Ben Wett

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Ben Wett (* 1941 in Hanover as Bernd Nass ; † April 27, 2012 in New York ) was a German - American journalist and sports reporter.

Life and work

At the age of 19, Bernd Nass began his journalistic training as a trainee at a US newspaper for members of the military who are stationed abroad. During this six-month work at the " Army Times ", he changed his name to the English equivalent "Ben Wett" (at least the double consonant remained untypically). In 1959 he emigrated to the USA .

After Wett had worked for the ARD radio studio in New York City for ten years from 1960 , he switched to television in 1970. As a TV reporter on site, Ben Wett reported on international sporting events as a freelancer. He also acted as the first US correspondent for the ARD sports show . His long stay in the USA made itself felt early on in the American language coloring of his German pronunciation; this became his trademark.

In addition to his reports on athletics competitions, Olympic Games and football tournaments, his broadcasts of boxing matches were among the reports with which he became known and popular on German television (ARD and ZDF). Well networked in the circles of the leading American professional athletes at the time, he often got exclusive interviews for German-language television with boxing champions such as Muhammad Ali (with whom he was privately friends), Joe Frazier , George Foreman or with the sprint world champion Carl Lewis . One of the last major TV interviews with Muhammad Ali, who was already suffering from Parkinson's disease , was conducted by Ben Wett in December 1998 in the BR studios in Unterföhring .

Background reports and information on new trend sports such as B. Jogging, windsurfing, skateboarding, aerobics and inline skating, which originated or became popular in the USA and found their way to Europe, were another focus of his work, especially in the 1970s and 1980s.

Betting was seldom active in Germany; However, he accompanied some boxing matches in later years as a ring announcer (e.g. Sven Ottke against David Starie on June 14, 2003 in Magdeburg ) or as a TV expert for RTL ( Wladimir Klitschko against David Haye on July 2, 2011 in Hamburg ).

Ben Wett was married to an American. He lived in New York and Los Angeles . Due to Parkinson's disease, Wett had last withdrawn from the public and spent the last few weeks before his death in a New York hospice .

Films (selection)

  • 1983: Black wins. Myth and Reality of Colored Athletes in the United States . TV report for Sport-Spiegel (ZDF)
  • 1997: Muhammad Ali. The legend . Documentation, 45 min., Production: WDR
  • 2000: Ali – Frazier I: One Nation… Divisible . TV documentary about the legendary fight Ali vs. Frazier on March 8, 1971 in Madison Square Garden, New York
  • 2002 :: 03 from Gold . TV documentary about the basketball duel USA-USSR during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich (Engl.)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b A life on the ring ( Memento from May 20, 2012 in the Internet Archive ). Obituary by Reinhold Beckmann . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of May 14, 2012, page 15. Retrieved from sueddeutsche.de on May 15, 2012
  2. ↑ Ben Wett's name used to be Bernd Nass . Hamburger Abendblatt, February 23, 2008
  3. ↑ 50 years of Sportschau Magical Moments ; ARD, May 26, 2011
personal data
SURNAME Bet, Ben
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Nass, Bernd
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sports reporter
DATE OF BIRTH 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover
DATE OF DEATH April 27, 2012
Place of death new York