Why the oldest family-run print shop is not afraid of digitization

The von Sternsche Buchdruckerei is still managed by one of Stern, now in the 14th generation. This makes it the oldest print shop in the world that has always been family-owned – and ranks ninth among the oldest family businesses in Germany.

The Thirty Years’ War, the global economic crisis, World War I and II, the transition to digital: the company has survived all of this so far. Today it employs 60 people, making it one of the top seven percent of German print shops and is “economically still amazingly stable,” says co-managing director Andreas Jörß. A look at the company history helps to fathom the secret of resilience.

“Sense of the need of the time”

Flashback, 1624: The Thirty Years’ War reaches northern Germany – and with it the plague. Six thousand Lüneburg residents fell victim to the epidemic within a short space of time. Salt production, which otherwise secures an income for the majority of Lüneburg residents, has been suspended due to dirty water. Not good prerequisites for a company that has so far been known primarily for opulent Bible prints.

But the von Sterns get creative: in addition to large, so-called folio Bibles in altar format, they also print prayer collections in small format from now on. They offer comfort at a time when many people have to flee their homes and help the family business through this difficult time.

“The von Sterns were an important pioneer in our industry, they helped to invent the paperback,” says Bettina Knape from the German Printing and Media Association. “We’ve always had a feeling for the needs of the time, for trends that could develop,” says Christian von Stern, the current head of the company. An important part of his family’s recipe for success has always been “the willingness to change, to keep reinventing yourself”.

The 58-year-old has been the company’s managing partner since 1994 and has himself experienced more than one drastic change in the print shop. The first is already evident in the building that surrounds it at that moment. The family business, still under the management of his father, moved four kilometers east of Lüneburg’s old town to the industrial park in 1982 – “if only because of the size of the modern printing machines,” says the current company boss. “Despite all ties to the old house.”

Christian von Stern leads past a painting that shows the company’s old headquarters in bright colors – a present for the company’s 400th anniversary eight years ago – and an ancestral gallery. He stops in an office decorated with a baroque ceiling and antique furniture. “That’s how my father set himself up here back then,” he says. Today it is “just a backdrop, a kind of showroom when guests come”.

The actual work takes place next door – on normal office chairs. Co-Managing Director Andreas Jörß, who has been with the company for 31 years and is responsible for the operative management of the print shop, is also based there.

This is also part of his personal recipe for success, says Christian von Stern: “Operational management should always be in one hand. And so that there is no dispute, this hand does not come from the original family.”

He himself mostly works in the office of the Lüneburger Landeszeitung, just a few steps away from the founding building of the print shop. Because the continued success of the printing company is also due to the fact that the boss gets some of his orders himself: Christian von Stern is also the managing director of the Lüneburger Landeszeitung and publisher of the Winsener Anzeiger and a small advertising newspaper publisher. “The history of our family is primarily linked to the print shop. But since the advent of the first press media, we have always been involved in publishing daily newspapers as well,” he explains.

In the 19th century, Dorette von Stern dared to disrupt

Flashback, 1835: von Stern’s book printing works are going through their most difficult economic times. The business model of printing spiritual books has become obsolete. At times, seven out of eight printing presses stand idle for months. Then Dorette von Stern takes over the management – and turns the company upside down. She buys high-speed presses and ensures that the family business produces newspapers instead of bibles. Within a few years, the sales figures quadrupled. Later, the von Stern family acquired not only the printing rights but also the publishing rights to the “Lüneburgsche Advertisements”, the local daily newspaper.

“Without Dorette, this company would no longer exist today,” says Christian von Stern. To this day it is “a desert corporate conglomerate that keeps us afloat”. If a newspaper that is part of the customer base is about to change ownership, it is taken over – as happened last year with the Winsener Anzeiger. “This is how we get the orders here and at the same time create publishing value.”

The company’s “pure print turnover” is currently in the mid-single-digit million range per year, says co-managing director Jörß. In addition to the Lüneburger Landeszeitung and the Winsener Anzeiger, the company also prints the Hamburger Morgenpost, a magazine for the homeless, and “various weekly papers for foreign customers from Lüneburg to Sylt”.

It also still produces books – but mainly out of a bond with the “roots of the company”. The company now shares the sheet-fed printing press used for this with another printer. As a result, this business area also pays off, says Jörß. “But the focus, the foundation of our business is clearly newspaper printing.”

It is “remarkable when a company that has been printing Bibles for 200 years suddenly relies on newspaper printing, i.e. completely reinvents itself,” says Bettina Knape. Christian von Stern is accordingly proud of his ancestor Dorette, who paved the way for the family to what is now its main business around 200 years ago. She “steered the company back on the right track” after her ancestors had let the business slide for decades. In addition, her story is “remarkable from an emancipatory point of view”. The city seems to have a similar view: a street in the north of Lüneburg is named after Dorette von Stern.

A chapter in the company’s history that Christian von Stern is not at all proud of: the time during the Second World War. Much of it is only handed down in fragmentary form. But one thing is certain: “Our family was not in the resistance.” Although “none of us were said to have been members of the NSDAP,” there was evidence that National Socialist editors-in-chief worked for newspapers that the family printed. His ancestors also used forced laborers in the printing works.

In addition, a “shameful self-advertisement” appeared in the Lüneburger Anzeiger once – in 1933, directly after the book burning in Berlin. ‘Other books will be burned, ours will be read’, it said. “We will go back to our family history during the Nazi era very carefully,” says Christian von Stern, who was shocked by the ad when he discovered it recently, as he says. An art historian is to take over this task later this year.

The next generation wants to drive on two tracks

Coming to terms with the past is important, as is setting the course for the future. Christian von Stern’s successor has not yet been decided, but the handover to the next generation is hardly five years away.

“As a father, you naturally wish that all children, with their specific characteristics, can make their own personal contribution to the continued existence of the company,” says the company boss, who is being accompanied on the day by daughter Philippa, 25, and son Laurenz, 21. The third in the group, 26-year-old Luisa, is on her way – at a conference in Berlin on the topic of corporate management, together with von Stern’s 30-year-old nephew Trond, who currently already runs a start-up in the media industry.

“Of course we definitely don’t want to be the generation that is responsible for the fact that this family empire no longer exists,” says Philippa von Stern. “That’s why the four of us have a lively exchange about how things are going from here.” It is questionable, however, whether the newspaper printing business will still exist in the near future.

That is why the family is currently considering new business areas as a whole. This includes reprints of family-owned rarities, books that can be linked to the Internet via QR codes, “everything that is complex, individual and requires a lot of advice,” says Christian von Stern. “Print will develop more and more into a cultural form and lose dimension,” he predicts. But this market also wants to continue to be served. “And we see ourselves in a position to do that.”

Bettina Knape from the Bundesverband Druck und Medien sees it in a similar way: Sternsche Druckerei is well positioned, especially when it comes to particularly beautiful books that require haptics. “Quality pressure instead of mass pressure” is “a good survival strategy,” she says.

Somehow, in the past, the print shop had always “made the right decisions in good time, foreseen and accepted developments,” says Christian von Stern optimistically. And as long as his family remains “open to opportunities and prospects”, things could continue in the centuries to come.

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