Subscriber Insurance
As subscribers Insurance is defined as the combination of newspaper subscriptions with additional insurance benefits for the subscribers.
Origins
The historical phenomenon of subscription insurance as a customer service-like service provided by publishers for Germany began on August 28, 1890 in Leipzig .
With such subscription insurance, Tit Bits in Great Britain had already increased its circulation to 700,000 copies in 1882 by combining subscription and insurance. In 1883 The Times offered a sum of £ 1,000 to the bereaved of readers who were caught in a fatal accident with the latest edition of the newspaper in their pockets . The publisher of the Leipziger Stadt- und Dorfanzeiger , Paul Kürsten, boosted the circulation with the insurance offer. He promised readers, i.e. also participants in the open sale, an insurance with the First Austrian Accident Insurance Company in Vienna against loss of assets as a result of physical injury at work and leisure in the Kingdom and the Province of Saxony and in the Duchy of Saxony-Altenburg .
The premiums amounted to 500 marks in the event of disability or death. Despite strong competition from the Leipziger Neuesten Nachrichten , the social democratic Leipziger Volkszeitung and the Generalanzeiger of the Essen publisher Wilhelm Girardet, he was able to increase his circulation of the Leipzig City and Village Gazette sixfold by 1912 .
The Official Journal of towns and villages indicator subtitled Official Journal of the Royal Amtshauptmannschaft Leipzig and for the Royal district courts Leipzig, diving and Markranstädt, the Health Insurance Office to Leipzig, the municipal council and parish council to Gohlis, Eutritzsch, Mockau and for Stadträthe to diving and Markranstädt was as the mouthpiece of the Dresden government. Kürsten did not want to be deprived of his status, as this privilege guaranteed huge advertising revenues and a steadfast official readership.
A little later, in 1894, the Lower Silesian newspaper in Görlitz insured its subscribers, in 1896 the Nürnberger Generalanzeiger , well-known newspapers and insurance companies followed suit across Europe. So Zurich Insurance and Schweizer Wochenzeitung came together and insured death and disability as well as fire damage . The cash on delivery card was also used as an insurance certificate .
distribution
After work , the Illustrierte Familienblatt as well as Volkshort und Welfare paid out 20 million via the subscription insurance according to their own advertising. Statistics from 1913 show that 235 daily newspapers and weekly political papers, 37 entertainment magazines and 43 trade magazines with a circulation of around 5.5 million copies offered subscription insurance.
Political Aspects
However, this type of early reader-newspaper relationship also repeatedly caused disputes right up to the Reichstag , where even the Catholic Center Party used the words “unscrupulous”, “unfair” and “unclean”. Ultimately, this form of insurance turned out to be a very successful instrument not only in the competition of publishers, but also in the dispute with the journalistic left in the press, whose newspapers lost numerous subscribers as a result of subscription insurance, especially among the workers.
From the insurance magazines, in which the subscription was linked to disability or death benefit insurance, the subscription insurance developed as a forerunner of today's family protection insurance tariffs.
Current situation
Soon after the currency reform in 1948, subscription insurance disappeared from the market in Germany.
The Vorarlberg media house has been offering a service package since 2004, which includes subscription insurance. Far beyond statutory accident insurance, this protects subscribers to Vorarlberger Nachrichten and the Neue Vorarlberger Tageszeitung in all common areas of life for € 29 .