About Selber Machen

Selber Machen

Selber machen (Do It Yourself) is Germany's classic do-it-yourself magazine. Founded in 1974 and published monthly in Munich by the Verlagshaus GeraNova Bruckmann, it serves ambitious DIY enthusiasts and homeowners with detailed project ideas for building, renovating, crafting and garden design. For half a century it has been the printed workshop companion of German home improvers.

Overview

The magazine's promise, as stated in the publisher's own media documents, is "the satisfaction of doing it yourself". It addresses readers who enjoy practical and creative DIY projects in their house, on their property and in their garden: building furniture, renovating rooms, repairing what is broken, designing outdoor spaces. Each issue presents exciting project ideas described in detail, with competent guidance for DIY enthusiasts across all aspects of building and renovation as well as interior and exterior design. The tone is that of the knowledgeable neighbour — encouraging, precise and safety-conscious.

History

Selber machen was founded in 1974. In 1978 it moved from the Orbis Verlag to the Hamburg Jahreszeiten Verlag, which merged it with Zuhause, mach's selbst (At Home, Do It Yourself), a title that had appeared from 1975 to 1978 with the subtitle "bauen, basteln, reparieren" (build, craft, repair). The merger consolidated the early German DIY press into a single strong brand.

In November 2013 the Jahreszeiten Verlag sold the magazine to the Munich publishing house GeraNova Bruckmann. For the acquisition, the Munich-based Selbermachen Media GmbH was founded as a 100-percent subsidiary of GeraNova Bruckmann — the unit that would later also absorb the interiors title Zuhause Wohnen when GeraNova Bruckmann bought it from the Jahreszeiten Verlag in 2018. The pairing reflects a natural readership overlap: the home improver who renovates with Selber machen is often the same reader who decorates with Zuhause Wohnen.

The magazine's longevity mirrors the DIY movement itself. Launched in the 1970s — the decade of the oil crisis, the environmental awakening and the first wave of owner-occupied housing renovation in West Germany — Selber machen has accompanied every subsequent wave: the 1980s home-improvement boom, the post-reunification renovation of the East German housing stock, the 2000s loft-and-design wave and the pandemic-era return to home and garden. Through all of them, the magazine's core proposition — that a well-explained project empowers the reader to do it themselves — has remained unchanged. The publisher's own anniversary arithmetic tells the story: "for 46 years now", the 2021 media kit stated — a span that reached the half-century mark in 2024.

The early history shows a segment finding its form. The 1978 move from the Orbis Verlag to the Jahreszeiten Verlag and the merger with Zuhause, mach's selbst consolidated two competing DIY titles into one; the absorbed title's subtitle — "bauen, basteln, reparieren" — reads like a mission statement the merged magazine kept. The November 2013 sale to GeraNova Bruckmann, reported by the industry service Meedia, moved the title from Hamburg's general-interest publishing into Munich's special-interest house, where it joined a portfolio built around the practical passions: railways, aviation, model building, military history — and now the workshop. The newly founded Selbermachen Media GmbH, a 100-percent subsidiary, gave the title its own corporate home within the group, later shared with Zuhause Wohnen.

Content and Concept

A typical issue is organised as a series of workshops on paper. Step-by-step building instructions, with measured drawings, material lists and tool recommendations, guide readers through projects of varying difficulty: a garden bench, a fitted wardrobe, a renovated bathroom, a raised bed, a child's treehouse. Renovation topics — insulation, flooring, painting, tiling — are treated with the thoroughness of a trade manual but written for the ambitious amateur. Repair culture, long the magazine's quiet theme, has gained new relevance in the era of sustainability: fixing rather than replacing is both an economic and an ecological statement.

The concept extends beyond the house. Garden projects — from the raised vegetable bed to the garden shed to the pond — recognise that for many readers the property is as much a project as the building. Interior and exterior design features show how self-built elements can carry a personal aesthetic, bridging the gap between the workshop and the living room. The line extension selber machen Garten applies the same workshop logic to the outdoor space.

Coverage and Audience

IVW figures for the third quarter of 2025 record a sold circulation of 31,880 copies with 32,030 distributed; reach was measured at 0.61 million readers (MA 2013 II). The 2021 media data cited a sold circulation of 56,419 (IVW IV/2020) at a copy price of 3.80 euros, with a full-page four-colour advertisement priced at 19,210 euros — figures that illustrate both the title's solid economics and the general circulation decline of German print media across the 2020s. The readership is predominantly male, home-owning and practically minded: people who own houses, tools and the ambition to use them. The print edition carries the ISSN 0171-614X, and the Munich-based editor-in-chief is Oliver Maute, who leads the title's editorial team.

Ownership

Selber machen is published by the Verlagshaus GeraNova Bruckmann of Munich, in the Selbermachen Media GmbH unit. The publishing house was formed in 2003 from the merger of the Bruckmann and GeraNova (now GeraMond) houses and has grown by systematic acquisition of special-interest brands: the DIY title from the Jahreszeiten Verlag in 2013, the Alba railway publications in 2014, the Sutton Verlag in 2014, the Silberburg-Verlag in 2017, Zuhause Wohnen in 2018 and the VGB railway publishing group in 2020. The group's programme spans books, magazines, calendars, DVDs, online portals, e-books and apps across tourism, outdoor life, nature, cuisine, creative crafts, culture, photography, history and regional history, as well as automotive, motorcycle, railway, model-building, aviation and military-history titles. The publishing house's magazine portfolio counts 35 titles under twelve publishing brands, alongside some 600 new book titles a year, 4,000 books in print, over 1,400 e-books and 22 apps. Within this house, Selber machen anchors the home-improvement segment — the practical heart of the group's Home & Living offering, marketed since 2019 under a unified in-house advertising sales organisation. The group's scale gives the title resources few DIY competitors can match: 35 magazines under twelve publishing brands, some 600 new book titles a year, 4,000 books in print, over 1,400 e-books and 22 apps, with advertising sales brought in-house — for zuhause wohnen from November 2019 and for the Ein Herz für Tiere Media titles from January 2020 — under marketing head Bernhard Willer, who took over the print and digital marketing brief in September 2019. For the reader at the workbench, that corporate machinery is invisible; what matters is that the measured drawings keep coming, month after month, project after project.

Digital Presence

The magazine's website, selbermachen.de, extends the print brand with project instructions, tool tests, video tutorials and the subscription shop. As part of the GeraNova Bruckmann digital portfolio, the site serves the community of German DIY enthusiasts between the monthly print issues. Fifty years after its founding, Selber machen continues to do what it has always done: to stand beside the reader at the workbench, with a measured drawing, a material list and the quiet confidence that it can be done — by yourself. In the GeraNova Bruckmann portfolio, Selber machen anchors the DIY segment — the title for readers who would rather build it than buy it.