Matthias Geyer

Matthias Geyer (* 1962 ) is a German journalist who headed the corporate department of the news magazine Der Spiegel from 2006 to 2019 .

Life

Geyer worked for Spiegel from 1989, where he initially worked in the sports department and later as a reporter in the capital city office. In 2006 he became head of the corporate department, which he headed with Cordt Schnibben until 2013 , with Stefan Willeke from 2013 to 2014 , with Ullrich Fichtner from 2014 to 2016 and from 2016 alone.

In 2004 he received the Egon Erwin Kisch Prize (as co-author of the report Schröder's game about the power mechanisms in the government of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder ) and in 2008 the Henri Nannen Prize for best investigative achievement - he had with the Udo Ludwig, Lothar Gorris and Detlef Hacke, who were also awarded prizes, have proven in years of work that the Telekom team also used prohibited doping substances in cycling. He portrayed and interviewed Guido Westerwelle ( Der ewige Guido , No. 49, 2003) and Oskar Gröning ( Der Buchhalter von Auschwitz , No. 19, 2005) , among others .

In 2004 he received the Georg von Holtzbrinck Prize for Business Journalism with Alexander Smoltczyk for Operation Dosenpfand - with German thoroughness into chaos (No. 32, 2003) about the introduction of the deposit system and Das Nürnberger Labor (about the Federal Labor Office in Nuremberg, No. 49 , 2003). In 2017 he and Ullrich Fichtner, André Geicke and Andreas Wassermann received the German Reporter Award for a report on the scandal surrounding the construction of the Berlin Brandenburg Airport ( How Germany failed to build an airport , No. 34, 2017).

On January 1, 2019, he should be appointed as a sheet maker . However, his appointment was suspended until the investigation into the forgery scandal surrounding Claas Relotius was concluded . As the head of the corporate department, he was responsible for Relotius' work from 2016 to 2018. He remained head of the corporate department, which Relotius should have taken over on January 1, 2019. On March 20, 2019, Spiegel-Verlag announced that Geyer, even if, according to the results of the investigation, was not personally responsible for the fraud, would renounce the position of journalist and hand over the management of the corporate department. As an editor for special tasks, however, he remained tied to the editor-in-chief. In the final report of the investigation, he was accused of not following up on information and delaying the investigation. On August 23, 2019, it became known that Spiegel-Verlag Geyer had given notice and that he had sued against the termination. One day before the first day of the negotiations on August 27, 2019, they agreed that Spiegel-Verlag would withdraw the termination and Geyer would sign a termination agreement.