Helmut Reitze

Helmut Reitze, 2011

Helmut Reitze (born June 11, 1952 in Gudensberg ) is a German journalist . From January 2003 to February 2016 he was director of the Hessischer Rundfunk in Frankfurt am Main .

Life

After graduating from high school in Kassel in 1971 , Reitze volunteered at the HNA ( Hessische / Niedersächsische Allgemeine ) and worked there as an editor until 1974 . He studied economics at the Philipps University of Marburg , graduated in 1978 and received his doctorate in political science (Dr. rer. Pol.) In 1980 . During the years of his academic training he continued to work as a journalist. a. as a reporter for the Hessischer Rundfunk.

Reitze started in 1981 as an editor and presenter in the business department of the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation , including for the broadcasts ARD-Ratgeber: Geld und Plusminus . In 1985 he changed to the ZDF in heute-journal as editor and presenter . From 1987 to 1990 he reported as a correspondent in Washington for ZDF.

In 1990 Reitze left ZDF and became managing director of AVE Gesellschaft für Fernsehproduktion in Munich, a private television production company that produces the programs Talk im Turm and Telebörse , among others, for Sat.1 .

From 1992 to 1993 Reitze reported again as a foreign correspondent for ZDF, this time from Brussels on NATO and the EU. In 1995 he switched back to ARD: As the second editor-in-chief of ARD-Aktuell in Hamburg , he produced Tagesschau and Tagesthemen for Erste. In the same year Reitze accepted an offer from Mainz and became deputy editor-in-chief of ZDF as well as head of the ZDF main editorial office “Social and Educational Policy”; from 1997 he headed the main editorial "News", in addition to all today broadcasts from noon magazine about Germany hello and people today are produced by Night Magazine all message formats ZDF. From 1997 Reitze also moderated the heute-journal and became known to a wide audience as the “man with the fly”, who stubbornly inquired.

Reitze is married and has one son.

Directorship

At ZDF, Reitze ran in December 2001 as the successor to Dieter Stolte for election as director. In the first and second ballots he achieved a majority of 42 to 35 votes against Dagmar Reim , but still missed the necessary three-fifths majority. After a lengthy process, Markus Schächter was elected as the new ZDF director in March 2002.

At Hessischer Rundfunk, Reitze took up the position of general manager in October 2002 as successor to Klaus Berg . He was elected in the first ballot against Heinz-Dieter Sommer with a narrow majority of 15 to 14 votes. On January 13, 2003, Reitze took over his position as director of the Hessischer Rundfunk in Frankfurt am Main.

At the beginning of 2005, Reitze hired Alois Theisen (formerly ZDF studio manager in Stuttgart) as the new television editor-in-chief. In addition to extensive organizational changes in almost all areas of the station, Reitze took an austerity course. With three consolidation plans, the station should save more than 140 million euros by 2009. In the first years of his tenure, regional reporting was expanded, including a. through a larger network of correspondents in Hessen.

On February 2, 2007, the Broadcasting Council of the Hessian Broadcasting Corporation elected Reitze to head the station for another seven years. In the first ballot, Reitze received 23 votes in favor, two votes against and one abstention. His second term began on January 13, 2008.

After critical reporting by the NDR media magazine Zapp about Reitze and the surreptitious advertising affair involving former sports director Jürgen Emig , the Hessian Broadcasting Corporation refused "in individual cases" to provide the NDR editorial staff with images.

In 2013 Reitze was re-elected as Artistic Director for the period from 2015 to 2020. Of the 29 committee members present, Reitze received 28 yes-votes and 1 no-vote in the first ballot. His third term of office begins on January 14th, 2015. The re-election of the conservative Reitze had already been brought forward two years before the end of his previous term of office because the SPD and Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen appeared to be able to win the state elections in Hesse in autumn 2013 . The Broadcasting Council justified the election by saying that they wanted to "keep the personnel out of the Hessian state election campaign".

In November 2015, Reitze announced that he would be resigning from his post as director early in 2016 for health reasons. After the hr- Rundfunkrat appointed Manfred Krupp as his successor on February 5, 2016 , he resigned from his office as director on March 1, 2016.

Others

In three small supporting roles Reitze appeared as an actor: In 2006 he was seen in the ARD television film Das unreine Mal as a campaigning local politician, in the same year in the ARD Christmas comedy Bettis Bescherung he played himself as director of HR. In 2019, Das Monster von Kassel will appear in the role of a journalist in the Frankfurt crime scene .

Reitze hit the headlines of the local press in Gießen in 2003 when, as part of a history walk through Gießen , a board with the slogan "Agitate, organize, study" was to be put up at Wilhelm Liebknecht's birthplace , where the HR tenant is. Helmut Reitze prevented this on the grounds that a public broadcaster like HR should not be associated with agitation . Finally, the responsible working group of the city of Gießen unanimously accepted Reitze's compromise proposal to put the Liebknecht quote “ Knowledge is power - power is knowledge ” on the memorial plaque . On August 26, 2018 Reitze was elected to the Board of Trustees of the Point Alpha Foundation .

Offices and memberships

Offices

• Chairman of the ARD media commission
• Chairman of the Advisory Board of the ARD / ZDF Media Academy
• Chairman of the Board of Directors of the German Broadcasting Archive (DRA)
• Chief Executive Officer of hr-Werbung GmbH
• Chairman of the Supervisory Board of TaunusFilm GmbH (until the end of 2012)
• Chairman of the supervisory board of hr-Senderservice GmbH
• HR-Media supervisory board
• Board member of the Working Group on TV Research (AGF)
• Responsible editor of the magazine Media Perspektiven

Memberships

• Member of the Board of Trustees of the Hertie Foundation
• Advisory board of the Vodafone Foundation Germany gGmbH
• Member of the administrative committee of the Free German Hochstift
• Member of the Board of Trustees of the Johanna Quandt Foundation
• Member of the University Council of Kassel University (March 2004 to August 2008)

Book publications

• Currency surcharges in maritime shipping and their effects on the export economy , Werner Brandeis-Verlag, 1981.
• Tagesschau 1994, The events of the year , Eds. Ulrich Deppendorf and Helmut Reitze, Gruner + Jahr, 1994.
• Who will be Chancellor in Germany? , from: “With mouse and keyboard. How the Internet changes politics ”, Eds. Klemens Joos, Alexander Bilgeri, Dorothea Lamatsch, Olzog Verlag, 2001.
• with Wolf von Lojewski and Marietta Slomka (eds.): Die Flut . Ullstein, Munich 2002.
• My favorite place - The Altmarkt , from: "Leben in Kassel", Euregioverlag, 2003.

Web links

• Biography of the artistic director on the Hessischer Rundfunk website
• Christoph Hickmann: Hessischer Rundfunk - Roland Koch's playground. In: sueddeutsche.de. May 17, 2010, accessed December 16, 2014 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Medienmagazin: Hessischer Rundfunk punishes "Zapp" after a critical report. In: Spiegel Online . May 9, 2009, accessed December 16, 2014 . 
2. ↑ Re-election of Helmut Reitze: HR director confirmed in office. In: Spiegel Online . January 25, 2013, accessed December 16, 2014 . 
3. ↑ HR director Helmut Reitze announces resignation. In: hr-online.de. November 13, 2015, accessed November 24, 2015 . 
4. ↑ Manfred Krupp elected as the new HR director. In: hessenschau.de. February 5, 2016, accessed November 4, 2016 . 
5. ↑ hessenschau.de, Frankfurt, Germany: Manfred Krupp: From trainee to HR director | hessenschau.de | Society. (No longer available online.) In: hessenschau.de. Archived from the original on March 5, 2016 ; accessed on March 4, 2016 . 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.  
6. ^ Tatort: ​​Das Monster von Kassel at programm.ARD.de , accessed on May 7, 2019.
7. ↑ Thorsten Winter: For Reitze, agitation and HR do not belong together. In: FAZ.net . February 2, 2004, accessed December 16, 2014 . 
8. ↑ Ten years of Point Alpha: countries are committed to the foundation . In: Thuringian General . ( thueringer-allgemeine.de [accessed on August 27, 2018]).
9. ↑ www.vodafone-stiftung.de  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.