Hanns Joachim Friedrichs

Hanns Joachim "Hajo" Friedrichs (born March 15, 1927 in Hamm , † March 28, 1995 in Hamburg ) was a German journalist . He was most recently the presenter of the news program Tagesthemen .

Life

As a sextan, Friedrichs first attended the humanistic grammar school Hammonense in the Westphalian town of Hamm and moved - after his father was dismissed as mayor of the former Pelkum office by the National Socialists - first to Hamm, then to Herford ; There he passed his Abitur a year after the Second World War , after his high school diploma at the Hennebergisches Gymnasium in Schleusingen, Thuringia, had not been recognized. Before the end of the war he was still an air force helper , labor officer and soldier; at the end of the war he was briefly taken prisoner. He later completed a traineeship at the Telegraf newspaper in Berlin . He came to London in the spring of 1949 through an advanced training course on parliamentary democracy , where he wrote his first text for the BBC . In the fall of 1950 the BBC contacted him to hire him for three years as a news editor for the BBC's German service .

Friedrichs was first seen on German screens in 1954 during a broadcast on the 80th birthday of Winston Churchill . In 1955 he started working as a correspondent and reporter for Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne . He also moderated the regional magazine Here and Today . After he was hired by ZDF in 1964 , he hosted the news program Today from 1969 and was head of sports at ZDF from 1973. In 1985 Friedrichs switched from ZDF to ARD . He was hired as a moderator for the news magazine Tagesthemen , which he moderated alternately with Ulrike Wolf and later with Sabine Christiansen . Ulrich Wickert became his successor on July 1, 1991 .

In 1988 Friedrichs spoke the prologue to the song Gehet zu und Vermehret dich by Udo Jürgens , who, in view of the increase in the world population, took a critical look at the sexual morality of the Catholic Church . He was heard in 1988 in the studio version of Udo Jürgens ' Das Blaue Album , and in 1990 on the live albums Live - ohne Maske and 1992 Open Air Symphony , in which Friedrichs' prologue was recorded from the tape , while Jürgens and the orchestra performed live played.

Grave of Hanns Joachim Friedrichs

On the evening of October 9, 1989, he announced in the Tagesthemen the picture report of the "March of the 70,000" demonstrators on the Leipzig inner city ring, secretly created by the tower of the Reformed Church , with the words "How an 'Italian film team' played us ...".

On November 9, 1989, he began the day's topics as follows: "Care is required when dealing with superlatives, they wear out easily. But today you can take a risk: This November 9 is a historic day. The GDR has announced that its The borders are now open to everyone, the gates in the wall are wide open. " At 10:42 p.m. when the broadcast began, this message was not yet applicable. In the subsequent interchange with Robin Lautenbach , who was standing at the Invalidenstrasse border crossing, nothing of this could be seen. It was only after Friedrich made this statement that many people streamed to the border crossings on both sides of the border and the Berlin Wall was brought down.

Hanns Joachim Friedrichs succumbed to lung cancer on the morning of March 28, 1995 at around 1 a.m. , which he learned about on December 27, 1994. He was buried in the Nienstedten cemetery in Hamburg. The news magazine Der Spiegel had one last conversation with him in 1995 and turned it into a cover story, one day after the publication of the corresponding issue of the Spiegel , Friedrichs died.

In the same year, the Hanns-Joachim-Friedrichs Prize for journalistic work was awarded for the first time . The motto under which the prize has been awarded annually since then goes back to a famous sentence by Friedrichs: “You can recognize a good journalist by the fact that he does not have anything in common with a cause, not even with a good cause; that he's there everywhere, but doesn't belong anywhere. ”Friedrichs is often quoted as such. Later, a Spiegel interview that appeared shortly before his death was often seen as the origin of the quote:

“That's what I learned in my five years at the BBC in London: keep your distance, don't make things in common with something, not even with a good one, don't sink into public concern, stay cool when dealing with disasters without being cold . This is the only way you can make the audience trust you, make you a family member, tune in every evening and listen to you. "

- Hanns Joachim Friedrichs : Interview with the mirror

In fact, the quote can already be found as a blurb on the back of Friedrichs biography "Journalistenleben" from 1994. However, the book shows that the quote essentially goes back to Charles Wheeler , a mentor of Friedrichs at the British BBC.

Awards

• 1975: Honorable recognition as part of the Adolf Grimme Prize for directing Sport-Spiegel
• 1985: Golden gong for pictures from America , together with Dieter Kronzucker
• 1990: Special honor at the Adolf Grimme Prize

Works

• Hanns Joachim Friedrichs (Hrsg.): Illustrated German history. About becoming a nation. Naumann and Göbel, Cologne 1991, ISBN 3-625-10428-8 .
• Hanns Joachim Friedrichs (with Harald Wieser ): Journalist life. Knaur Taschenbuch, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-426-75094-5 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Hanns Joachim Friedrichs in the catalog of the German National Library
• Website of the Hanns Joachim Friedrichs Prize with biographical information
• Hanns Joachim Friedrichs , Internationales Biographisches Archiv 22/1995 from May 22, 1995, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hanns Joachim Friedrichs: Journalist Life. P. 11 and 35.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} “Stay cool, not cold.” TV presenter Hanns Joachim Friedrichs on his life as a journalist. In: Der Spiegel No. 13/1995 of March 27, 1995.
3. ^ Hanns Joachim Friedrichs: Journalist Life. P. 23.
4. ^ Ex-civil rights activist Freya Klier during her speech in the Saxon state parliament on the Day of German Unity on October 3, 2014; Source: MDR television .
5. ↑ # throwback89 Tagesthemen with Hanns-Joachim Friedrichs. Retrieved November 10, 2019 . 
6. ↑ Michael Meyer: The unplanned fall of the wall. In: Deutschlandfunk. November 7, 2019, accessed November 8, 2019 . 
7. ↑ Hans-Hermann Hertle : Chronicle of the fall of the wall: the dramatic events around November 9, 1989 . 11th edition. Ch. Links Verlag, ISBN 978-3-86153-541-6 , p. 286–288 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
8. ↑ Eleni Klotsikas: Catalysts of the Wall Opening . The role of the media on November 9, 1989. In: Deutschlandfunk. November 7, 2009, accessed November 8, 2019 . 
9. ↑ Armin Wolf : What can a journalist "have in common with"? Addendum dated December 9th. In: www.arminwolf.at. December 9, 2018, accessed on January 20, 2019 (text photos).