Press news in Germany – Corona crisis: station bookstores in numerous federal states are closed

The station bookshop

The station book trade (BB) occupies a separate position in the press distribution due to special requirements and regulations. The conditions were originally anchored in the Federal Railway Act. The station bookseller should cover the needs of travelers. Contrary to other sales outlets, the BB is not supplied through a regional press wholesaler (“wholesaler”), but directly from the publisher.

The conditions laid down in the law were, among other things, that a station bookshop must be open every day of the year. Annual holidays and closings on public holidays are excluded. The opening times are usually at least 100 hours per week, but not less than 90 hours per week if this corresponds to the relevant train situation.

There are currently about 350 locations in the station book trade in Germany, every tenth magazine is sold in the BB. But not every point of sale in the station is automatically a classic “station book dealer”. Station kiosks are often supplied by wholesalers, provided the above criteria cannot be met.

On the other hand, sales outlets in airports can be given the status of a station bookseller, for example sales outlets in Frankfurt Rhein / Main, Berlin-Tegel, Berlin-Schönefeld or Munich Erdinger Moos. But here, too, there is no uniform structure for the layperson. While the sales point in Cologne / Bonn Airport (9.9 million passengers in 2010) has no BB status, the much smaller Airport Dresden (1.9 million passengers in 2010) is counted among the station bookstores.

As part of the merger of the Deutsche Bundesbahn with the Deutsche Reichsbahn and the concurrent privatization resulting from the foundation of Deutsche Bahn AG on January 1, 1994, the Federal Railway Act was largely overridden. The “criteria for station book trade” were therefore agreed in the industry, and the Bundeskartellamt was involved in the drafting. These framework conditions contain the requirements that were previously set out in the station book trade from the Federal Railway Act.

Station categories

In Germany, train stations have been divided into categories since 1944. The number of platforms, the length of the platforms, the number of train stops and the number of passengers are taken into account. Over time, however, the rating systems were repeatedly modified or renamed. Since 2017, Deutsche Bahn AG no longer uses the term “station category”, but now the term “price class”. This shows the tariffs that private railway companies have to pay to Deutsche Bahn when they stop.

The main train stations belong to category 1. In Berlin, these include the stations Hauptbahnhof, Gesundbrunnen, Ostbahnhof and Südkreuz as well as the main stations in Dortmund, Dresden, Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Essen, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Hanover, Karlsruhe, Cologne, Leipzig, Munich , Nuremberg, Stuttgart as well as Hamburg-Altona and the Ostbahnhof in Munich.

Lagardère Travel Retail Deutschland GmbH

The foundation stone for today’s Lagardère Travel Retail was laid by Louis Hachette, who opened his first bookstore in Paris in 1826. In 1852, a station bookshop opened at Gare de Lyon station in Paris. Business openings also followed in Spain and Belgium at the beginning of the 20th century.

Since 1999, the company has also been represented in the Czech Republic, Poland and Germany, under the name HDS Retail Germany. The market entry in the Federal Republic took place through the takeover of the stationery bookstore chain Bauer in Wiesbaden. In 2012 the company was renamed LS travel retail Deutschland GmbH. From October 2015 it appeared under the name Lagardère Travel Retail Germany.

Lagardère is represented at the train stations Siegen, Darmstadt, Hanover, Bad Kreuznach, Goslar, Herford, Bünde, Unna, Haltern am See, Wuppertal-Oberbarmen, Hamburg-Bergedorf, Minden, Frankfurt / Südbahnhof, Mülheim an der Ruhr, Wuppertal Hbf., Berlin, Hbf., Osnabrück, Hanau, Wiesbaden, Mainz, Friedberg, Bad Nauheim, Celle, Neuss and at the airports in Hanover, Stuttgart, Dresden, Frankfurt-Hahn, Berlin-Tegel (Terminal C), Bremen, Hamburg, Frankfurt / Main as well as Berlin-Schönefeld. Some points of sale are operated in the franchise system.

Valora

The listed Swiss retail group Valora, founded in 1905, has been represented in the German station book trade since the takeover of Stilke aktuell GmbH in January 1997. The publisher Georg Stilke, born in Düsseldorf in 1840, opened his first sales outlets in Berlin in 1882 and continued to expand his company in the following years. With branches from Flensburg to Bonn, the company was finally able to generate around 50 percent of total station book trade sales in the 1970s.

Valora finally took over with the retail chains BZVG Lux (Berlin), Detlef Horndasch (Gütersloh), Sussmann’s (Munich), Falter (Aachen) and Wittwer (Stuttgart) other station booksellers, as well as individual family businesses, and is now represented in all federal states. There are also sales outlets outside of train stations and airports, primarily in shopping centers. The most famous branch is probably the location in the Berlin Europacenter. Valora also acquired companies in other industries, such as the “Backwerk” and “Ditsch” chains. Many points of sale are operated by franchise partners. Valora claims to be the market leader in small-scale retail with over 900 partners.

Valora operates the station bookstores in Aachen, Aalen, Ahlen, Ahrensburg, Aschersleben, Bad Oldesloe, Bensheim, Bielefeld, Bietigheim-Bissingen, Böblingen, Bocholt, Bochum, Bonn, Braunschweig, Bremen, Bremerhaven, Buchloe, Chemnitz, Cuxhaven, Dachau, Delmenhorst, Diepholz, Dinslaken, Donauwörth, Dortmund, Dresden, Duisburg, Düren, Düsseldorf, Elmshorn, Emden, Emmerich, Essen, Esslingen / Neckar, Euskirchen, Fulda, Gelsenkirchen, Gütersloh, Haar, Hagen, Hameln, Hamm, Heidenheim, Heilbronn, Herne and Wanne-Eickel, Hildesheim, Itzehoe, Jena, Koblenz, Köthen, Krefeld, Kronach, Landshut, Leer, Lichtenfels, Lübeck, Ludwigsburg, Lüneburg, Magdeburg, Marburg, Mönchengladbach Hbf. And Rheydt, Münster, Neumünster, Neunkirchen, Nienburg / Weser, Nordhausen, Oberhausen, Pinneberg, Potsdam, Ravensburg, Recklinghausen, Remscheid, Rendsburg, Reutlingen, Rheine, Rostock Hbf., Saarlouis, Schorndorf, Schwerin, Schwerte, Siegburg, Solingen, St. Ingbert, St. Wendel, Stade, Starnberg, Stendal, Stralsund, Uelzen, Ulm, Wesel, Witten, Wolfsburg, Zwickau and in Berlin the stations Adenauer Platz, Alexanderplatz (long-distance train to subway), Alt-Mariendorf, Tegel Airport (main hall), Frankfurter Allee, Frohnau, Gesundbrunnen, Greifswalder Straße , Lichtenberg (underground station area), Neukölln, Osloer Str., Ostbahnhof, Ostkreuz, Steglitz Town Hall, Spandau (long-distance train and at the BVG service point), Tempelhof and Zoo (long-distance train main hall), in Hamburg the train stations Altona, Dammtor, Harburg,, Hauptbahnhof, Blankenese and in the airport, is represented in Munich at the Hauptbahnhof, in Pasing and at the Ostbahnhof as well as in Stuttgart at the Hauptbahnhof and in Bad Cannstatt.

The Dr. Eckert

The trading company for travel and traffic was founded in Heidelberg on July 6, 1923. Dr. Adam Eckert and Wilhelm Pappritz. Two years later the company moved to Stuttgart. In 1928 the Frankfurt tobacco shop ’L. Barbarino was taken over, and in the following year the travel supplies specialist Peter Welter was added. In 1988 the Gerhard Ludwig GmbH bookstores in Cologne were acquired.

In the GDR, the Deutsche Post der DDR was responsible for operating the newspaper kiosks. During the turnaround, this division was outsourced to the then newly founded PSG Postdienst Service Gesellschaft, which was then opened in 1998 by Dr. Eckert was taken over and later traded as “PSG Prima Service Gesellschaft mbH”. In 2001 the company Handelshaus für Reise und Verkehr Dr. Eckert & Co. and L. Barbarino KG on the Dr. Eckert & Co. KG merged. In 2010 it was decided that all companies in the Dr. To unite Eckert GmbH, although individual brands such as Barbarino will continue to be used as company logos.

In the station book trade, the company now maintains branches in Annweiler, Ansbach, Asperg, Aulendorf, Backnang, Bad Mergentheim, Bad Saulgau, Bad Wildbad, Baiersbronn, Bernau, Besigheim, Biberach, Bitterfeld, Bonn-Bad Godesberg, Brandenburg an der Havel, Coburg , Cottbus, Dessau, Ditzingen, Dresden-Neustadt, Ebersbach, Ellwangen, Erkner, Frankenthal, Frankfurt / Oder, Freudenstadt, Göppingen, Görlitz, Greifswald, Grünstadt, Güstrow, Halberstadt, Halle, Hennigsdorf, Herrenberg, Homburg, Kaiserslautern, Cologne Hbf. , Cologne-Deutz, Königs-Wusterhausen, Landau / Pfalz, Lauffen, Leipzig Hauptbahnhof, Leonberg, Limburgerhof, Lorch, Lörrach, Ludwigshafen, Marbach, Meißen, Merseburg, Mühlacker, Naumburg, Nierstein, Nürtingen, Oberesslingen, Oldenburg, Oranienburg, Ostseebad Binz on Rügen, Pirna, Plochingen, Rostock-Warnemünde, Saalfeld, Saarbrücken, Schwabach, Schwäbisch-Gmünd, Soest, Speyer, Stuttgart (Büchsenstraße), Stuttgart-Feuerbach, Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen, Tr ier, Tübingen, Waldshut-Tiengen, Weil der Stadt, Wernigerode / Harz, Wilhelmshaven, Winnenden, at Leipzig Airport and in Berlin at Alexanderplatz (main hall / main line), Baumschulenweg, Friedrichsfelde-Ost, Friedrichstraße, Helene-Weigel-Platz, Lichtenberg (main hall), Papestrasse, Potsdamer Platz and Südkreuz.

picture of Thomas B. on Pixabay

see also: Corona / COVID-19 pandemic topic

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