Founded by the publisher and patron Friedrich Justin Bertuch together with the literature professor at the University of Jena Christian Gottfried Schütz and the Weimar poet and writer Christoph Martin Wieland.
[2] In 1804 Schütz accepted a professorship in literary history and rhetoric in Halle (Saale), having moved the place of publication of the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung to that city as early as 1803.
Starting in January 1804,[3] an offshoot off the journal, named the Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung appeared, at Goethe's instigation beginning in August 1803.
However, the Jenaische Literaturzeitung opened itself more and more to the new political and philosophical directions and regularly included contributions from the fields of medicine, anthropology and natural science, whereas the Hallesche Zeitung, with Schütz, remained true to Kantian philosophy and suffered from increasing decline over the following years.
After the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung in Halle also ceased publication in 1849, its place in the world of German letters was taken by the Literarisches Centralblatt für Deutschland, founded by Friedrich Zarncke in Leipzig in 1850, until it closed down in 1944.