Rhenish Mercury

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Rhenish Mercury
logo
description Weekly newspaper
language German
publishing company Publishing house Rheinischer Merkur GmbH
Headquarters Bonn
First edition March 15, 1946
attitude November 25, 2010
Frequency of publication Thursday
Editor-in-chief Michael Rutz
editor Wolfgang Bergsdorf , Paul Kirchhof , Jean-Claude Juncker
ISSN (print) 0942-6973

From 1946 to 2010, Der Rheinische Merkur was a national weekly newspaper with a Christian and conservative orientation.

It was published in Bonn , where it appeared every Thursday. In her advertisement she described herself as “Political. Competently. Different". The paid circulation was, according to the IVW for the second quarter of 2010, 64,356 copies of which 36,363 Subscription; the publisher no longer reported any figures for the third quarter.

The main sponsors were eight German dioceses , including the Archdiocese of Cologne and the German Bishops' Conference . The majority were with dioceses in North Rhine-Westphalia .

Since December 2010, the Rheinische Merkur no longer appears as an independent publication, but under the title Christ and World as a supplement to the weekly newspaper Die Zeit .

history

Foundation with reference to Görres

The newspaper was founded after the Second World War . The German journalist Franz Albert Kramer had taken the first steps while still in exile in Switzerland and in August 1945 he set up a publishing house in a destroyed technical facility in Koblenz . In this city Joseph Görres had already published a newspaper called Rheinischer Merkur from 1814 to 1816 . Kramer picked up on this in his first editorial : “There is no bigger name that we could use. With the originality of his thinking, with the power of his language, with all the ravishing passion of his mind, Görres secured the highest rank for the Rhenish Mercury. "

Start time

The first edition of the new Rheinischer Merkur appeared on March 15, 1946 with a license from the French occupying power under the founder and first editor-in-chief Franz Albert Kramer. The first edition was 220,000 copies, but due to a lack of paper, only 160,000 copies could be made in the following period. The paper initially appeared twice a week and was converted to once a week in the year of the first edition.

The journalists and publicists Paul Wilhelm Wenger , Otto B. Roegele (editor-in-chief 1949–1963, publisher 1963–2005) and Eduard Verhülsdonk worked for the first time .

Later editors-in-chief:

Support from the Catholic Church since the 1970s

After 1971, the experiment of a national Catholic weekly new type (Publik) had failed in Germany, which was Rheinische Merkur of the Catholic Church also institutionally supported. The Archdiocese of Cologne and eight other dioceses later supported the paper; In 1976 the German Bishops' Conference was added through the Association of Dioceses of Germany .

In 1979 the evangelical weekly newspaper Christ und Welt was incorporated into the Rheinischer Merkur .

The Rhenish Mercury described itself as independent. The editorial team mostly represented conservative political positions based on a Christian image of society. The church political positions were liberal-conservative and oriented more towards the German Bishops' Conference than the positions of the Vatican .

From 1978 to 2006, Christa Meves With editor .

2000s

When the weekly newspaper Die Woche was discontinued in March 2002, Rheinische Merkur took over its subscriber base . However, this only led to a short-term increase in the number of subscribers of around ten percent. After a few years it was well below the previous level. The newspaper was the rule of the parts politics , economy , culture , science and practice , Christian and the world , of life (with travel, style, media, human and Report) and the irregularly appearing PR - Supplement Mercury Plus .

Together with the Weltbild publishing group , Rheinische Merkur published the book series Classics of Christianity from May 2007 .

Setting as an independent publication

In September 2010, the German Bishops' Conference decided as a shareholder because of the difficult situation of the newspaper market and declining circulation and advertising revenues, the setting of the Rheinische Merkur as an independent newspaper and the liquidation of the Rheinischer Merkur GmbH (CEO: Bert G. Wegener). Most recently, the newspaper made a loss in the single-digit million range every year. The publisher turned down a takeover offer from the Berlin weekly newspaper Junge Freiheit .

The Eichstätt media scientist Christian Klenk published details of the data in a specialist article (see literature), but in response to his inquiries, neither the management of Rheinischer Merkur nor the German Bishops' Conference gave him precise information on subsidies or the amount of circulation.

Supplement of the time under the title Christ and World

The last independent edition of the Rheinischer Merkurs appeared on November 25, 2010. Since December 2, 2010, a special edition of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit has been accompanied by a six-page, editorially independent supplement with the title Christ and World . This special edition is only available for new subscribers of the time and for previous subscribers of the Rheinischer Merkur and not in retail stores.

The supplement is produced by dreipunktdrei mediengesellschaft mbH , a subsidiary of the Catholic News Agency (KNA), with an editorial team on behalf of ZEIT, some of whose members had already been employees of Rheinischer Merkurs . The editorial office is located in the building in Heinrich-Brüning-Straße 9 in Bonn , which has already been used .

The focus is on ecclesiastical, ethical and cultural issues, mostly from a Roman Catholic perspective.

According to the publisher, the circulation in 2014 was around 15,000.

As of October 1, 2016, the supplement was completely taken over by ZEIT.

Holdings

  • merkur.tv, Bonn (50 percent subsidiary of Verlag Rheinischer Merkur GmbH and Tellux GmbH )
  • Verlag Deutsche Zeitung GmbH, Bonn ( film service , radio correspondence, mercury, cinomat)
  • Pressehaus Sozialkasse GmbH, Bonn.

literature

  • Peter Hertel : The Watch on the Rhine? The "Rheinische Merkur" . In: Michael Wolf Thomas (Ed.): Portraits of the German press. Politics and profit . Volker Spiess, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-88435-021-8 , p. 237-256 .
  • Christof Lenhard: The marketing strategies of the Rheinischer Merkur and the German General Sunday Gazette. An economic and historical consideration . In: Church contemporary history (KZG) . 6, 2, 1993, ISSN  0932-9951 , pp. 467-496.
  • Eckart Klaus Roloff : 60 years of "Rheinischer Merkur". A weekly newspaper between change and constant values . In: Communicatio Socialis 1, 2007, ISSN  0010-3497 , pp. 38-49.
  • Christian Klenk: Suddenly, but not unexpectedly. The 'Rheinische Merkur' shrinks to a supplement to the 'Zeit'. In: Communicatio Socialis , 4, 2010, ISSN  0010-3497 , pp. 389-403.
  • Eckart Roloff: The fight against clichés. Newspaper dying: The Rheinische Merkur has perished - and should continue to live. In: Neues Deutschland , December 16, 2010, p. 15.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Weekly newspaper "Rheinischer Merkur" before the end? DWDL.de from September 20, 2010.
  2. ↑ Bishops no longer want to bear deficits: "Rheinischer Merkur" at the crossroads kress - the media service of September 20, 2010.
  3. ↑ The Catholic Church makes its weekly newspaper small, Süddeutsche Zeitung, from September 20, 2010.
  4. ↑ BDZV: “Rheinischer Merkur” takes over the “Woche” subscriber list , press release of March 20, 2002
  5. ↑ according to IVW, quarterly comparison on ivw.eu
  6. ↑ Alexander Krei: "Rheinischer Merkur" in its previous form at the end. DWDL.de , September 21, 2010, accessed on September 21, 2010 .
  7. ↑ The end of the "Rheinischer Merkur". The disease lasted for decades . In: FAZ , September 22, 2010, accessed on September 22, 2010.
  8. ↑ "Christ and the World" is capitalized ( memento from February 6, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) in domradio .de from December 1, 2010, accessed on December 2, 2010
  9. ↑ "Rheinischer Merkur" cooperates with ZEIT . zeit.de , September 22, 2010, accessed on December 2, 2010
  10. ↑ About Christ and the World , accessed December 2, 2011.
  11. ↑ Alexander Riebel: Faith is the worst case scenario: The Bonn Catholic media house separates from 'Christ und Welt' - Die ZEIT takes over the supplement from October In: Die Tagespost , 11 August 2016, page 11.