Christiane Kohl (writer)

Christiane Kohl (born May 26, 1954 in Frankenberg (Eder) ) is a German journalist and writer.

Education and professional career

After graduating from the Edertal School in Frankenberg, Christiane Kohl studied German, politics and history in Giessen. She began her journalistic career at Gießener Anzeiger in Gießen, later she moved to the then federal capital of Bonn as a political correspondent for the Kölner Express . After an interlude as press spokeswoman in the Hessian Ministry of the Environment (1986–1988), Christiane Kohl went to the news magazine Der Spiegel in 1988 , where in 1996 she became the first woman in the history of the news magazine to become deputy head of a department (Germany II). After working as a Spiegel reporter and Italy correspondent for the Spiegel in Rome, Kohl switched to Süddeutsche Zeitung in 1999 , where she was initially responsible for the East German federal states of Thuringia, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt as Italy correspondent and from 2005 to 2013 as a reporter. Between 1997 and 2005 Kohl published six books, two of which were filmed: The Jew and the Girl in 2001 by Joseph Vilsmaier under the title Leo and Claire and in 2014 Das Zeugenhaus by Matti Geschonneck .

Since leaving the Süddeutsche Zeitung at the end of 2013, Christiane Kohl has been working as a hotelier and managing director at Landhaus Bärenmühle in Frankenau-Ellershausen, her parents' house, which she and her sister Bettina converted into a country hotel. Since 2012 it has been organizing the literature festival "Literary Spring in the Homeland of the Brothers Grimm " together with two other hotels .

Engagement in Sant'Anna di Stazzema

Christiane Kohl is an honorary citizen of the Italian town of Sant'Anna di Stazzema (district of Stazzema ). The award was given to her in 2002 as a thank you for her research on contemporary history, which was also related to the discovery of the so-called " cupboard of shame " in Rome.

With her research and articles since 1999, the author had made a decisive contribution to the investigation of a war crime in Sant'Anna di Stazzema, which members of the Waffen SS committed on August 12, 1944 in this mountain village in the Apuan Alps near Lucca . More than 500 residents of the village were killed, and the first trial of the alleged perpetrators was not held until more than 60 years later.

With her research on German war crimes in Italy , Christiane Kohl initiated more than half a dozen preliminary investigations in Germany and Italy.

Special articles

• The land of a thousand volcanoes. Report on the "poison kitchen GDR" and the environmental disaster in the city of Bitterfeld. Spiegel No. 2, January 8, 1990.
• Greenpeace money machine. Report about fundraising, PR tricks and a certain lack of ideas in the most successful German eco-organization. Spiegel No. 38, September 16, 1991.
• Billion grave upswing east. Report on the waste of money in the new federal states, Spiegel No. 7, February 13, 1995.
• The sky was bright blue. Reconstruction of a war crime. Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, October 29, 1999.

Books

• The Jew and the Girl. Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg 1997, ISBN 978-3-442-12968-3 .
• Cow dung, bell bag and Kalashnikov. Reports from German provinces. Picus, Vienna 1999, ISBN 978-3-85452-723-7 .
• Villa Paradiso. When the war came to Tuscany. Goldmann, Munich 2002, ISBN 978-3-442-15277-3 .
• The sky was bright blue. About the raging of the Wehrmacht in Italy. Reportage tape. Picus, Vienna 2004, ISBN 978-3-85452-484-7 .
• The witness house - Nuremberg 1945: When perpetrators and victims met under one roof. Goldmann, Munich 2005, ISBN 978-3-442-15417-3 .
• Pictures of a father. Goldmann, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-442-31162-0 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Christiane Kohl in the catalog of the German National Library