Heinz Klaus Mertes

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Heinz Klaus Mertes (born October 21, 1942 in Prüm ) is a German journalist , television presenter and producer .

Life

Mertes graduated from the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Gymnasium in Trier in 1962 and studied political science , ancient history and economic history at the University of Saarland and the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelm University in Bonn . He has been a member of the Catholic student association KDSt.V. since 1963 . Carolus Magnus Saarbrücken and the KDSt.V. Trifels Munich in the CV . From 1966 to 1969 he was secretary of the Cartell Association of German Catholic Student Associations (CV) .

After working for Bavarian Reinsurance , he worked for Industriemagazin in 1972 and, from 1973, for manager magazin . Mertes television career began in 1977 at the Bayerischer Rundfunk , where from 1986 he headed the newsroom and in 1988 for the first program of the ARD , the political magazine Report München moderated. As a long-standing CSU member, Mertes already represented fundamentally conservative positions at that time.

When the Bavarian JU chairman Gerd Müller demanded the death penalty for drug traffickers in 1989 , Mertes made sure that this was euphemistically presented in the BR news as a “demand for harsher punishments”, which led to allegations of party-politically motivated news suppression.

In 1986 he wrote the book Ali , in which he attacked Günter Wallraff's methods in his book Entire Below . Wallraff remained an intimate enemy of Mertes and a favorite target for his criticism. In the early 1990s, when rumors arose about Wallraff's involvement with the Stasi, Mertes made a comment in Tagesthemen, in which he presented these rumors as proven and attacked Wallraff in a way that was harsh for public television.

After contacts of the then Prime Minister of the State of Brandenburg, Manfred Stolpe , with the Ministry for State Security became known , Mertes suggested that he resign. In the BR Broadcasting Council , Mertes was accused of being “submissive”, “submissive”, “kneeling” towards the CSU. As a result, Mertes switched to the private broadcaster Sat.1 in 1993 as information director , whereupon he was accused of trimming the broadcaster for the super election year 1994 on a total Kohl course. In 1994 he was criticized for being “too friendly” interviews with the then Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl in the series On the subject, Chancellor and ridiculed for being a “federal microphone holder”. In 1996 he gave up the post at SAT.1 because, in Mertes' opinion, its then new managing director Fred Kogel focused too much on entertainment and too little on information.

From the end of 1996 Mertes moderated briefly the political talk Im Kreuzfeuer on RTL together with Peter Glotz . In 1998 Mertes received the Konrad Adenauer Prize from the Germany Foundation , of which he was also a member of the board for a time. From 1996 to 2004 he was managing director and liquidator of Ratgeber Television GmbH in Munich. He then moderated until the end of broadcasting in 2009 on television from Berlin . From May 2012 to April 2016 Mertes was editor-in-chief of the insurance industry magazine .

Today Mertes produces and moderates for his two Munich companies M'Com TV Programmproduktion Heinz Klaus Mertes GmbH and FORTE-Television Fernseh- und Filmproduktion GmbH in particular business productions, including a. Sparkassen-TV as a program for German savings banks . In addition, he is active as a journalist as a guest author, u. a. as a columnist for the business blog Filetspitzen .

Others

In an interview in 1992, Ulrich Wickert , the presenter of the daily themes , unintentionally announced the not very tall Heinz Klaus Mertes as Klein's House Mertes . This slip of the tongue happened to him even later - unclear whether it was intentional or unintentional. Mertes kept this nickname in the media for many years.

Works

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ticket to the top , Der Spiegel, June 19, 1989, p. 61
  2. ↑ In the eyes . In: Der Spiegel . No. 7 , 1992, pp. 83-84 ( online - 10 September 1992 ).
  3. ↑ Interview with HK Mertes . In: Stern.de, accessed on April 15, 2015.
  4. ↑ In the shadow of the giant . In: Der Spiegel . No. 33 , 1993, pp. 40 ff . ( Online - Aug. 16, 1993 ).
  5. ^ Filetspitzen.de: Contributions by Heinz Klaus Mertes .
personal data
SURNAME Mertes, Heinz Klaus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist, television presenter and producer
DATE OF BIRTH October 21, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Prüm