PRINTING AND PUBLISHING

In the Wilhelminian period, large printing houses and well-known publishers had their headquarters in Leipzig, today their tradition is continued by printing companies, emerging and established publishers and committed literary professionals. 

Publishers such as Edition Peters or the Leipzig division of Ernst Klett are just as committed to this area as independent publishers and other medium-sized operations. All of them, with their diverse profiles and selected programmes, are defining the modern image of Leipzig as a book city.

The city also hosts one of the literary year's highlights: the Leipzig Book Fair and the reading festival Leipzig liest (Leipzig reads) attract more than a quarter of a million visitors to the book city every year.

The Gutenbergschule (site only in german), the vocational school for the city of Leipzig, offers the opportunity to achieve university entrance qualifications with a focus on design. This is also where apprentices in the print and media sectors as well as booksellers lay the foundations for their professional future.

The Institute for Communication and Media Studies at the University of Leipzig specialises in book studies and provides comprehensive information about the publishing industry. Here the medium of the printed book is explored and examined in the context of the entire media landscape.

The Leipzig University of Applied Sciences (HTWK Leipzig, subpage only in german) graduates, who hold a degree in book and media production, printing technology or book trade and publishing are highly qualified specialists for the printing and publishing industry.

At the Deutsches Literaturinstitut Leipzig, students can earn an academic degree as creative writers. Award-winning authors such as Clemens Meyer and Juli Zeh studied at this institute.

July 1, 1650 marked the start of the global press market - right hear in Leipzig. On that day Timotheus Ritzsch, the son of a publisher, issued the "Einkommende Zeitungen" in Leipzig which was the world's first daily newspaper. Over the centuries, daily newspapers have served as a medium to foster a phenomenon that is now taken for granted: the global community.

Nearly 250 years later, the Leipziger Volkszeitung was printed for the very first time. Today the LVZ is the city's largest daily newspaper - but it is by no means the only print medium available on the urban press market. Local newsrooms of nationally active news services or media, city magazines, weekly magazines, multifaceted blogs and many district newspapers provide the necessary journalistic diversity in the Saxon metropolis.

Every year, the Journalism Department of the University of Leipzig and the Leipzig School of Media introduce young journalists to the media landscape who will shape the future quality of journalism in the city. The programmes have an excellent reputation within the industry and place great emphasis on managing digital change and its consequences.