Florian Klenk

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Florian Klenk (2016)

Florian Klenk (born June 23, 1973 in Vienna ) is an Austrian lawyer , investigative journalist and book author . Since the beginning of June 2012 he has been editor-in-chief of the Austrian weekly newspaper Falter .

Life

Klenk has a doctorate in law. He studied law at the University of Vienna and in the Netherlands and originally aspired to become a criminal defense lawyer . His dissertation “Freedom of the press and presumption of innocence” (2000) at the University of Vienna dealt with the legal problems of crime reporting with special attention to the European Convention on Human Rights and the Media Act .

During the study was Klenk at helping hands involved, one in the field of legal advice to Fremdenrecht active NGO . Many of the cases involved refugees from the former Yugoslavia during this period, the years of the Bosnian War . In addition, he also worked as a freelancer for the daily newspaper Kurier , where he was mainly concerned with court reports. The possibility of pointing out events and grievances in this way and being able to move more than in the role of legal advisor led him to switch entirely to journalism .

He became a freelancer and editor of the Viennese weekly newspaper Falter . From November 2005 he worked as an editor for Die Zeit in Hamburg and returned to Falter in May 2007 as head of politics and deputy editor-in-chief . At the Vienna University of Applied Sciences , he teaches research at the Institute for Journalism & Media Management . In the summer semester of 2010, Klenk held the Theodor Herzl lectureship for “Poetics of Journalism” at the University of Vienna .

Klenk is known as an investigative journalist , u. a. in relation to human rights violations, corruption , human trafficking or maladministration in the judicial and police apparatus. His research on Viennese traffickers formed the basis for Elfriede Jelinek's play "About Animals". Klenk's research into the case of the exiled Mauritanian Seibane Wague, who died in a police operation in Vienna in July 2003, and the asphyxiated deportation prisoner, Marcus Omofuma, attracted particular media attention . He also uncovered inhumane prison conditions in Austrian prisons, for example in Krems-Stein and in the Josefstadt prison. At the time he documented grievances and the involvement of German authorities in the prison camp at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base .

In 2005, several anti-racism initiatives and the magazine malmoe criticized Klenk for reporting on drug-related crime . They accused him of using stereotypes in his arguments that are also used by racists. Klenk and the editor-in-chief of the Falters rejected these allegations. The journal of the Minorities Initiative also defended the journalist against the nature of the attacks.

In autumn 2007 Klenk was involved in the uncovering of the abuse of office affairs in the Vienna police in connection with the Association of Friends of the Vienna Police . In August 2009, he published confidential files from the instructions department of the Federal Ministry of Justice , which suggested political interference in sensitive criminal proceedings against politicians, judges and police officers. The revelations sparked widespread debate about the Justice Minister's right to issue instructions. Shortly after the series of articles appeared, Klenk's weblog was temporarily blocked by the Ministry of Justice, so that the employees in the ministry no longer had access to it. Klenk accused the Ministry of censorship. The Justice Minister rejected the allegations and relied on an automatic filter that worked on the basis of key words.

In the donation and expense affair of the former Austrian Finance Minister Karl-Heinz Grasser , he repeatedly revealed various events and machinations. In December 2010, he published excerpts from leaked telephone monitoring logs of Grasser's conversations with several consultants and business partners. The cabaret artists Florian Scheuba , Robert Palfrader and Thomas Maurer staged a reading with the protocols under Klenk's direction in the Audimax of the University of Vienna, which Hans Rauscher described as the “new Austrian national epic”.

Florian Klenk (r.) With Armin Wolf at a presentation of Klenk's book "The end of the world used to be here" - reports (Vienna 2011)

Florian Klenk's first book, “The end of the world used to be here” , was published in March 2011 , with 16 reports, some of which had previously been published in Falter .

In 2016 he was involved in the evaluation of the Panama Papers for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) of the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) . At the beginning of 2017 he published a report on Dr. Erwin Pröll Privatstiftung , the disclosure led to a report by the Court of Auditors and then to the dissolution of the foundation. After journalist Anna Thalhammer ( Die Presse ) published revelations about sexual harassment by Peter Pilz in autumn 2017 , Klenk received information on other similar incidents via Twitter and confronted Pilz with them. The list leader of the Pilz list then resigned from his mandate or did not accept it. In November 2018, Klenk and the writer Doron Rabinovici at Zsolnay published the book “Everything can happen”, in which the speeches of European right-wing populists are documented. With the head of Statistics Austria, Konrad Pesendorfer , Klenk published the fact book “Numbers, please! Everything you need to know about Austria ”(Falter-Verlag).

Awards

Works

  • Dissertation: Freedom of the press and the presumption of innocence - legal problems of crime reporting with special consideration of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Media Act (2000) ( Online, PDF )
  • At the German Weltblatt . In: Reinhard Christl, Silke Rudorfer (Ed.): How do I become a journalist? Paths to the dream job . LIT , Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-7000-0687-9 , pp. 97 ff .
  • Florian Klenk: "It used to be the end of the world" - reports . Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Vienna 2011. ISBN 978-3-552-05528-5 .
  • Florian Klenk, Doron Rabinovici : "Anything can happen!": A political theater. 2018, ISBN 978-35520-5943-6
  • Florian Klenk, Konrad Pesendorfer : Numbers, please !: Everything you always wanted to know about Austria. 2018, ISBN 978-38543-9617-8

Web links

Commons : Florian Klenk  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ FHWien : Lecturer at the Institute for Journalism & Media Management ( Memento from March 17, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ no-racism.net : Racism in the Viennese city newspaper Falter , February 9, 2005
  3. ↑ malmoe: The Falter and the Fury , February 11, 2005
  4. ↑ In the Lost Paradise , Falter of January 19, 2005 ( Memento of April 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Hakan Gürses: "Affair Klenk" and anti-racism. (No longer available online.) In: sosmitmensch.at. 2005, archived from the original on September 29, 2007 ; accessed on January 8, 2019 .
  6. ↑ heise online : Austria's Ministry of Justice blocks the website of a critical journalist , August 18, 2009
  7. ↑ "I raised mitkassiert, right?" , Falter of 22 December 2010 ( Memento of 16 April 2012 at the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ orf.at - data leak reveals offshore secrets . Article dated April 3, 2016, accessed April 10, 2016.
  9. ^ A secret Pröll . Falter, issue 1–2, 2017
  10. ↑ Peter Pilz resigns. In: falter.at. November 4, 2017, accessed January 8, 2019 .
  11. ^ Austrian Journalists Club : Claus Gatterer Prize 2002 ( Memento from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  12. ↑ The 2002 Gatterer Prize winner is Florian Klenk vom Falter . APA bulletin dated May 4, 2002, accessed March 11, 2015.
  13. ↑ Bundespräsident.at: Presentation of the Kurt Vorhofer Prize to Florian Klenk (”Falter”) and the Robert Hochner Prize 2005 to Andreas Pfeifer (ORF Rome) . In: hofburg.at . Archived from the original on September 28, 2007. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved November 17, 2005. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hofburg.at
  14. ^ ORF : Florian Klenk is Journalist of the Year , December 19, 2005
  15. ↑ derStandard.at: "Falter" editor-in-chief Klenk is journalist of the year . Article dated December 16, 2016, accessed December 17, 2016.
  16. ↑ International journalist award "Writing for CEE" goes to Austrian Florian Klenk , November 18, 2009
  17. ↑ Walther Rode Prize 2014 . Retrieved April 9, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Klenk, Florian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian journalist
DATE OF BIRTH June 23, 1973
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna