined sold circulation of the Garmisch-Partenkirchner Tagblatt and the Murnauer Tagblatt stands at 12,381 copies, making it one of the mid-sized local editions in the Münchner Merkur family. The Merkur's main distribution area covers Munich and the surrounding Upper Bavarian districts, with local editions appearing partly as head papers under their own traditional mastheads.

The audience is the population of the northern Garmisch-Partenkirchen district: residents of Murnau, a town known for its artistic heritage as a center of the Blauer Reiter movement, its moorland landscape, and its position on the Munich–Garmisch railway axis. The paper's readers include commuters to Munich and Garmisch-Partenkirchen, local business owners, innkeepers, farmers, and the tourism-dependent communities around the Staffelsee and the Murnauer Moos. The editorial strategy of the Merkur group emphasizes local proximity, with local editorial offices staffed more heavily than the central departments.

History

The Murnauer Tagblatt developed as the Murnau edition of the Garmisch-Partenkirchner Tagblatt within the Münchner Merkur's network of local editions. The Münchner Merkur itself was first published on 13 November 1946 as the Münchner Mittag, with a license from the American military government, and grew into the conservative subscription daily of the Munich region, the second licensed newspaper in Munich after the Süddeutsche Zeitung. In 1982, the Westphalian publisher Dirk Ippen acquired the Münchner Merkur, bringing it into the Ippen media group.

The Garmisch-Partenkirchen district's local press was organized within this structure, with the Garmisch-Partenkirchner Tagblatt serving the district capital and the Murnauer Tagblatt serving the northern part of the district around Murnau. The Murnau editorial office, with its dedicated telephone numbers and email address, has maintained a distinct local identity within the group, serving as the journalistic voice of the Staffelsee communities. The paper's recent editions, documented through mid-2026, show the Murnauer Tagblatt continuing its daily publication with the Murnau & Region section covering the town's communities, confirming its ongoing operation in the Garmisch-Partenkirchen district.

In 2016, the publisher decided to merge the local editorial office of the Münchner Merkur with that of the tz, and in 2018 the Merkur tz Redaktions GmbH was founded, merging the sports desks. These consolidations affected the central operations while the local editions, including the Murnauer Tagblatt, continued with their local reporting.

Coverage and Content

The Murnauer Tagblatt's local pages focus on Murnau and the surrounding communities: market town council decisions, district news, school topics, construction and infrastructure projects, and the activities of local clubs and associations. The town's cultural life provides distinctive material: Murnau's heritage as the home of the Blauer Reiter artists Gabriele Münter and Wassily Kandinsky, the Schloßmuseum, and the Ödön von Horváth Society, which maintains the memory of the playwright born in Fiume who lived in Murnau.

The paper covers the Staffelsee moorland, the Murnauer Moos, one of Central Europe's largest raised bogs, and the tourism economy around the lake, from guesthouse news to hiking and cycling topics. Local reporting includes the restoration of landmarks such as the Horváth Hut in the Murnau spa park, community festivals, and the activities of the town's associations, including the volunteer organizations that shape social life in the market town. The mantle from the Münchner Merkur supplies national and international politics, the economy, culture, and sport.

Special pages and supplements follow the local calendar: school enrollment specials, Christmas features such as the Tagblatt Christmas campaign supporting charitable causes, and themed pages around town festivals and the summer cultural program. The paper covers local sports, particularly football and winter sports, with results from the district leagues. Reader letters provide a forum for civic debate in the market town and its neighboring villages, and the paper reports on court cases and police news from the northern district area.

The paper's online portal, merkur.de, carries the Murnau local content alongside the group's wider coverage, with dedicated local sections for Murnau and the surrounding area. The portal publishes breaking news throughout the day, photo galleries from community events, and video content, giving the Staffelsee region a multimedia presence within the Merkur's digital offering.

Organization and Ownership

The Murnauer Tagblatt is published within the Münchner Merkur group, whose publisher is the Münchener Zeitungs-Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, based in Munich. The Münchner Merkur belongs to the media group of Dirk Ippen, who acquired the paper in 1982, with Alfons Döser also named as a publisher figure.

The Murnau editorial team, including editors such as Roland Lory and Michaela Sperer with their published contact details, produces the paper's local pages for the Murnau-area communities, from Eschenlohe to Schwaigen. Details of the full editorial staffing are not publicly confirmed in accessible sources. The group's workforce covers the central newsroom in Munich, the local editorial offices across Upper Bavaria, printing, distribution, and advertising sales.

The Merkur tz media sales operation markets advertising across the group's print and digital inventory, and the group's local editions benefit from shared technology and production infrastructure. The Murnauer Tagblatt's advertising pages serve the businesses of the Staffelsee region, from guesthouses and restaurants to local tradespeople.

Digital Presence

The Murnauer Tagblatt's digital home is merkur.de, the central online portal of the Münchner Merkur group. The portal publishes local news from Murnau and the surrounding communities alongside the group's wider coverage, with dedicated local sections and breaking news updates. The site's media data highlights the portal's national reach.

The paper offers an e-paper edition for subscribers, reproducing the printed newspaper page for page, available through the website and mobile apps. Digital subscriptions follow the standard model with premium content behind a paywall. The group's social media presence is substantial, with millions of followers reported across its channels.

Newsletters deliver curated selections of the day's news, and the portal's local sections allow readers to follow news from their specific area, from Murnau's market town center to the Staffelsee villages. The digital strategy reflects the Ippen group's investment in digital publishing, including the Ippen Digital operations. For the Murnauer Tagblatt, the online platform extends its reach to commuters and former residents who follow the Murnau area from Munich or Garmisch-Partenkirchen, and it provides a channel for breaking news that complements the daily print edition. The combination of the established local title and the digital portal keeps the paper present in the daily media habits of the Staffelsee region.