Jochen Piest

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Joachim Piest (born February 8, 1964 in Bad Honnef , † January 10, 1995 in Tscherwljonnaja , Chechnya ) was a German journalist and correspondent for Stern magazine . He was shot in the First Chechen War .

Life

Piest grew up in Bad Honnef and Bonn , where he graduated from high school in 1983. After his alternative service , he studied history , Slavic studies and economics at the Free University of Berlin . He finished his studies with a master's degree .

In 1992 he passed the entrance examination to the Henri Nannen School under Wolf Schneider in Hamburg . As part of his training, he also completed a three-month internship in the Moscow office of the Süddeutsche Zeitung . After completing his training, he received a contract as the star's second Moscow correspondent and in 1994 moved to the Russian capital.

death

After the star was depicted , Piest drove to the border between Chechnya and Dagestan together with two Russian photographers . They were initially able to ride on a bus that organized Russian soldiers' mothers had rented to get to the embattled city of Grozny to see Chechen President Jokhar Dudayev . The women wanted to ask him for the release of Russian conscripts prisoners of war. On the way, the reporters had the opportunity to meet Salman Raduyev , Dudayev's son-in-law. The following day, Piest interviewed a group of Russian soldiers who were defusing mines in front of a railway bridge near the village of Chervlyonnaja around 25 kilometers northeast of Grozny. According to the report, a Chechen fighter had seized a locomotive, drove towards the group and fired several bursts in the immediate vicinity. Piest was fatally hit and one of the photographers was shot in the leg.

Stern editor-in-chief Werner Funk wrote in an editorial that Piest had felt sympathy for the Chechens because of the "brutality of the Soldateska Yeltsins " and called the "merciless use of rockets and cluster bombs, grenades and fighter planes".

The Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin , his predecessor Yegor Gaidar and the press spokesman for President Yeltsin sent letters of condolence, which the star printed.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Die Rechtschreiber , tagesspiegel.de , April 2, 2004
  2. ^ Victims of the fratricidal war in the Caucasus, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung , January 12, 1995, p. 6.
  3. ^ Matthias Schepp, Death of a Reporter, in: Der Stern , January 19, 1995, pp. 14-17.
  4. ↑ Werner Funk, May we look away ?, in: Der Stern , January 19, 1995, p. 1.
  5. ↑ Mourning for Jochen Piest, in: Der Stern , January 26, 1995, p. 9.
personal data
SURNAME Piest, Jochen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Piest, Joachim
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist
DATE OF BIRTH February 8, 1964
PLACE OF BIRTH Bad Honnef
DATE OF DEATH January 10, 1995
Place of death Chervlyonnaya , Chechnya