About Waldkraiburger Nachrichten

Waldkraiburger Nachrichten

The Waldkraiburger Nachrichten is a daily regional newspaper published in Waldkraiburg, in the Mühldorf district of Upper Bavaria, appearing as one of the OVB-Heimatzeitungen of the Oberbayerisches Volksblatt group. Published Monday through Saturday by the Oberbayerisches Volksblatt GmbH & Co. Medienhaus KG (Rosenheim), part of the Ippen media group, it serves Waldkraiburg — Bavaria's largest "Vertriebenenstadt," a town founded by post-war expellees — and the surrounding Inn valley communities. Its digital home is ovb-online.de, the OVB group's news portal.

Overview

The Waldkraiburger Nachrichten covers Waldkraiburg — with around 24,000 inhabitants, the Mühldorf district's largest town — and the surrounding communities of the Inn valley between Mühldorf and the Chiemgau. The paper appears Monday through Saturday in Rhenish format, combining the Waldkraiburg newsroom's local section with the OVB group's shared pages, whose national section is produced in cooperation with the Münchner Merkur.

Waldkraiburg's identity is unique in Bavaria: founded after World War II on the site of a former munitions factory, settled by expellees from the Sudetenland and other eastern territories, it grew within a generation into an industrial town. The paper's readership consists of the town's households — many with expellee heritage — local businesses, the chemical and manufacturing industries, and commuters.

History

The Waldkraiburger Nachrichten developed within the Oberbayerisches Volksblatt's expansion across southeastern Upper Bavaria. The OVB — first published 26 October 1945 in Rosenheim (successor to the Rosenheimer Anzeiger of 1855), founded by Leonhard Lang and Ernst Haenisch — grew into the region's dominant daily under the Döser family's stewardship (Oliver Döser took over management from his father Alfons in 2003).

The OVB-Heimatzeitungen family — the Chiemgau-Zeitung, Mangfall-Bote, Wasserburger Zeitung, Mühldorfer Anzeiger, Waldkraiburger Nachrichten, and Neumarkter Anzeiger — covers the city and district of Rosenheim, the Mühldorf district, and western Traunstein. The Waldkraiburg edition serves the district's largest town, documenting its remarkable history: from munitions site to expellee settlement to industrial center within a single lifetime.

The OVB group belongs to the Ippen media group (Zeitungsgruppe Ippen), connecting the Waldkraiburg paper to one of Germany's major regional press families. The group's sold circulation stands at 62,856 copies (IVW 4/2025), down 17.5 percent since 1998. Christoph Maier is named as chief editor, according to published sources.

Coverage and Content

The local section covers Waldkraiburg's town politics, the Mühldorf district, and the Inn valley communities' affairs. The expellee heritage shapes distinctive coverage: the Sudeten German associations, the commemoration culture, the town's post-war founding story — still within living memory for the oldest residents — and the integration narrative that defines Waldkraiburg's identity.

Industrial reporting follows the town's chemical and manufacturing employers, the industrial park's development, and the skilled-labor economy. The paper covers the schools, the clubs and associations, the cultural life, and the sports. The Inn river's ecology, flood protection, and the valley's agriculture feature in environmental reporting.

Beyond the local pages, readers receive the OVB group's offering, with the national section produced with the Münchner Merkur — the Ippen group's Munich flagship — plus Bavarian state coverage, business, culture, and sports.

Organization and Ownership

The Waldkraiburger Nachrichten is published by the Oberbayerisches Volksblatt GmbH & Co. Medienhaus KG, based at Hafnerstraße 5–13 in Rosenheim, as one of the OVB-Heimatzeitungen. The publishing house belongs to the Zeitungsgruppe Ippen. Oliver Döser leads the management, with Bernd Stawiarski and Florian Schiller also named as managing directors in published sources.

The Waldkraiburg newsroom produces the town's local section, while the Rosenheim central operations supply the shared pages and the ovb-online.de digital platform. The e-paper planning figures cite around 1,075 digital subscribers for the Waldkraiburg edition (October 2025 planning data).

Waldkraiburg: The Expellees' Town

Waldkraiburg's founding story is among post-war Germany's most remarkable: on the grounds of a wartime munitions factory, expellees from the Sudetenland, Silesia, and other lost eastern territories built a town from nothing — within a decade, factories rose, streets were laid, and a community formed from refugees who had lost everything. The Seliger-Gemeinde — the Sudeten German Social Democrats' organization, founded in Waldkraiburg in 1954 — anchors the town's political memory.

The paper's journalism carries this heritage: the commemoration events, the expellee associations' activities, the town's relationship with its difficult origins, and the generational transition as the founding generation passes. In a town where the post-war founding is not ancient history but family memory, the local paper serves as both chronicler and custodian of the community's founding narrative.

The Inn Valley Industrial Belt

Waldkraiburg anchors the Inn valley's industrial economy, and the paper's business journalism covers it as a specialty. The town's chemical and manufacturing employers — descendants of the post-war industries that rose on the munitions site's infrastructure — provide thousands of skilled jobs, and the paper tracks their investments, expansions, and the skilled-labor challenges with the expertise of a newsroom that has covered industry for generations. The industrial park's development, the supplier networks, and the region's vocational training system form the economic reporting's backbone.

The Inn river itself shapes the region's economy and ecology: the river's hydroelectric plants, the flood-protection infrastructure, and the valley's agriculture. The paper covers the eternal negotiation between industrial development and the Inn's natural values — the river's ecology, the floodplain restoration projects, and the communities' relationship with the waterway that defines their valley. In a town built by industry on a former weapons site, the paper's economic journalism carries the weight of the community's founding bargain: prosperity built from ruins.

The Seliger-Gemeinde Heritage

The Seliger-Gemeinde — the community of Sudeten German Social Democrats, founded in Waldkraiburg in 1954 — gives the town a distinctive political heritage that the paper's journalism reflects. Named after Josef Seliger, the interwar Czechoslovak Social Democratic leader, the organization preserved the democratic socialist tradition of the Sudeten Germans through exile and integration. Its Waldkraiburg founding — in the town the expellees were building — made the town a center of Sudeten German political memory.

The paper covers the Seliger-Gemeinde's commemorations, its political education work, and the generational transition as the founding expellees' children and grandchildren reinterpret the heritage. The town's SPD tradition — rooted in the expellee Social Democrats who built Waldkraiburg's civic institutions — shapes the local political landscape the paper reports on. In a town where the post-war founding generation's politics still echo, the Nachrichten provides the historical context that makes current debates intelligible.
The town's commemoration culture — the memorials, the anniversary events, the school projects on the expellee history — receives the paper's sustained attention. As the founding generation passes, the Nachrichten's role as the community's memory grows ever more important.

Readership and Market Position

The Waldkraiburger Nachrichten is the town's local daily within the OVB system, serving Waldkraiburg's households, businesses, and the Inn valley communities. Its market position combines the OVB group's regional strength with the Waldkraiburg newsroom's community roots — the paper of the expellees' town, for the expellees' town's descendants.

Like all German regional dailies, the paper faces long-term circulation pressure, addressed through the ovb-online.de digital platform, e-paper editions, and digital subscriptions. The town's industrial base provides a solid advertising foundation.

Digital Presence

The paper's digital home is ovb-online.de, the OVB group's news portal serving southeastern Upper Bavaria. The portal operates a digital subscription model with e-paper editions (around 27,800 digital subscribers across the OVB-Heimatzeitungen), newsletters, apps, and social media channels. The Waldkraiburg newsroom's stories appear alongside the group's broader coverage — from Rosenheim to the Chiemgau to the Inn valley — reaching both the town's online readers and the wider OVB audience.