Dieter Bednarz

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Dieter Bednarz (born September 3, 1956 in Bochum ) is a German journalist , author , lecturer and speaker. Bednarz was the political editor of the Hamburg news magazine Der Spiegel from 1981 to 2017 . He received international attention through his exclusive discussions with heads of state and government from the Near and Middle East . Bednarz also teaches at the TU Hamburg-Harburg and at the private media university University of Applied Sciences Europe (UE), Campus Hamburg-Altona, formerly Business and Information Technology School (BITS).

Life

Bednarz, born in Bochum - Langendreer and raised in Essen , volunteered after graduating from high school at the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ), for which he then worked as an editor in the local Witten editorial office. In 1979 he went to Israel for alternative civilian service with the Berlin Action Reconciliation Service for Peace . He also reported from Jerusalem as an accredited Israel correspondent for the WAZ and, together with his fellow volunteer, today's Islamic scholar Michael Lüders, wrote his first two books, which came out in spring 1981 almost at the same time as his return to Germany: Palestine Protocols - Inventory and Perspective (foreword: Udo Steinbach ) and looking back without hatred - Jews from Israel remember Germany (foreword: Helmut Gollwitzer ).

Bednarz began his Spiegel career on October 1, 1981 as a political editor in the Düsseldorf regional office of the news magazine. In 1984 he moved to the Hamburg headquarters of Spiegel and wrote on almost all current topics in the Germany section. In the spring of 1991 he summoned the chief editor for the Middle East correspondent residing in Cairo . Almost three years later he returned from the Nile to the Elbe and took over responsibility for the region from Hamburg . Since then, numerous trips have taken him to the Near and Middle East.

The Spiegel talks with heads of state of the region, which Bednarz held together with the respective editors-in-chief Stefan Aust , Mathias Müller von Blumencron , Georg Mascolo and Klaus Brinkbäumer , attracted international attention . Bednarz questioned the Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad (2009 and 2013) and the Egyptian head of state Abd al-Fattah as-Sisi (2015) with extraordinary sharpness . As the only Western journalist, he spoke extensively in Tehran both with President Akbar Hāschemi Rafsanjāni (1996) and with the head of state Mahmud Ahmadinejad (2006 and 2009). "Hardly any German journalist should have interviewed as many despots as he did," wrote Paul-Josef Raue in the media service kress.de . Bednarz also interviewed the opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi and met with the regime critic and cleric Mehdi Karroubi when he was already under house arrest and had no contact .

Bednarz became known beyond journalism from 2009 onwards. After he had also written on the subject of family and upbringing, his personally colored non-fiction book Survival on the Wrap Front: Vom Elternglück in den was published that year by the German Publishing House (DVA) in Munich best years , which the then Family Minister Ursula von der Leyen presented to the public in Berlin and recommended as "both entertaining and socio-politically important food for thought". The Berlin producer Regina Ziegler filmed the book in 2011 under the title Survival on the Winding Front for the Second German Television (ZDF) . When it was broadcast on ZDF in March 2012, the film was the winner of the day in terms of audience ratings. In 2013 the fictional continuation of the family story was published as a novel under the title You may be wrong - Our life after the winding front at Langen Müller Verlag and was also filmed by Ziegler-Film under the title Survival on the Divorce Front. The broadcast in April 2015 was also a ratings hit for ZDF.

A certain reference to their own biography is also shown in the novel "Heavily Enlightened", which was published by Droemer Knaur in the summer of 2017 and describes the story of a Hamburg couple who, after a surprising visit by a Buddhist monk from Sri Lanka, embarked on the so-called path the wisdom is out. Versions for the cinema and the stage are in progress.

With his most recent work "Too Young for Old - From Departure to Freedom After Working Life" ( Edition Körber , September 2018) Bednarz returned to narrative non-fiction. In very personal conversations with leading German aging researchers and experts on demographic change , he describes the challenges, but also the opportunities that are associated with the end of professional life and the beginning of un-retirement and retirement .

As a lecturer , Bednarz deals in his seminars and lectures with the political upheavals in the Middle East and the challenges posed by the new media to classic journalism . As a traveling speaker, he also speaks on the topics of work-life balance , change , demographics and age .

Bednarz has been married to the lawyer Esther Göttling since 2002. The couple lives with three daughters in Hamburg- Rotherbaum .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://kress.de/news/detail/beitrag/135587-spiegel-redakteur-dieter-bednarz-ueber-interviews-mit-despoten-ein-journalist-scheut-den-schlagabtausch-nicht.html
  2. ↑ http://www.randomhouse.de/author/author.jsp?per=215718
personal data
SURNAME Bednarz, Dieter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist and non-fiction author
DATE OF BIRTH 3rd September 1956
PLACE OF BIRTH Bochum