About Wiener Zeitung

Wiener Zeitung

Wiener Zeitung is a German-language newspaper based in Vienna, the capital of Austria, and published online at wienerzeitung.at. For most of its long life it was a broadsheet daily newspaper, and it was also far more than a newspaper: for generations it served as the official gazette of Austria, the place where laws, executive orders and legally required announcements were formally published. It is owned by the Government of Austria, represented by the Chancellor, and operated through Wiener Zeitung GmbH, a limited liability company owned by the Austrian state. Yet throughout its modern history it was described as editorially independent of its owner, and it was counted as a newspaper of record — one of the papers whose reporting was treated as an authoritative account of public life.

That standing rested above all on its age. First published on 8 August 1703 as the Wiennerisches Diarium, Wiener Zeitung was one of the oldest newspapers in the world, and at the end of its print era it described itself as the world's longest-running daily newspaper still in print. Its daily print edition ended on 30 June 2023, after 320 years, following a change in Austrian law that removed its main source of revenue. The newspaper itself did not close. It continues as an online publication, relaunched under the shortened brand WZ, with a much smaller editorial team and a remit that also includes journalist training and media services. Its story is therefore in two parts: a print history written in the past tense, and a digital present that is still unfolding.

Founding in 1703 as the Wiennerisches Diarium

The newspaper began as a private enterprise. Johann Baptist Schönwetter received a privilegium impressorium — an imperial printing privilege — for a weekly newspaper on 10 January 1702. Launched under the name Wiennerisches Diarium, its first issue appeared on 8 August 1703. Schönwetter owned the paper and served as its editor-in-chief and printer until 1722, when he was succeeded by Johann Peter van Ghelen. The first issue set out an ambition that later coverage of the paper often quoted: to provide a sober account of the news without any oratory or poetic gloss.

The title page of that first issue described the paper as containing everything notable which occurred from day to day in Vienna, as well as in other places all over the world. In practice that meant a mixture that will still be recognisable to readers of an official gazette: death notices in the city, and news of aristocratic births, marriages, and visits to and departures from Vienna. The paper was published twice a week — a biweekly rhythm it kept for more than a century — and it usually ran to around eight pages. From the start, its home was Vienna, the imperial capital, and its identity was bound up with the institutions of the Habsburg court.

Court Mouthpiece and Early Reporting

Because it was supplied with information directly and exclusively by the Imperial Court, the Wiennerisches Diarium came to be considered the official mouthpiece of the court. That privileged access gave it authority, but it also limited it. Reference works on Austria note that, because of its close relations with government from the early nineteenth century and the censorship in force until 1848, the newspaper could not develop a fully independent political position, even though substantial scientific and cultural coverage became possible in the second half of the nineteenth century.

War reporting was a major part of its early content. During wartime the paper published supplements and other extensive reports, mainly about Austria, the Franco-Austrian Alliance and their mutual enemy Prussia. Field journals and diaries from the Austrian army were its main sources, and it reported officer promotions, troop deployments and other public announcements connected with the war. One study of its reporting found that around 15 per cent of reports were about battles and armed conflicts, while about 3 per cent were about war crimes committed by Prussian troops. The paper also preserved small moments that later became famous. In 1768 it reported on a concert featuring an especially talented 12-year-old — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Becoming Wiener Zeitung and a Daily Newspaper

The paper has used its present title since 1780 — reference sources give 1 January 1780 as the date from which it was known as Wiener Zeitung, a name that simply means Viennese newspaper. In 1810 it became the official government newspaper, and Austrian reference works also describe it as the official government gazette from around that period. On 1 October 1813 it began publishing daily, ending the biweekly pattern that had lasted since 1703. Daily publication, with one forced interruption in the twentieth century, then continued until 2023.

During the First World War the paper marked the collapse of the empire it had served for so long: when Austria was defeated, it published a special edition including the abdication letter of Kaiser Karl, the last Habsburg ruler. It was a fitting role for a title that had reported the arrivals and departures of the imperial court in its earliest issues and had outlived the monarchy itself.

Government Ownership and the Twentieth Century

In 1857 the government acquired the paper. It was nationalised under Emperor Franz Joseph I and was printed by the Austrian State Printing Office — the Staatsdruckerei — until 1997. State ownership, however, did not protect it from the darkest chapter in its history. After the Anschluss, by which Austria was incorporated into Nazi Germany, the newspaper was closed down in stages: in February 1939 its editorial part was removed, and in February 1940 the remaining official journal closed entirely. That was the only forced break in its publication. The first edition after the Second World War appeared on 21 September 1945, and daily publication resumed.

The post-war decades were a period of steady, modest scale rather than mass circulation. Copies sold grew from about 4,500 in 1855 to around 10,000 in 1920, 25,000 in 1938 and about 30,000 in 1970, according to Austrian reference works, before settling at roughly 24,000 by around 2000. In 1998 the paper was transferred to a GmbH, a limited liability company, which remained owned by the Austrian Government. Its former premises stood in the centre of Vienna; eurotopics lists its more recent address as Maria-Jacobi-Gasse 1 in Vienna's 1030 district.

Official Gazette of the Republic of Austria

For most readers outside Austria, the defining fact about Wiener Zeitung was not its journalism but its legal function. Until April 2023 it was the official gazette of the government of the Republic of Austria for legally required announcements, such as company registrations. Formal announcements — for example civil service vacancies and changes in the commercial register — were printed in its Official Journal insert, the Amtsblatt. Until 2004 it also published the official version of newly passed Austrian laws; after that, the authentic version of statutes and treaties moved online, and the law gazette was no longer available in print.

That official role was also the paper's economic foundation — and its most contested feature. Companies were legally required to publish certain announcements in Wiener Zeitung and to pay fees for doing so, and those mandatory announcements made up the majority of the newspaper's revenue. Entrepreneurs and rival private newspapers argued that this was anti-competitive, a form of state financing through compulsory fees; Austria's Supreme Court dismissed claims on the matter. The arrangement survived legal challenge, but it depended entirely on the law that created it, and when that law changed, the print newspaper's business model ended with it.

A Newspaper of Record and Editorial Character

Alongside its official duties, Wiener Zeitung worked to be taken seriously as a quality newspaper in its own right. As of 2002 it was counted among Austria's four daily quality newspapers, alongside the right-liberal Die Presse, the left-liberal Der Standard and the Christian-liberal and conservative Salzburger Nachrichten. Its coverage ranged across domestic and foreign news, business and culture, and reference profiles described it in its later print years as aspiring to be a liberal quality newspaper.

Its editorial line shifted with its editors. Until 2009 its editor-in-chief was Andreas Unterberger, who hired mostly outspoken conservative columnists; under his successor Reinhard Göweil the paper returned to a liberal position. Walter Hämmerle, editor-in-chief from 2018, resigned at the end of 2022 as the planned restructuring became clear, and Judith Belfkih and Thomas Seifert became editors-in-chief on 1 January 2023, leading the paper through its final print months. When the daily print edition ended, Katharina Schmidt, who had worked in product development at the paper, and Sebastian Pumberger, previously with the digital edition of Profil, were announced as interim editors-in-chief of the new online publication.

Circulation, Format and Readers

Wiener Zeitung was a broadsheet, a format it kept throughout its daily print life. Its circulation was always small by the standards of Austria's popular tabloids, which suited its character as an official and quality paper rather than a mass-market title. At the end, in April 2023, it sold about 20,000 copies on weekdays and about twice as much at weekends. Figures compiled by eurotopics for 2020 tell a similar story: about 18,000 copies Monday to Friday and about 43,000 on Saturdays and Sundays. A weekday sale in the low twenty-thousands, roughly doubling at the weekend, was the consistent picture of its final print years.

That small circulation was precisely why the official announcements mattered so much. A quality daily selling around 20,000 copies could not have sustained a newsroom of its size on sales and ordinary advertising alone. At the time of the 2023 announcement the newspaper had more than 200 employees, of whom about 40 were journalists, according to its trade union — a staffing level underwritten by the gazette fees rather than by the cover price.

The End of the Daily Print Edition in 2023

The end came through legislation. In March 2021 the Austrian government led by Chancellor Sebastian Kurz proposed a law that would no longer require companies to pay to publish public announcements and changes to the commercial register in the paper's print edition, pointing to European Union rules allowing such corporate information to be published digitally. In April 2023 parliament adopted the change, and the official gazette function moved to a separate state-owned online platform. The loss of income was estimated at about 18 million euros, and the paper cut 63 jobs, reducing its editorial staff sharply to around 20.

The decision followed a years-long dispute between the government and the newspaper over its future, and it was not universally welcomed. After the announcement on 27 April 2023, several hundred people protested on the streets of Vienna. The paper's vice managing editor, Mathias Ziegler, voiced a fear reported at the time: that the government wanted to keep the Wiener Zeitung brand with its 320-year-old history, while nobody yet knew what the future publication would look like, or whether it would still be serious journalism.

The last daily print edition appeared on Friday, 30 June 2023. Its front page summed up the run in a single line: 116,840 days, 3,839 months, 320 years, 12 presidents, 10 emperors, 2 republics, 1 newspaper. The final edition carried an interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger, one of Austria's most famous exports, and an editorial that lamented stormy times for quality journalism, in which serious content competes for attention with fake news, cat videos and conspiracy theories. With its passing, the title of world's oldest newspaper still in print was noted in its own final issue as passing to the Hildesheimer Allgemeine Zeitung, founded in 1705.

Life Online as WZ

Wiener Zeitung continues today as an online publication at wienerzeitung.at, relaunched in July 2023 under the brand WZ. The relaunch was recognised quickly: the launch of its digital platform won the 2023 European Publishing Award for a launch or relaunch of a publication in digital form. Early results reported by WAN-IFRA showed the relaunched site reaching up to 3 million users by November 2023, with strong growth on Instagram and a new TikTok channel aimed at younger readers — a deliberate shift away from a readership defined by Vienna and by officialdom, toward a socially relevant, Austria-wide digital audience.

The new model is publicly funded on a smaller scale. Reporting by the Reuters Institute put government support at 13.5 million euros per year for Wiener Zeitung GmbH, of which 7.5 million euros was for editorial work and 6 million euros was directed to Media Hub Austria for practical journalism training. In line with the plans announced in 2023, the organisation now combines its online newsroom with a media hub, a content agency function and training for journalists, including a 360-degree traineeship programme that places young journalists in Austrian newsrooms. Print has not disappeared entirely: the 2023 law provided for a minimum of ten print publications a year depending on available funds, and the restructured print product appears in a monthly, magazine-style format rather than as a daily newspaper.

What survives, then, is the name, the Vienna base, the state ownership and the journalistic ambition — but not the daily paper or the gazette that sustained it for so long. A former group of its journalists even founded a separate monthly print title, Das Feuilleton, which began publication on 1 December 2023 after successful crowdfunding. Wiener Zeitung itself now lives where its official announcements went before it: online. For a newspaper that began in 1703 by promising a sober account of the news without oratorical or poetic gloss, the medium has changed beyond recognition, but the title — after emperors, republics, a Nazi closure and the loss of its print edition — is still publishing.