Karin Leukefeld

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Karin Leukefeld (2015)

Karin Leukefeld (* 1954 in Stuttgart ) is a German journalist and the Middle East - correspondent .

Life

Leukefeld was born in 1954. She has (according to her website) trained as a bookseller , as well as "studies" in ethnology , Islamic and political science . She has worked in organizational and public relations work at the Federal Association of Citizens' Initiatives Environmental Protection , in the federal party The Greens , and at an information center in El Salvador . She was also a personal assistant to a member of the Bundestag for the PDS (foreign policy and humanitarian aid).

Journalistic activities and contributions

Leukefeld has been a freelance correspondent in the Middle East since 2000 .

In 2010 she was accredited by the Syrian government , repeatedly traveled to Syria and reported on the Syria conflict on the spot . According to Tagesspiegel (as of 2012), the Syrian government does not allow any other German journalist to do so much .

Contributions by Leukefeld are currently (as of 2020) mainly in the supraregional Marxist-socialist newspapers Neues Deutschland (since 1997) and Junge Welt (since 2001), and also on the video portal Weltnetz.tv (since 2011), the Internet portal financed by the Russian government RT Deutsch (since 2015), the magazine Zeit -fragen (since 2015), as well as the online magazines Rubikon (since 2017) and NachDenkSeiten (since 2017).

She published isolated radio, video or text contributions in the Swiss weekly newspaper (2005 to 2011) on Swiss radio and television (2012 to 2017) and on Deutschlandfunk (2007 to 2011). In addition, individual contributions or interviews can be found in Bayerischer Rundfunk (2013) and N-tv (2016).

Alongside Daniele Ganser and Rainer Mausfeld , Leukefeld is a member of the Rubikon Advisory Board .

Leukefeld gave several interviews to Ken Jebsen . On the occasion of the controversial awarding of the Cologne Karls Prize to Ken Jebsen , she congratulated him on NRhZ-Online .

Book publications

While There's Still a Way (1996)

Gerald Grüneklee ( taz ) regards Leukefeld's first book as a well-founded analysis. In this “most comprehensive overview to date, Leukefeld describes the everyday life of the Kurds in Syria and Iran, Turkey and Iraq.” He describes the historical reviews as “illuminating to understand the current situation”. It becomes clear "once again that without German weapons and money at least the Kurdish persecution in Turkey could not take place on the scale practiced so far". The book offers a “well-founded examination of the political perspectives of the region”, which is understandable even for readers without relevant prior information.

Say Goodbye and Get Strong (2004)

The book is about the German Helma Al Saadi, whose husband Amer Al Saadi negotiated with the Swedish disarmament expert Hans Blix as Saddam Hussein's disarmament officer . In the opinion of the Zeit reviewer, the biography offers astonishing insights into Iraqi society. The observations on the changed everyday life of Iraqi women, in which Islamists are increasingly putting more shackles on them in public life, says Hans-Christian Rößler in the FAZ, are also worth reading. The eventful history and present of Iraq - revolution, upswing, dictatorship, war and occupation - are brought closer to the fate of a woman, even to those who are not politically in need. Leukefeld succeeded in giving Iraq a face beyond Saddam Hussein.

Conflagration (2015)

In her publication, Leukefeld shows understanding for Assad's approach and external accusations of oppositional forces such as international actors, according to Nathalie Wohlleben's review in the Political Science Portal . The importance of the terrorist organization IS is not recorded, insofar as the author thinks that IS “with the support of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other Gulf states with its' advance did the core work [what is probably meant is' hard work ', note in the review ] for this division of Syria and Iraq 'done' and only the threat to the oil wells is the motive for the intervention of the West against IS. The reviewer regards this as symptomatic for the author to “merge facts and politically bound speculations with one another until the individual parts are unrecognizable”. Furthermore Wohlleben criticizes the “very left enemy image” of the “USA as an evil hegemonic power” and the “anti-Israel direction”. Leukefeld does not make their research transparent, footnotes and bibliography are missing. A serious overview is not offered.

In contrast, Wolfgang Freund from the SZ considers Leukefeld's book in a collective review on Leukefeld, Jürgen Todenhöfer and Daniel Gerlach a "successful report book". Above all, it makes the "underexposed" role of France in the Middle Eastern "political and revolutionary theater" clear, in which the French-Syro-Alawite "Techtelmechtel developed along a common thread" that led to July 14, 2007.

Syria between shadow and light (2016)

In an interview with Ernst Rommey on Deutschlandradio Kultur, Leukefeld sees Bashar al-Assad as a “driven man, if not a victim of foreign countries and geopolitics.” Like his father, he has a double face, progress-oriented and autocratic. She accuses the opposition groups of not having accepted Assad's offers.

Media reception and response

Helmut Höge commented in the TAZ in 2011 : “Leukefeld manages to make innumerable excuses for the regime, why despite promises of democracy after Bashar al Assad came to power there was nothing but oppression and exploitation. [...] Karin Leukefeld is a supporter of a bloody regime that tramples human dignity. "

Matthias Meisner wrote in Tagesspiegel in 2012 , “Karin Leukefeld tries to keep a certain distance from Assad in her texts. But the Syrian head of state never appears as a dictator who brutally suppresses the opposition in the country. For them he is more of a "tragic" figure who failed because of his own reform projects. "Meisner reports that Detlef Pries ( Neues Deutschland , ND) and Arnold Schölzel ( Junge Welt ) defended Leukefeld. The ND editorial team is happy to accept Leukefeld's offers "so that they don't have to rely solely on reporting from agencies that themselves have no direct insight into what is happening". Arnold Schölzel ( Junge Welt ) thinks Leukefeld is an "experienced journalist", the reporting of the news agencies from Syria is unsatisfactory in comparison to their reports, they can report from Syria with little freedom.

She is "one of the most prominent Middle East experts" for the state-run Russian foreign program RT Deutsch . Leukefeld is an exception among German journalists, as she repeatedly travels to the war zones in the Middle East and reports on the war in Syria as a freelance correspondent.

In 2018, the editorial team of Linksnet commented that Leukefeld had " glorified the orgy of violence in Aleppo as a" fiery offensive by the Syrian armed forces and their allies (Russia, Iran, Hezbollah), "which led to the" liberation of the city "." "Not a coincidence it also, “when the right-wing extremist publisher Antaios of the well-known New Right Götz Kubitschek sells Leukefeld's books on Syria. Here we come full circle to the AfD : there is agreement on anti-western resentment, pro-Russian and pro-Iranian attitudes and the trivialization of the authoritarian leader Assad. "

Publications

Filmography (selection)

  • 2016: What's Left of Wars

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Short biography | Life in the background of the headlines. In: leukefeld.net. Retrieved August 11, 2016 .
  2. ^ A b Matthias Meisner : With Assad's toleration - “I can largely report freely”. In: Der Tagesspiegel. February 21, 2012, accessed November 12, 2016 .
  3. ^ Search: Karin Leukefeld . In: New Germany . Retrieved August 27, 2020.
  4. ^ Search: Karin Leukefeld . In: Junge Welt . Retrieved August 27, 2020.
  5. ↑ Karin Leukefeld . In: Weltnetz.tv . Retrieved August 27, 2020.
  6. ↑ Karin Leukefeld. Guest author and correspondent in Syria and the Middle East . In: RT German . Retrieved August 27, 2020.
  7. ^ Search: Karin Leukefeld . In: Time questions . Retrieved August 27, 2020.
  8. ↑ Karin Leukefeld . In: Rubicon . Retrieved August 27, 2020.
  9. ↑ Karin Leukefeld . In: NachDenkSeiten . Retrieved August 27, 2020.
  10. ↑ Karin Leukefeld . In: The weekly newspaper . Retrieved August 27, 2020.
  11. ^ Search: Karin Leukefeld . In: SRF . Retrieved August 27, 2020.
  12. ^ Search: Karin Leukefeld . In: Deutschlandfunk . Retrieved August 27, 2020.
  13. ^ Search: Karin Leukefeld . In: Bayerischer Rundfunk . Retrieved August 27, 2020.
  14. ^ Search: Karin Leukefeld . In: N-Tv . Retrieved August 27, 2020.
  15. ↑ Advisory Board . In: Rubicon . Retrieved August 27, 2020.
  16. ^ Search: Karin Leukefeld . In: KenFM . Retrieved August 27, 2020.
  17. ↑ Karin Leukefeld: I congratulate you . In: NRhZ-Online . December 8, 2017.
  18. ↑ Gerald Grüneklee: Kurds: Well-founded analysis . In: The daily newspaper .
  19. ↑ Say goodbye and become strong. Helma Al Saadi . In: The time . September 29, 2004.
  20. ↑ approximations . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . November 25, 2004.
  21. ↑ Life between Hamburg and Baghdad . In: AG Peace Research . November 9, 2004.
  22. ↑ Nathalie Wohlleben: Portal for political science - wildfire. Retrieved April 8, 2017 (German).
  23. ↑ Wolfgang Freund: Chaos in the Orient . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . June 1, 2015.
  24. ↑ in conversation with Ernst Rommeney: Karin Leukefeld: "Syria between shadow and light" - Broken dream of an Arab republic . In: Deutschlandradio Kultur . July 9, 2016.
  25. ↑ In the struggle for the truth . In: The daily newspaper . August 26, 2011. Accessed August 28, 2020.
  26. ↑ Why is the Middle East Burning? Karin Leukefeld in the RT German conversation . In: RT German . October 21, 2016.
  27. ↑ In the struggle for the truth . In: Linksnet . May / June 2018. Accessed August 28, 2020.
personal data
SURNAME Leukefeld, Karin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist
DATE OF BIRTH 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart