About Schnüss

Schnüss

Schnüss, Rhenish dialect for "Schnauze" (snout or gob), is a monthly city magazine for Bonn in North Rhine-Westphalia. Founded in 1978 out of the alternative-media movement of the late 1970s, it is one of Germany's longest-running independent city magazines, combining background reporting on local politics and culture with one of the most comprehensive events calendars in the region, covering Bonn, Cologne, and the surrounding area. Published by the nonprofit Verein zur Förderung alternativer Medien, the magazine has maintained its independent, grassroots character for nearly five decades while professionalizing into a full-service city medium with print, classifieds, and digital editions.

Overview

Schnüss appears once a month and serves as Bonn's independent city magazine in the classic German Stadtmagazin tradition. Its editorial program rests on three pillars: in-depth background reports on Bonn politics and cultural life, an extensive events calendar, and a service section with classified advertisements. The culture pages carry reports and reviews from gastronomy, art, cinema, theatre, and literature, while the events calendar lists more than two thousand entries per issue from Bonn, Cologne, and the surrounding region, making it one of the densest regional listings publications in western Germany.

The magazine is sold at newsagents for 1.90 euros per issue, with an annual domestic subscription priced at twenty-one euros; digital and combined print-digital subscriptions are also offered. Reported circulation figures put sold copies at around ten thousand and distributed copies at about eleven thousand three hundred, figures that date from trade-directory listings and should be read as historical self-reports. The print format is A4, 210 by 297 millimeters, with a four-column layout, and the magazine carries both display advertising from local businesses and an extensive classified section organized by dozens of rubrics, from housing and jobs to music lessons and esoterica.

What distinguishes Schnüss from commercial city magazines is its ownership and ethos. It is published by an association, the Verein zur Förderung alternativer Medien, rather than a commercial publishing house, and it grew out of the 1970s movement for alternative public spheres, a counter-publicity to the established press. That heritage shows in its political coverage, which has traditionally taken an independent, critical stance toward Bonn's municipal politics, and in its commitment to affordable access: the cover price has remained deliberately low.

History

The Schnüss was born in the ferment of the new social movements of the late 1970s. As activists across West Germany debated the need for alternative media and counter-publicity, discussions in Bonn led in early 1978 to the founding of the Verein zur Förderung alternativer Medien, which constituted itself on 23 February 1978 and was registered with the Bonn district court. The association became the publisher of a publication initially called the Stattzeitung, bearing the title DE SCHNÜSS, whose first issue appeared on 1 April 1978.

The founding board doubled as the editorial team: Rolf Wermund, Margherita Zander, Bernhard Meier, Manfred Krämer, Gisela Brenig, and Ernst Wittkowski, joined by nine further founders including Georg Jünger, Stephan Radowski, Peter Steffens, and Martin Schmidt-Roßleben, the later founder of Bonn's Brotfabrik cultural center. The early years were shaped by the volunteer labor typical of the alternative press: collectively organized, politically engaged, and financially precarious.

Over the decades the magazine professionalized without abandoning its roots. Editors who passed through its newsroom went on to notable careers elsewhere: Harald Grunert became co-owner of the Berlin pub Ständige Vertretung, Heinz Dietl became boulevard editor at the Bonner General-Anzeiger, Harald Gesterkamp became an editor at Deutschlandfunk and a writer, and Bernd Neubacher joined the Börsen-Zeitung. The magazine chronicled Bonn's extraordinary transformation from federal capital to UN and conference city after the government's move to Berlin, covering the municipal politics of that transition with the critical independence its founders had envisioned.

The association remains the publisher, with the editorial office currently listed at Roonstrasse in Bonn-Bad Godesberg and the publishing address at Blücherstrasse 28 in central Bonn. The October 2026 issue, numbered 10/2026, confirms the magazine's continued monthly publication nearly half a century after its founding.

Coverage and Content

The political reporting is the magazine's journalistic core. Schnüss covers Bonn's municipal politics, urban development, cultural policy, and the afterlife of the capital era, the federal institutions, UN campus, and international organizations that still shape the city, with background pieces that go beyond daily-news reporting. The tone is engaged and independent, in keeping with the alternative-press tradition, and the magazine provides a forum for debates within Bonn's civil society.

Cultural coverage spans the city's theatres, cinemas, galleries, concert venues, and literary life, with reviews and previews written by contributors rooted in the local scene. Gastronomy reporting covers Bonn's restaurants and pubs, and the magazine has traditionally paid close attention to the independent and subcultural venues that commercial listings papers overlook.

The events calendar is the magazine's service backbone: more than two thousand listings per issue from Bonn, Cologne, and the surrounding area, organized for practical use. The classified section, with its dozens of rubrics and affordable private rates, functions as a community marketplace, while the directory-style business entries give small local enterprises visibility. Reader letters, published under the "Post an die Schnüss" heading, maintain the dialogical character of the alternative press, with the editors answering correspondents directly and correcting themselves publicly when readers catch errors.

Organization and Ownership

Schnüss is published by the Verein zur Förderung alternativer Medien, the nonprofit association founded in February 1978 that has owned the title ever since. The association model, unusual in German magazine publishing, insulates the editorial line from commercial ownership interests and from the consolidation that has absorbed many independent city magazines into publishing groups. Contact addresses place the publishing operation at Blücherstrasse 28, 53115 Bonn, with the editorial office at Roonstrasse 3a, 53175 Bonn-Bad Godesberg.

The business model combines newsstand sales, subscriptions, display advertising, and classified revenue. Media data list a full-page four-color advertisement at 1,950 euros, with smaller formats and classified rates scaled for local businesses and private advertisers. The association's nonprofit character and the magazine's low cover price reflect a mission-oriented rather than profit-maximizing approach, though the operation must still cover its costs through the market.

Digital Presence

The magazine's website, schnuess.de, serves as its digital home, offering subscription management, media data, classified-ad booking, and selected content. Digital and print-digital combination subscriptions are sold alongside the print edition, and back issues are available as PDF downloads, with the 2026 issues archived on the site. The classified business, long a print stronghold, is bookable online, and the site provides the forms and rate information for private and commercial advertisers.

On the web, Schnüss competes with the event portals and social media channels that have eroded the listings monopoly city magazines once held. Its response has been to emphasize what algorithms do poorly: curated cultural criticism, political background reporting with a local point of view, and the community function of its classifieds. For a magazine approaching its fiftieth anniversary, the continued monthly appearance in print is itself a statement about the durability of the independent city-magazine model.

An Alternative-Press Survivor

Schnüss belongs to the generation of alternative city papers founded in the late 1970s, most of which did not survive the 1980s. That it still appears monthly from Bonn, still published by the association founded to create it, makes it a rarity in the German media landscape. Its history mirrors the arc of the alternative press: from volunteer collective to professional newsroom, from counter-publicity to an established, if still independent, voice in the city's public sphere. For Bonn, it remains what its founders intended: a magazine with its snout in the city's business.