Koenig & Bauer Move Back to Germany; 7 Years Later Print the "Allgemeine Zeitung", the First Examples of Machine Printing in Germany

In 1817 Friedrich Koenig and his partner Andreas Bauer left England because of financial disputes with their English partners, and founded the company known today as Koenig & Bauer. They set up a new printing machine factory at an abandoned monastery at Oberzell near Würzburg. However, in Germany development of their printing machines proceeded slowly, as this was at least 25 years before the beginning of the machine age in Germany. In the 1860's there were attempts in Germany at imitating the industrialization that had taken place elsewhere in Europe. This imitation was only moderately successful. Only in 1871 when  the modern German nation was created by Otto von Bismarck were major industries founded that led to the full fledged industrialization of Germany.

The first newspaper to mechanize its printing was Johann Friedrich Cotta's Allgemeine Zeitung in Augsburg. On July 3, 1824 Koenig did a test printing of the Allgemeine Zeitung. This was the first commercial application of a Koenig Schnellpresse in Germany. Nine days later, for the July 12, 1824 edition Koenig was able to print 3000 copies of the newspaper using his Schnellpresse. However, the steam engine failed and the press had to be driven by hand. With this awkward beginning Koenig introduced high speed printing to Germany roughly ten years after he introduced it in England.

An article describing the history and development of Koenig's Schnellpresse appeared in the Allgemeine Zeitung for August 21, 1825. An additional article appeared in the February 3, 1827 issue.