About Odenwälder Echo

Odenwälder Echo

The Odenwälder Echo is the Odenwald edition of the Darmstädter Echo, and the most important daily newspaper of the Odenwaldkreis in Hesse. Published as a regional edition of the Darmstadt daily, it serves the towns and villages of the Odenwald — the low mountain range in southern Hesse — with local pages produced for the district, while the general section comes from the Echo group's Darmstadt newsroom. Part of the Echo Zeitungen since 1986 (previously published as the Odenwälder Heimatzeitung), it belongs to the VRM publishing group, which acquired the Echo newspapers in 2015. Its newsroom maintains an office in Erbach, the district town, and its journalism covers the Odenwaldkreis's municipal politics, schools, clubs, and the rural economy of one of Hesse's most distinctive landscapes.

Overview

The Odenwälder Echo is a regional daily newspaper published Monday through Saturday, serving the Odenwaldkreis — the Odenwald district — in southern Hesse. It is a Regionalausgabe, a regional edition, of the Darmstädter Echo, the daily newspaper of Darmstadt and the Darmstadt-Dieburg district. The edition's local pages are produced for the Odenwald district, while the national, international, and regional core sections are shared with the Echo group's other editions.

The Odenwaldkreis is the paper's territory: a rural district of around 97,000 inhabitants in the Odenwald highlands, with its district town in Erbach and its largest town in Michelstadt — the half-timbered old town that is the district's tourist magnet. The district's other towns include Bad König, Breuberg, Höchst, and Reichelsheim, along with the villages scattered through the forested hills. The Odenwälder Echo's local office stands on the Hauptstraße in Erbach, near the district's administrative center and the Erbach palace.

The Echo group as a whole publishes six editions: the Darmstädter Echo as the main edition (published since 21 November 1945), the Groß-Gerauer Echo (since 1977), the Odenwälder Echo (since 1986), the Starkenburger Echo, the Rüsselsheimer Echo, the Ried Echo, the Dieburger Anzeiger, and the Main-Spitze — the last two added more recently. The Darmstädter Echo itself sells 26,057 copies (IVW 2/2026, Monday to Saturday). The group's editions together cover Darmstadt, the Darmstadt-Dieburg district, the Odenwaldkreis, the Bergstraße district, the Groß-Gerau district, and parts of the Rhine-Neckar region and Lower Franconia.

History

The Odenwälder Echo's history as an Echo title begins in 1986, when the previously independent Odenwälder Heimatzeitung became part of the Echo Zeitungen — the Darmstadt publishing house's regional edition for the Odenwald district. The Echo Zeitungen GmbH itself traces to the Darmstädter Echo, founded on 21 November 1945 in the aftermath of the Second World War as the regional newspaper for Darmstadt and its surroundings.

The Echo group's expansion through regional editions was the key to its postwar growth: the Groß-Gerauer Echo joined in 1977 (previously the Heimat-Zeitung des Kreises Groß-Gerau), the Odenwälder Echo in 1986, and further editions followed — the Starkenburger Echo, the Rüsselsheimer Echo (founded 1956, temporarily part of the Frankfurter Societät for antitrust reasons between 2015 and 2022, now identical in content with the Main-Spitze), the Ried Echo (founded 2004), the Dieburger Anzeiger (2023), and the Main-Spitze (assigned 2022). Each edition extended the Echo's territory while preserving a local editorial identity.

In 2015 the Echo Zeitungen were acquired by the VRM media group — the Mainz-based Verlagsgruppe Rhein Main — integrating the Darmstadt papers into one of southwestern Germany's large regional publishing houses. The Odenwälder Echo continued as the group's Odenwald edition, maintaining its Erbach office and its district-focused journalism within the larger corporate structure.

Coverage and Content

The Odenwälder Echo's content combines the Echo group's shared sections — national and international news, federal and Hessian state politics, business, culture, and sport from the Darmstadt newsroom — with local pages devoted to the Odenwaldkreis. The local journalism covers the district council in Erbach and the town councils of Michelstadt, Erbach, Bad König, Breuberg, Höchst, Reichelsheim, and the district's other municipalities; the local courts; police news; schools — including the district's integrated and cooperative comprehensive schools, the Michelstadt Gymnasium, and the vocational school center — churches; and the clubs and associations of the Odenwald villages.

The district's particular character shapes the paper's agenda. The Odenwald is a forested low mountain range whose economy rests on tourism, forestry, agriculture, crafts, and small industry; the paper reports on the hiking and holiday region, on the timber industry, on the district hospital in Erbach (part of the Gesundheitszentrum Odenwaldkreis), and on the infrastructure questions of a rural district: public transport, broadband, medical care, and school provision. Michelstadt's historic old town — one of Germany's best-preserved half-timbered town centers — and the district's castles, including Erbach Palace, give the cultural pages distinctive material.

The paper also serves the traditional functions of the district daily: comprehensive municipal reporting, family announcements, church news, club reports, and the court and police journalism that make the local paper the community's daily record. As the district's most important daily newspaper, the Odenwälder Echo's pages are the indispensable account of public life in the Odenwaldkreis.

Organization and Ownership

The Odenwälder Echo is published by the Echo Zeitungen GmbH, based in Darmstadt, as one of the group's regional editions. The Echo Zeitungen belong to the VRM media group, which acquired the Darmstadt publishing house in 2015. The editor-in-chief of the Darmstädter Echo is Frank Kaminski; the managing director is Joachim Liebler.

The group's edition structure gives each title its local editorial presence: the Odenwälder Echo maintains its office in Erbach, where its district journalists produce the Odenwald pages, while the Darmstadt central newsroom supplies the general section and the group's shared services. The names of individual edition editors are not publicly confirmed in the sources consulted; what is publicly documented is the edition's continued daily publication and its Erbach office.

The VRM group's ownership connects the Odenwald edition to one of the large regional publishing houses of southwestern Germany, with the resources for production, digital infrastructure, and group-wide journalism. For the Odenwaldkreis, the practical consequence is the preservation of a staffed district newsroom and a daily local edition — the Odenwald's paper within a Darmstadt-based publishing group.

Digital Presence

The Odenwälder Echo's digital home is echo-online.de — presented as echo-online.de and the Echo News app — the news portal of the Echo Zeitungen, which the group describes as informing readers around the clock about events in Darmstadt and all of southern Hesse. The portal carries the editions' local and regional reporting with continuous updates, alongside e-paper editions, the "Echo News" news app, and the group's social media channels on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and WhatsApp.

The group's digital strategy follows the established pattern of German regional publishers: subscription-based websites, e-paper, apps, newsletters, and social media, with the district newsrooms producing online-first local journalism between print editions. For the Odenwälder Echo, the digital channels carry the same district journalism as the print edition — the council reports, the school news, the club announcements — to readers who increasingly consume their news on screens.

In the Odenwaldkreis's digital media environment, the Echo's portal competes with municipal communications, the tourism industry's channels, and the growing array of local social media groups. The edition's advantage remains its newsroom: the Erbach-based journalists covering the Odenwald district daily. The Odenwälder Heimatzeitung that joined the Echo group in 1986 now serves its district in print, e-paper, app, and portal — the Odenwald's daily paper in every medium.