In 1982 the literature magazine SCHRiTTE is born: Poems are supposed to be brought to readers, which throws in the question where those lyric readers are to be found – where one could catch them with dense lines and clenched verses.

The main idea: In coffee houses, back then not yet replaced by „Bistros“ or some other In-pubs, where you sit likely for longer and just drift away – exactly the right place to read a thrilling novel. In other words:

A DIN A3 big paper is being created, firs with only 13 content pages, fotocopied (which, back then, was a real technichal challenge in DIN A3), on the cover an original linocut of Detlef Schumacher, fixed with selfmade newspaper holders – that's how the magazine with 13 poems is put up in 43 coffee houses in Frankfurt.

The extraordinary happens: It is being asked for a sequel, for subscriptions, the possibility to contribute – that's how the experiment, to catch readers for a few poems in a place of reading, turns into a periodical.

SCHRiTTE is now published irregularly and quarterly for 4 years with copied content, the original titles stem from different artists and literature friends, such as Brigitte Kottwitz and Hans-Jürgen Dietz, Walter Diewock and Ilya Vassiliev. The editors are poet Rolf Werner Kunz, who unfortunately already passed away, and Stefan Klamke, later on the lyricist and critic Klaus Hensel, today he is wokring at the HR tv, and Thorsten Casmir, the, aswell passed away, romancier.

One of the first sponsors is the company Ricoh-Minolta: They print the DIN A3-Copy for only 10 pennies in their Frankfurt headquater – a ridiculously low price for those big copies, which cost five or eight times more at that time.

After a break the magazine is published again, now printed. This second time of publishing SCHRiTTE it's not only a 100 cafés in Frankfurt where the magazine is put up, but almost 1.400 coffee houses and bistros in 14 cities from Hamburg to Munique are supplied. This was possible with sponsors such as Honda Germany GmbH and Deutsche Post („Schreib mal wieder“ was a very nice slogan for an anouncement in a literature magazine and got us a bag full of poem contributions), who appreciated the distribution channel and multiplication through the notice in cafés. Contributing to this concept was, that Hilmar Hoffmann, head of cultural affairs, supplied an amazing letter of intent for the magazine: form and content make the originality noticable, which is appropriate for written art. As well as with the way to provide the reader with the magazine, they made a great decision. As a journal, which invites people to read in cafés, bistros and other meeting places, SCHRiTTE comes in an appropriate vibe to the right audience. Artful and impressive at the same time, the magazine know how to arouse interest, where other papers sink into ephemerality.