Ignaz Lozo

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Ignaz Lozo (born January 1, 1963 in Stommeln ) is a German historian, journalist, book and film author. He is considered a leading expert on Mikhail Gorbachev and the fall of the Soviet Union .

Life

Lozo passed the Abitur at the old-language Friedrich-Wilhelm-Gymnasium in Cologne in 1982 . After studying Russian and English with a minor in law at the Department of Applied Linguistics in Germersheim (part of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz), he completed a two-year postgraduate course in journalism in Mainz, which he completed in 1990. After breaking new scientific ground in 1987 with his thesis on Mikhail Gorbachev's press policy under the sign of glasnost, Lozo received a scholarship from the Rhineland-Palatinate Ministry of Culture in 1988 for a study visit to the renowned Russian School of Middlebury College in the US state of Vermont.

In 1989 Lozo joined the ZDF as an editor during his postgraduate studies , worked in the main news department as an author a. a. for the Today Journal . In 1991 he reported on the coup against Gorbachev. This was followed by correspondent representations in the Moscow studio and numerous, sometimes life-threatening, war reporter missions in besieged Sarajevo. The weekly newspaper Die Zeit and the Süddeutsche Zeitung paid tribute to these missions. In 1995 Peter Sartorius wrote on page three of the SZ: “Ignaz Lozo from ZDF was shot at, a young colleague who is also a veteran of war reporting and has the advantage over the others, as a Slavist, to speak the Bosnian language ( ...) His car was not hit properly and remained on the track, albeit with tattered tires. (...) ”The writer Hans Christoph Buch stated in DIE ZEIT:“ ZDF correspondent Ignaz Lozo makes no big fuss about the incident: Judging by the suffering of the people in Sarajevo and other enclaves surrounded by Serbs, he is in a privileged position as a reporter (...) "

In 1997 Lozo went to Moscow as a correspondent for the station Pro Sieben as part of the so-called information offensive, and in 1998 moved there to the Deutsche Welle TV studio . In 2000 he returned to ZDF as a political correspondent in Munich, but also reported from Moscow on a representative basis. Since 2007 Lozo has been working at the broadcaster's Mainz headquarters as a writer of documentaries - with a focus on Russia. They are broadcast by ZDF-History , ZDFinfo , ZDFneo , 3sat and phoenix . In 2015 Lozo was the first western journalist who was allowed to film the state residence in Archys in the Caucasus with his team, where Mikhail Gorbatschow and Helmut Kohl negotiated the conditions for the Soviet approval of German unity at the so-called cardigan meeting in July 1990. In 2016 he was the first western journalist who was allowed to film the former Soviet state residence Viskuli (now in Belarus in a restricted military area) with his team, where the presidents of three Soviet republics (Russia, Belarus, Ukraine) conspiratorially on December 8, 1991 sealed the end of the Soviet Union and founded the Commonwealth of Independent States . The exclusive recordings of these two historical locations are included in Lozo's TV documentaries “Poker for German Unity” and “The Fall of the Soviet Union”, as well as in its respective short film versions for the ZDF-Heute Journal.

In 2013 the scientific journal Eastern Europe commissioned Lozo to review Gorbachev's book “Alles zu seine Zeit. Mein Leben ”, which became a bestseller in Germany. The German press agency dpa interviewed him as an expert on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Moscow August coup.

In 2013 he received his doctorate magna cum laude from the History Department of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz .

Lozo lives in Wiesbaden. He has a son.

Standard work on the coup against Gorbachev

In 2014 Lozo published the world's first academic monograph on the 1991 August coup in Moscow . He received a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for his research stay in the Russian capital . His book “The Putsch against Gorbachev and the End of the Soviet Union” was presented for the first time by Jörg Baberowski at the Leipzig Book Fair 2014 in the Forum of Contemporary History (“House of History”) . In the same year it was published as a translation in the state-independent science publisher ROSSPEN in Russia. It is considered a standard work and is based on a completely new source foundation. The Gorbachev Foundation in Moscow has put a chapter from the book on its website gorby.ru. Mikhail Gorbachev himself mentioned Lozo by name in the text of his 2017 book “Sobranie sotschinenij” (in German: “Collected Works”) and used almost a page from Lozo's Russian edition of the book on the 1991 August putsch as a quote. Gerd Ruge highlighted Lozo's work and acted as a moderator at its reading in Munich. Sven Felix Kellerhoff wrote in Die Welt : “The dramatic days of the coup in Moscow by the Eastern European historian and journalist Ignaz Lozo were shined like no one else.” The leading American specialist publication Slavic Review certifies Lozo as a fundamentally new contribution to the reconstruction of the August Putsches: "(...) No scholarly study has yet been published on the subject, although a considerable period of time has elapsed since then (...) Lozo's book has the value of uniqueness. Anyone who wishes to read a careful and scholarly account of the events of August 1991 would do well to consult it. "The German specialist journal Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas writes that" almost 25 years after the coup there is still no comprehensive scientific review. This deficiency is now being remedied by the television journalist and Eastern European historian Ignaz Lozo (...) He reconstructs the backgrounds and motives for the coup (...) into an overall picture that does away with the common myths and brings the state of research up to date. ”Further presentations took place in Lew Kopelew Forum in Cologne with Russia and Ukraine expert Gerhard Simon and in the Urania in Berlin. The highlight was the presentation of the Russian edition in the Central House of Journalists in Moscow on May 29, 2014 with the history professor Vladimir Buldakov from the Russian Academy of Sciences as moderator.

Filmography (selection)

  • A space shuttle on the move (2008, Phoenix)
  • Moscow, Myths, Fall of the Wall - How the Kremlin struggled with German unity (2009, ZDFinfo / Phoenix)
  • Myth Gorbachev - The sad hero of perestroika (2010, ZDFinfo / ZDFneo / Phoenix)
  • The Russian Germans - In Search of Home (2010, Phoenix)
  • End of a superpower - the coup against Gorbachev (2011, ZDF / 3sat)
  • CVs in Parliament - How colorful is the Bundestag? (2013, Phoenix)
  • Poker for German Unity - Has Russia Been Deceived on the NATO Question? (2015, ZDF / ZDFinfo / Phoenix)
  • Michail Gorbachev - world changer and private citizen (2016, ZDF)
  • The fall of the Soviet Union - From Gorbachev to Putin (2016, ZDF)
  • Myth KGB-RAF - Did Moscow support the Baader-Meinhof terror? (2017, Phoenix)

Discussion about NATO eastward expansion

On November 8, 2014, Lozo conducted a much-cited exclusive interview with Mikhail Gorbachev in Berlin on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the contentious question of whether the West had made promises to the Kremlin leadership during the turning point that NATO would not expand eastward after German reunification , Gorbachev made it unmistakably clear that there had been no such promises or promises. He was not betrayed by the West; the existence of promises that NATO will not be expanded is "a myth," said Gorbachev. Die Welt and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung quoted from the interview on November 10, 2014 on page 1. a. the dpa and the time.

Lozo's 2015 documentary "Poker for German Unity - Was Russia Deceived on the NATO Question?" Received an even greater media response and consistently positive reviews, for which he interviewed all relevant negotiators of the " two plus four treaty " , u. a. the then US Secretary of State James Baker or the then German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher . It was Genscher's last interview for a TV documentary before his death. The epd media certify that the documentary is "illuminating (...) at the intersection of closed contemporary history and unfortunately present-day conflicts that are not at all closed."

After an internal selection process, Lozos film was submitted by ZDF for the Grimme Prize 2016. The documentation meticulously proves that there were no promises not to expand the Western Defense Alliance to the east.

Lozo was defamed by the anonymously operated Wordpress blog Propagandaschau because of this film and later because of an article in the ZDF-Heute Journal. Neither he nor ZDF ever reacted to it.

Publications (selection)

  • Night job in the kiosk. ; In: The Journalist. Das deutsche Medienmagazin, No. 12, 1993, pp. 94-95.
  • Television in Russia. In: Yearbook of the Heinz Kühn Foundation (1993–1994). Düsseldorf, 1994.
  • Forty years later. Alvin Lee is doing a solo record again. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, November 7, 2007, p. 14.
  • The coup against Gorbachev. Background and decision-making processes. In: Osteuropa, Issue 11, 2011, pp. 77–96.
  • The coup against Gorbachev and the end of the Soviet Union. Böhlau, Cologne-Weimar-Vienna 2014.
  • Avgustovski putsch 1991 goda. Moscow, 2014.
  • Review of: Mikhail Gorbachev. Naedine's soboj. German: Everything in good time. My life. In: Osteuropa, Heft 5–6, 2013, pp. 377–378.
  • Review of: Oleg Baklanov. Cosmos - moja sud'ba. In: Osteuropa, Heft 5–6, 2014, pp. 342–343.
  • Review of: Julia Metger: Studio Moscow. West German correspondents in the Cold War. In: Sehepunkte. Review journal for historical studies.

Web links

  • Literature by and about Ignaz Lozo in the catalog of the German National Library
  • ZDF press portal: Poker for German unity [3]
  • ZDF press portal: ZDF History Michail Gorbatschow world changer and private citizen [4]
  • Phoenix press portal: Interview Lozo [5]
  • Phoenix press portal: Soviet Union [6]
  • Lozo's TV documentary End of a Superpower - The Putsch against Gorbachev (2011, ZDF / 3sat) [7]

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Colony of the Intrepid. Germans in Sarajevo: life behind sandbags and armor plates. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, June 22, 1995, p. 3.
  2. ↑ Hans-Christoph book: Normality and gun thunder . In: The time . No. 26/1995 ( online ).
  3. ↑ Christian Bartels: Melange of Genres. "Poker for German Unity - Was Russia Deceived on the NATO Question?" (Review). In: epd medien, No. 30 of July 24, 2015, p. 22.
  4. ^ ZDF history film The Fall of the Soviet Union: https://www.zdf.de/dokumentation/zdf-history/der-untergang-der-sowjetunion-100.html
  5. ↑ Review by Ignaz Lozo on: Michail Gorbatschow. Naedine's soboj. German All in good time. My life . In: Osteuropa, Heft 5–6, 2013, pp. 377–378.
  6. ^ Film contribution with Gorbachev statements in the ZDF-Heute Journal from November 8, 2014
  7. ↑ dpa, November 8, 2014
  8. ↑ Lozo, Ignaz: The coup against Gorbachev and the end of the Soviet Union . 1st edition, new edition Böhlau Cologne, Cologne 2014, ISBN 978-3-412-22230-7 .
  9. ↑ http://www.boehlau-verlag.com/download/161460/978-3-205-78283-4_Böhlau%20in%20Leipzig.pdf
  10. ↑ Kamkin, Aleksandr K., Камкин, Александр К.,: Avgustovskiĭ putch 1991 goda: kak ėto bylo . Moskva 2014, ISBN 978-5-8243-1862-3 .
  11. ↑ http://www.gorby.ru/presscenter/news/show_29417/
  12. ↑ Loginov, VT, Puchkova, LN, Koroleva, NF, Логинов, В. Т., Пучкова, Л. Н.,: Sobranie sochineniĭ . Изд-во Весь мир, Moskva 2017, ISBN 978-5-7777-0679-9 .
  13. ↑ http://www.kulturportal-russland.de/veranstaltung.32170.der-putsch-gegen-gorbatschow.perm
  14. ↑ Sven Felix Kellerhof: Even a coup couldn't save the Soviet Union. In: Die Welt, August 19, 2016, p. 7.
  15. ↑ https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/slavic-review/article/div-classtitleder-putsch-gegen-gorbatschow-und-das-ende-der-sowjetunion-by-lozo-ignaz-cologne-bohlau -verlag-2014501-pp-appendix-notes-bibliography-index-photographs-3990-hard-bounddiv / 39E682C14CE3CE94F07ECF780A525D3D
  16. ^ Yearbooks for the History of Eastern Europe 64 (2016), no. 2, pp. 346–348.
  17. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from October 12, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.domjour.ru
  18. ^ Die Zeit, November 13, 2014, p. 2.
  19. ↑ Jens Peter Dohmes: Documentation worth seeing on the historical cardigan meeting in the Caucasus. In: Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung, July 14, 2015, p. 25; Jürgen Overkott: Kohl, Gorbatschow and NATO's eastward expansion. Phoenix documentary "Poker for German Unity" comes up with new insights. In: Neue Ruhrzeitung, July 14, 2015, p. NTV1
  20. ↑ [1]
  21. ↑ Lozo, Ignaz: The coup against Gorbachev and the end of the Soviet Union . 1st edition, new edition Böhlau Cologne, Cologne 2014, ISBN 978-3-412-22230-7 .
  22. ↑ Kamkin, Aleksandr K., Камкин, Александр К.,: Avgustovskiĭ putch 1991 goda: kak ėto bylo . Moskva 2014, ISBN 978-5-8243-1862-3 .
  23. ↑ [2]
personal data
SURNAME Lozo, Ignaz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian, journalist, book and film author
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1963
PLACE OF BIRTH Stommeln , Germany