Luxemburger Wort

History and profile

Luxemburger Wort has been published since 1848. The paper was founded just three days after press censorship was abolished. The newspaper is mainly written in German, but includes small sections in both Luxemburgish and French. The paper is part of the Saint-Paul Luxembourg S.A. The paper is owned by the archbishopric and has a strong Catholic leaning.

From its very foundation, the newspaper opposed the Volksfreund, founded by Samuel Hirsch, and the Judenrabbiner, as well as the subsidy for the Jewish congregation. In the period from 1849 to 1880, on average it published two anti-Semitic articles per week.

From 1938, the newspaper opposed Nazi Germany. In 1940, after the German invasion of Luxembourg, the Luxemburger Wort was co-opted as part of the occupation. The director Jean Origer and the editors Batty Esch and Pierre Grégoire were arrested by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp. Pierre Grégoire was the only one of them to survive imprisonment. After the liberation of Luxembourg, the paper produced the headline: Lëtzebuerg as fräi! ("Luxembourg is free!"). At the same time this was one of few editions that appeared entirely in Luxembourgish; the publishing house also changed its name from German into French as a symbolic act.

From 17 March 2005 to 21 March 2008, the paper called itself d' Wort: Luxemburger Wort für Wahrheit und Recht.

In the period of 1995–1996 Luxemburger Wort had a circulation of 85,000 copies, making it the best-selling paper in the country. The circulation of the paper was 83,739 copies in 2003. In 2006 its circulation was 79,633 copies. The paper had a circulation of almost 70,000 copies a day and a daily readership of more than 180,000 (print and e-paper) in 2007, making it Luxembourg's most popular newspaper by both counts.