Klaus W. Bender

Klaus W. Bender (born December 15, 1938 in Darmstadt ) is a German journalist and book author .

Life

He studied economics and social sciences in Munich and later in Cologne , graduating in 1964 with a degree in business administration. Immediately afterwards, he joined the research institute of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation . In 1966 she sent him to her new regional office in Japan .

In 1970 Bender dared to make the long-planned jump into journalism there . He now reported from Tokyo on Japanese economic issues, first as a freelance journalist for a number of German and Swiss regional newspapers, then as a "permanent client" for Handelsblatt and Der Spiegel . 1972 Bender joined the editorial team of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). From Tokyo he now reported exclusively for the FAZ from the Asian region on politics, economy and culture. Research trips took him to all countries in Southeast and East Asia, with the exception of Indochina. The highlights were trips to China , North Korea and the east of the Soviet Union .

After 14 years in Japan, Bender was transferred to Europe in 1980 and now reported from Rome for the FAZ on the economy of Italy and selected countries in the Mediterranean region. After 12 years in Italy, the fall of the Berlin Wall brought Bender to Austria at the beginning of 1992, where he worked from Vienna as the FAZ business correspondent for Eastern and Southeastern Europe.

In the summer of 2000, Bender left active journalism prematurely to write a non-fiction book about the international high-security printing industry - it produces banknotes, passports, credit cards, etc. - but remained associated with his newspaper as an author on special topics. With a view to the upcoming European common currency, the euro, he had already started collecting material on this topic in 1996, parallel to his correspondent activity, which was associated with many trips. In the course of this research, Bender discovered in the FAZ in 2000 the misprint of several hundred million 100 euro banknotes by the high-security printing company Giesecke & Devrient . Later, Bender was the first to report in the FAZ on the events surrounding the privatization of the Bundesdruckerei in Berlin.

In 2004, Bender published the sum of his years of research into the high-security printing industry in the book “Money makers, the world's most secret business”. It is the first book in the world about this branch and was even positively received by the critical industry and was on the bestseller list in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. In 2006 an updated version of the English translation was published again by J. Wiley under the title "Moneymakers, the secret world of banknote printing".

literature

• Klaus W. Bender: Geldmacher, the most secret trade in the world. 3. Edition. Wiley-VCH Verlag, Weinheim 2008, ISBN 978-35275-0383-4 .
• Klaus W. Bender: Moneymakers. The secret world of banknote printing. Wiley-VCH, Weinheim 2006, ISBN 3-527-50236-X .