Birgit Virnich

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Birgit Virnich (2013) .jpg

Birgit Maria Virnich (* 1959 in Essen ) is a multiple award-winning German journalist , correspondent, TV editor for the WDR and book author.

Life

Birgit Virnich went to school in South Africa and studied journalism , English literature , film and international politics . She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Film from the University of Chicago and a Master of Science in International Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science .

From 1985 to 1992 Virnich worked as a freelance journalist in the radio and TV sector for ARD , the BBC and Channel 4 in London. From 1992 to 1994 she helped set up the ARD morning magazine as an editor . From 1994 to 1996 she worked as a writer and editor in the Monitor editorial team, and from 1996 to 1999 she produced films for the WDR editorial team Menschen firsthand . For the WDR television documentary Ein Mann sucht Braun - In action against East German Nazis , she received the CIVIS television award in November 2000 .

During the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 , Virnich reported on the consequences and effects of the attack from the ARD studio in New York. From 2002 to 2008 she was ARD television correspondent for Africa and lived in Nairobi , Kenya . They reported from 39 countries in Africa. In 2003 her dossier The Children's War ( Die Zeit ), which she wrote in collaboration with the journalist Bartholomäus Grill , was nominated for the Egon Erwin Kisch Prize . Her documentary Congo Fever - A Journey into the Heart of Darkness ( ARD World Tour ) was nominated for the Adolf Grimme Prize in 2005. Three years later, in 2008, she was for her film mass rape as a weapon in eastern Congo to the Lorenzo Natali prize of the International Federation of Journalists , honored for journalists who work for human rights. In the same year Birgit Virnich left the ARD studio in Nairobi on schedule. From September 2008 she worked as an editor and reporter in the WDR foreign editorial office in Cologne. As editor, she was responsible for Kurt Pelda's ARD documentary "The Story in the First: How Syria Dies - A Report from the Civil War", for which both were nominated for the German Television Prize in the 2013 Report category. In August 2014 the WDR sent Birgit Virnich to Moscow as ARD foreign correspondent. As part of her activities, she reported several times from the crisis area in Eastern Ukraine. At the beginning of 2015 she was one of the authors of the documentary "Putin's People" on ARD. She lives with her family in Cologne and Moscow .

Birgit Virnich has also been working as a book author since 2010. She published A Bicycle for the River Gods , in which she describes the everyday life of individual everyday heroes in Africa. Together with the women's rights activist Rebecca Lolosoli, she wrote "Mama Mutig", published by Südwest-Verlag in 2011. In it, she describes the life story of the first woman who founded a village in Kenya. She gives readings in German cultural institutions and schools as well as lectures on the subjects of " Freedom of the press and human rights in Africa" ​​and child soldiers - Africa's greatest challenge .

During her work as a foreign correspondent, Virnich collected children's toys from African countries. The touring exhibition Global Players - Toys from Africa in cooperation with “Together for Africa” was opened in October 2009 by the then Federal President Horst Köhler in the German Museum of Technology in Berlin and has since traveled to other museums in Hamburg, Nuremberg, Cologne and many other cities.

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Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ [1]
  2. ↑ CIVIS award winners from 2000 to 2008 at Kulturpreise.de
  3. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from January 6, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Birgit Virnich: A bicycle for the river gods. Reports from Africa
  5. ↑ Global Players - Toys from Africa. TOGETHER FOR AFRICA
personal data
SURNAME Virnich, Birgit
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Virnich, Birgit Maria
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist, author and filmmaker
DATE OF BIRTH 1959
PLACE OF BIRTH eat