In January, 1853, a new journal appeared as a Beiblatt zum Illustrirten Dorfbarbier [Supplement to the Illustrated Village Barber] entitled Die Gartenlaube [The Garden Bower]. Its editor, Ernst Keil (1816–78), was no newcomer to the publishing industry. Keil had begun his career as an apprentice bookseller in Weimar, where he soon came into contact with the writings of the Young Germans. He became a sharp critic of the reactionary Vormärz government, and an ardent supporter of liberal reform in a unified Germany. In 1845 Keil began publishing his first literary journal, Der Leuchtturm [The Lighthouse], which soon attracted the attention of the German censors. For three years he was on the run, as his liberal journal was forbidden in one German province after the next. His fortunes seemed to take a turn for the better when freedom of the press was granted throughout Germany in March, 1848, but the Prussian government soon clamped down with even tighter censorship laws when King Friedrich Wilhelm IV refused to accept the constitution of the Frankfurt National Assembly. The government revived its case against Keil's Leuchtturm, and by 1852 Keil found himself serving a nine-month prison sentence for his allegedly seditious journal.

It was here that Keil first conceived Die Gartenlaube, and by the end of the year the journal was underway. From the opening page of the first edition it becomes clear that Keil's new publication no longer targeted left-wing intellectuals of the Vormärz. The masthead includes an illustration of a family gathered together around a table under a garden bower, where a grandfatherly figure reads aloud to mother, father, and young children.