About Passauer Bistumsblatt

Passauer Bistumsblatt

The Passauer Bistumsblatt is the Catholic weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Passau, first published on 1 July 1936. It understands itself as the organ of the bishop to the faithful of his diocese: informing and commenting on events in the diocese and in the world church. Published by the Verlag Passauer Bistumsblatt GmbH — the publisher is the Passauer Bistumsblatt BgA of the Diocese of Passau — it appears weekly with a sold circulation of 7,993 copies (IVW Q2/2025). The editor-in-chief is Wolfgang Krinninger, the managing director Axel Schürzinger. With its ISSN 0031-2681 and its 90-year history — from the Nazi-era founding under censorship to the forced closure in 1941 and the post-war refounding — it is one of the German diocesan press's enduring titles.

Overview

The Passauer Bistumsblatt is a German-language Catholic weekly for the Diocese of Passau, appearing once a week. The publisher is the Verlag Passauer Bistumsblatt GmbH; the Herausgeber (publisher in the legal sense) is the Passauer Bistumsblatt BgA of the Diocese of Passau KdÖR — the diocese's own commercial operation. The editor-in-chief is Wolfgang Krinninger, the Geschäftsführer Axel Schürzinger. The sold circulation is 7,993 copies (IVW Q2/2025). The programme: the diocese's news — the parishes, the associations, the bishop's appointments — the world church's events, the commentary on the church-political debates, the faith's practice — the prayers, the saints' days, the pilgrimages — and the service for the Catholic everyday. The diocesan news is the paper's core: the bishop's pastoral visits to the parishes, the deaneries' assemblies, the Catholic associations' — the Kolping, the KAB, the women's associations — meetings, the religious orders' news. The world church's events connect the local to the universal: the pope's Angelus, the bishops' conferences, the world church's crises and hopes — reported for the Passau faithful. The commentary takes the stand: the church-political debates of the German church — the synodal way's reforms, the abuse crisis's reckoning, the church's shrinking — commented from the diocese's Catholic perspective. The faith's practice fills the devotional pages: the liturgical year's rhythm, the saints' days, the pilgrimages — the Mariahilfberg pilgrimage that the 1941 issues described as the "unübersehbar lange Prozession" — the prayers for the everyday. The readers are the diocese's faithful: the parishes from Passau to the Bavarian Forest, the Catholic associations, the religious orders. The weekly rhythm gives the diocese its common reading: the Sunday's news on the Saturday's paper, the bishop's word to the faithful.

History

The first number of the "Passauer Bistumsblattes" appeared on 1 July 1936. Responsible were Bishop Sigismund Felix — later Bishop Simon Konrad Landersdorfer OSB — Generalvikar Dr. Franz Seraph Riemer and Schriftleiter Dr. Emil Janik. That a Catholic journal was newly licensed during the Nazi era may surprise; but the Nazi government had agreed in Article 4 of the 1933 Reichskonkordat that diocesan papers could continue to be published unhindered. Passau saw the need for a diocese-owned journal only because of the dictatorship's conditions: the Passauer Donauzeitung, which had reported close to the church until 1933, had passed into the possession of the Nazi publishing house Bayerische Ostmark in the press's coordination and since pursued the Nazi press's church-hostile tendency. A goal of the diocesan leadership was therefore to create a journal independent under strict censorship conditions. The Passauer Bistumsblatt was indeed much read in the five years of its appearance in the National Socialist era: it started with a circulation of 20,000 copies and rose to 45,000 weekly by the forced closure on 1 June 1941 — 254 issues from 1 July 1936 to 30 May 1941. The state prescriptions forced the paper to four pages, only occasionally broken through; since the war's beginning in 1939 it could appear only four times a month — a fifth Sunday's issue had to be dropped. The diocese's archive, with the University of Passau's Digital Humanities chair and the Bistumsblatt itself, has digitised and put online the Nazi-era issues: the 1936–1941 run as the searchable historical source, published under Creative Commons. The post-war refounding — the Bistumsblatt's return as the diocese's weekly — is the second founding: the Catholic weekly that the diocese reads to this day.

Coverage and Content

The paper's programme is the diocese's Catholic life. The diocesan news: the bishop's appointments and visitations, the parishes' events, the associations' assemblies — the diocese's public sphere. The world church: the pope's words, the universal church's events, the missions — the Passau faithful's connection to Rome and the world. The commentary: the church-political debates — the synodal way, the church's future — commented from the diocese's perspective. The faith's practice: the liturgical year's feasts, the pilgrimages — the Mariahilf pilgrimage's long procession that the 1941 issues reported — the prayers, the devotions. The digitised 1936–1941 issues show the historical programme: the diocesan announcements ("Im Bereich des Bistums"), the religious plays, the pilgrimages — the Catholic life under the dictatorship's censorship. The today's paper adds the service: the parish directories, the event calendars, the obituaries — the diocese's family notices. The journalism is the diocesan press's: the organ of the bishop to the faithful — informing and commenting, in the diocese's service.

Organization and Ownership

The Passauer Bistumsblatt is published by the Verlag Passauer Bistumsblatt GmbH in Passau. The Herausgeber is the Passauer Bistumsblatt BgA der Diözese Passau KdÖR — the diocese's Betrieb gewerblicher Art, the church's commercial operation under public law. The editor-in-chief is Wolfgang Krinninger, the Geschäftsführer Axel Schürzinger. The commercial model is the diocesan weekly's: the subscriptions in the diocese's parishes — the 7,993 sold copies (IVW Q2/2025) — the Catholic advertisers, the diocese's institutional support, and the digital subscriptions via passauerbistumsblatt.de. The ISSN is 0031-2681. The digitisation project — the archive of the Diocese of Passau, the University of Passau's Digital Humanities chair, the Bistumsblatt — is the historical commitment: the 254 Nazi-era issues scanned at 300 dpi, OCR'd, the headlines proofread, published under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. The project's method — the TIFF binarisation, the OCR raw output, the three fully corrected articles per issue — is the digital humanities' craft: the historical newspaper made machine-readable. The 90-year history — 1936 founding, 1941 closure, post-war refounding — makes the paper the diocese's memory: the archive that the diocese keeps of itself, issue by issue, week by week.

Digital Presence

The paper's website is passauerbistumsblatt.de — the digital edition with the current issue, the subscriptions, the archive. The digitisation portal bistumsblatt-geschichte.bistum-passau.de — the diocese archive's and the university's project — puts the 1936–1941 issues online: the searchable Nazi-era run, the historical source under Creative Commons. In the German diocesan-press landscape the Passauer Bistumsblatt occupies the eastern-Bavarian pole: alongside the Munich, Regensburg and Augsburg diocesan papers, the Passau weekly is the voice of the diocese at the Danube's three rivers — 7,993 sold copies weekly, the bishop's organ to the faithful, from the 1936 founding through the 1941 closure to the post-war refounding, in print and online, for the diocese of Passau. The diocese's geography — the Bavarian Forest, the Rottal, the Passauer Land — is the paper's territory: the parishes between the Danube, Inn and Ilz. The 7,993 sold copies are the diocese's faithful readers: the subscribers who receive the bishop's weekly word, the parishes that lay it out, the associations that read it together. The 90 years — 1936 to 2026 — make the Bistumsblatt the diocese's continuity: through the dictatorship, the war, the post-war rebuilding, the council, the secularisation — the weekly that informed and commented, always as the organ of the bishop to the faithful.