Michel Friedman

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Michel Friedman at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2018

Julien Michel Friedman [ miˈʃɛl ˈfʁi: tman ] (born February 25, 1956 in Paris ) is a German - French lawyer , philosopher , politician , publicist and television presenter .

From 1994 to 1996 he was a member of the CDU federal executive committee . Friedman moderated among others from 1998 to 2003 at the Hessian Radio , the talk show "Caution! Friedman ". From 2000 to 2003 he was deputy chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany and editor of the weekly newspaper Jüdische Allgemeine and from 2001 to 2003 he was president of the European Jewish Congress . In the course of the Friedman affair, he resigned all public offices and started a new beginning in 2004 with the program Studio Friedman , which is broadcast on Welt , then still N24.

Since February 2016 he has been honorary professor for real estate and media law at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences .

Life

Childhood and youth

Michel Friedman comes from a Polish-Jewish family from Krakow . Hardly any member of his family survived the Holocaust , almost all of them perished in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp . Only his parents and grandmother (“coming from a middle-class background”), who were rounded up in the Krakow ghetto during the Nazi era , were saved by the Sudeten German entrepreneur Oskar Schindler through a list of “Schindler Jews”.

After the end of the Second World War , the parents emigrated to Paris , where they were stateless . Michel Friedman was born in humble circumstances in 1956 as the son of a businessman and his wife and grew up with his brother in a multicultural environment. They spoke French , Polish and Yiddish , German he learned at school in Germany. From 1961 Friedman attended a French elementary school. As he himself states, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir had formative influences on him . Friedman's father worked in his stepfather's fur wholesale business .

Studied law and worked as a lawyer

In 1965 he and his parents moved from France to the Federal Republic of Germany , where their father worked in the German fur trade center in Frankfurt am Main . Oskar Schindler was the guest of honor at the celebrations for Friedman's Bar Mitzvah (13 years of age), and his parents maintained contact with the former savior. Friedman was head of the school at the Goethe-Gymnasium in Frankfurt and organized demonstrations against the Soviet Union during this time . In addition, at a young age he was an employee of the youth center of the Jewish community in Frankfurt am Main and from 1974/75 a member of the board of the Federal Association of Jewish Students in Germany . His family was Orthodox , and in his childhood he was shaped by the authority of the regional rabbi Isaak Emil Lichtigfeld . In 1974 he passed his Abitur and, at his father's request, began studying human medicine , which he did not finish.

After completing the physics course , he switched to law . He passed his first state examination in law in 1984 "with distinction". In 1987 he took his second state examination in law. He then settled in Frankfurt as a lawyer specializing in real estate and media law and became a partner in an international law firm. In 1994 he was at Alfons force at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz with a thesis on the subject of the right of initiative of the Works to Dr. iur. PhD .

Functionary of Jewish organizations

From 1983 to 2003 he was a board member of the Jewish community in Frankfurt . From 1990 he worked for the Central Council of Jews in Germany . In 1997 he was supposed to become chairman of the Jewish community in Berlin , which he refused for family reasons, as his father had only become a widower the previous year.

In 1999 he was elected to the Presidium of the Central Council, where he became Vice President under Paul Spiegel . He was particularly strong against neo-Nazism , xenophobia and anti-Semitism .

In 2002, he and the Central Council led a public anti-Semitism dispute with the deputy federal chairman of the FDP and state chairman of the FDP North Rhine-Westphalia , Jürgen Möllemann , which was triggered by the acceptance of the Green politician Jamal Karsli into the FDP state parliamentary group in North Rhine-Westphalia . Friedman commented on Möllemann's statements as a “breach of civilization”.

From 2001 to 2003 he was President of the European Jewish Congress . In addition, he was editor of the weekly newspaper Jüdische Allgemeine from 2000 to 2003 .

TV presenter for public broadcasting

In addition to his work as a lawyer, publicist, politician and association official, Friedman has also worked as a television presenter since 1993. From 1993 to 1994 he presented the talk show Riverboat on Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk . In 1995 he started the magazine Drei-Zwei-eins with Luc Jochimsen and Holger Weinert at Hessischer Rundfunk . In 1997 he briefly moderated the Polit-Talk 43:30 - Time for Politics at Premiere . From 1998 to 2003 he presented the program “Caution! Friedman ”and from 2001 to 2003 the program Friedmann on ARD. In the opinion of observers, his appearances were thoroughly provocative and controversial.

Friedman affair

In June 2003, Friedman came into the public prosecutor's field of view during an investigation into human trafficking in the red light district . Several prostitutes illegally brought to Germany from Ukraine and forced into prostitution testified that he had sex with them several times, consumed cocaine in their presence and also offered them the addictive substance. Friedman had requested prostitutes and cocaine under the pseudonym “Paolo Pinkel” (this was allegedly misunderstood by the police, Friedman later claimed to have actually used “Paolo Pinkas” - Pinkas is a Hebrew first name). As a result, his office and home were lawfully searched. Three parcels typical of the scene were found that had cocaine buildup. The amount found was too small to determine the exact active ingredient content. The test result of a hair sample submitted by Friedman was positive, which provided legal evidence that Friedman had actually been a cocaine user. Then came July 8, 2003, a penalty order against Friedman for cocaine possession more than 150 daily rates in a total amount of 17,400 euros, which he accepted without protest.

Friedman resigned from all public office in the wake of the affair . In a statement, he regretted "making a mistake". He apologized to the people he had let down and asked the public for "a second chance". Since he avoided explicitly apologizing to the prostitutes, he was u. a. Publicly criticized by the women's rights organization Terre des Femmes .

Professional new beginning, philosophy studies and professorship

Michel Friedman (2004)

After a short time he became editor of the “Political Book” program area at Aufbau-Verlag and, following the offer by the entrepreneur Hans Wall, became a member of the supervisory board of Wall GmbH .

Already at the beginning of November 2003 Friedman took part in the political discussion rounds Sabine Christiansen ( ARD ) and Grüner Salon ( n-tv ) after a long absence on television . Since February 2004 he has hosted the program Im Zweifel für Friedmans Talk on 13th Street , a law talk show on the US series Law & Order . He also became a columnist for Max magazine . Friedman has also moderated the weekly Talk Studio Friedman since October 2004 and the report series Friedman Watching at the news channel Welt since 2008 . Friedman is also a columnist for Die Welt ; Before that, he regularly wrote comments in the now discontinued Frankfurt compact newspaper NEWS . In 2008, together with Franziska Günther, he was responsible for the program “prefer reading” on the literary channel Lettra ( Premiere Star ).

In addition to his television activities, he studied philosophy at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, and in 2010 he received his doctorate from Klaus-Jürgen Grün with his dissertation “Guiltless Responsibility. Requirements of brain research for ethics and criminal law "for Dr. phil. PhD.

Since February 2016 he has been honorary professor for real estate and media law at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences . He heads a research center for European issues in Frankfurt and is one of four directors of the newly established “Center for Applied European Studies” at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences.

Assassination attempts

In an interview program broadcast on his person by the alpha forum of ARD on February 25, 2016, on the occasion of his 60th birthday, Michel Friedman mentioned two attempted assassinations that were carried out with firearms. This notice was already expressed and published by him in an interview with the FAZ on December 9, 2013.

family

Friedman's older brother (born in Krakow in 1948) now lives in Israel .

Since 2004 Michel Friedman has been married to the television presenter Bärbel Schäfer , who converted to Judaism . The wedding took place according to the Jewish rite in the Park East Synagogue , the place of worship of an Orthodox Jewish community in New York . The couple has two sons and lives in Frankfurt-Westend , Paris and Cannes .

Friedman has been a German citizen since he was eighteen .

Committee work / volunteering

From 1990 to 2003 Friedman was a member of the executive committee of the ZDF television council . In addition, he was a board member of the Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Korn und Gerstenmann Foundation . He was the deputy supervisory board of the Friedrichstadt-Palast , chairman of the supervisory board of the Saarland State Theater , member of the board of trustees of the Saarland Cultural Heritage Foundation , member of the coordination council of the German-Czech Discussion Forum , member of the advisory board of the Federal Academy for Security Policy and chairman of the executive board of Keren Hajessod Germany as well as member of the supervisory board of the Saarland investment credit bank .

He is a member of Atlantik-Brücke and a board member of the Jewish Agency .

politics

Career as a Union politician

Michel Friedman (2009)

Inspired by NATO's double decision and more committed to conservatism, although never one hundred percent on the party line, Friedman joined the CDU in 1983 . From 1984 to 1997 he was a CDU city ​​councilor in Frankfurt am Main. He put his focus on the subjects of business , planning and culture . In 1994 Friedman was elected to the party executive committee of the CDU Hessen . Because of the CDU donation affair surrounding the then Prime Minister and State Chairman Roland Koch , he resigned from his regional association at the beginning of 2000. Since then he has been a member of the CDU Saar . From 2000 to 2002 he took over the honorary staff position for cultural and European policy issues under Prime Minister Peter Müller .

Friedman applied successfully in 1994 at the suggestion of Hermann Grohe , then chairman of the Junge Union , with 610 out of 919 votes for the CDU federal executive committee . There he discussed European integration , the multicultural society and the reform of citizenship law and naturalization law . He was also elected to the Federal Media Policy Committee in 1995 .

In 1996 he was unable to assert himself for another term on the federal executive board. He was considered a critic of Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl , whom he attested "unbearable arrogance" and was too liberal in the eyes of some party members . Instead, he was active in the Federal Committee for Culture.

Commitment to right-wing extremism

Friedman has campaigned against anti-Semitism and racism for years . He was repeatedly exposed to threats, including a. He was temporarily assigned to police bodyguards with right-wing extremist sentiments.

In 1995 he stated that historical revisionists and right-wing intellectuals represented a greater danger to democracy than right-wing extremist parties because they had a more resounding effect "under a bourgeois guise and with a high degree of social acceptance".

In this context, he criticized Martin Walser's speech in the Frankfurt Paulskirche in 1998, in which he defended himself against the "permanent representation of our shame". Friedmann explained: “I consider this speech to be a further indication. We have seen a clear shift in the intellectual scene for years. Right-wing conservatives and right-wing nationalist intellectuals break outrageous taboos and try more aggressively in society to see how far they can go. "

He was one of the organizers of the Rock gegen Rechts concerts . In 2000 Friedman founded the association Show Face! Together with Uwe-Karsten Heye and Paul Spiegel . For a cosmopolitan Germany e. V. , which campaigns nationwide for a cosmopolitan and tolerant Germany and against right-wing extremism .

In 2001, the “Gypsy Jews” judgment caused a stir when the former district chairman Hermann Joseph Reichertz of the Republican Party (REP) in the Oberallgäu district described Friedman as a “Gypsy Jew” in a press release in November 2000. Friedman filed a complaint, whereupon the Kempten District Court sentenced Reichertz to a fine of 6,000 marks in March 2001, but on August 27, 2001, in the second instance, the Kempten District Court acquitted him of the charge of insult. The Bavarian Supreme Regional Court (BayObLG) overturned the controversial ruling on February 15, 2002 (1 St RR 173/01) after the public prosecutor's office appealed against the ruling, whereupon the Kempten Reichertz Regional Court found Friedman guilty of insulting and imposed a fine Imposed amount of 3000 marks.

Friedman conducted an interview with Holocaust denier and former RAF terrorist Horst Mahler in 2007 , which appeared in Vanity Fair magazine, for which he worked as a chief reporter. The interview was controversial, not least because Mahler greeted him with a Hitler salute. Friedman reported this.

In 2018 Friedman described the AfD as a “inhuman, anti-democratic party”. On the occasion of the founding of the Jews group in the AfD , Friedman said: "Nobody should join the AfD, especially not a Jew."

Commitment to refugees

In 2015, Friedman and his long-time friend and Tigerpalast director Johnny Klinke organized a welcome party in the Paulskirche for refugees and their helpers who had recently arrived in Germany . The organizers declared that they wanted to set an example for the refugees and humanity.

Criticism of the Bavarian state government

Friedman is one of the critics of the Bavarian state government . Horst Seehofer's statement that “Islam does not belong to Germany” met with sharp criticism from him. The TV presenter made major reproaches for the Federal Minister of the Interior . In a guest commentary for Deutsche Welle, he accused this of populism.

It would not be the job of a federal interior minister to stigmatize Islam, because a federal interior minister is at the same time minister of religion and constitution and is responsible for "ensuring that he represents respect for all religions."

As a politician, assuming that one world religion is denied its existence as part of the religious and social reality in Germany, testifies to a very dubious understanding of religious freedom, according to Friedman. Seehofer justifies his controversial Islamic statement that his statement was not "about the exclusion of the people who live here", but rather about the "identity of Germany". In his opinion, “one cannot seriously deny that Christianity has shaped this country. And that many elements of Islam have not shaped this country. "

Awards and honors

Fonts (selection)

Monographs

  • The works council's right of initiative (= Europäische Hochschulschriften , Series 2, Law, Volume 1602). Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 1995, ISBN 3-631-47747-3 (also dissertation, University of Mainz, 1994).
  • Kaddish before dawn. Novel . Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-351-03046-0 . (Paperback and phonogram 2007)
  • Innocent responsibility. Requirements of brain research for ethics and criminal law (= philosophy in history and present , volume 3). Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 2010, ISBN 978-3-631-60489-2 (also dissertation, University of Frankfurt am Main, 2010).

Editing

Michel Friedman is editor of the Political Book series at Aufbau-Verlag .

Contributions to edited volumes

  • Self-portrait of childhood and adolescence . In: Florian Langenscheidt (Ed.): At home with us. Celebrities talk about their childhood . Econ, Düsseldorf 1995, ISBN 3-430-15945-8 .
  • The importance of freedom of belief from the point of view of the Jewish religion . In: German section of the International Commission of Jurists (Ed.): Religious Freedom. From September 29 to October 2, 1995 in Erfurt (= constitutional state in probation , Volume 31). Müller, Heidelberg 1996, ISBN 3-8114-0897-6 , p. 81 ff.
  • From evolutionary trust . In: Dirk C. Fleck (Ed.): The fourth power. Top journalists on their responsibility in times of crisis . Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-455-50259-6 , p. 177 ff.

Conversations / interviews

  • Future without forgetting. A Jewish life in Germany. Conversation with Ernst Dieter Lueg . Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 1995, ISBN 3-462-02437-X .
  • “It's about the identity of the republic for the next decades” . In: Hans Erler , Ansgar Koschel (ed.): The dialogue between Jews and Christians. Attempts to talk to Auschwitz . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1999, ISBN 3-593-36346-1 , p. 104 ff.
  • The sorcerer's apprentice . In: Jens Bergmann , Bernhard Pörksen (Ed.): Scandal. The power of public outrage. (= Edition Medienpraxis , 6). von Halem, Cologne 2009, ISBN 978-3-938258-47-7 , p. 112 ff.
  • "It will make you happier to live your needs even when society stigmatizes you". In: Justus Bender , Jan Philipp Burgard: Do you still believe in love? Unexpected answers from Hannelore Elsner, Eckart von Hirschhausen, Michel Friedman, Sonya Kraus, Franz Müntefering, Roger Willemsen and many others. Bertelsmann, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-570-10143-8 , pp. 199 ff.

literature

Web links

Commons : Michel Friedman  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Michel Friedman  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michel Friedman: Future without forgetting . Cologne 1995, p. 28.
  2. ↑ Michel Friedman: Future without forgetting . Cologne 1995, p. 25.
  3. ↑ a b Michel Friedman: Future without forgetting . Cologne 1995, p. 24.
  4. ↑ Michel Friedman: Future without forgetting . Cologne 1995, p. 23.
  5. ↑ a b Michel Friedman: Future without forgetting . Cologne 1995, p. 29.
  6. ↑ Michel Friedman: Future without forgetting . Cologne 1995, p. 57.
  7. ↑ Goedart Palm: Paolo Pinkel - or: When is a name no longer an alias? In: Heise online . June 17, 2003.
  8. ↑ 150 daily rates - Why Friedman pays 17,400 euros. In: Hamburger Abendblatt . July 9, 2003.
  9. ↑ Terre des Femmes criticizes Michel Friedman Excerpt from Terre des Femmes press release from 2003.
  10. ^ Open letter to the ev. Kirchentag of the Lower Saxony Women's Union of February 28, 2005, accessed on March 2, 2011.
  11. ↑ Kirchentag: Friedman undesirable. In: Focus Online . March 15, 2005, accessed March 2, 2011.
  12. ↑ Michel Friedman is rehearsing his social comeback with a private celebrity party focus.de, accessed on December 16, 2019
  13. ^ Studio Friedman ( Memento of February 8, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). Official website of Studio Friedman at N24 .
  14. ^ N24: Friedmann gets a new contract and a new slot. In: quotenmeter.de . August 27, 2014, accessed June 25, 2015 .
  15. ↑ "I understood Marcuse when I was 16". In: streitBar magazine. Archived from the original on June 19, 2012 ; Retrieved on May 1, 2014 (Interview by Raphael Geiger with Michel Friedman and Matthias Matussek. The title quotes a statement by Matussek about himself.): “Friedman: I have completed my master's degree and am now doing my doctorate. [...] It's about free will: does a person have free will? Or is that just an invention of humans, who cannot bear that they are no further than other animals? [...] I don't believe that there is free will. "
  16. ↑ https://www.frankfurt-university.de/de/hochschule/fachbereich-1-architektur-bauingenieurwesen-geomatik/kontakte/professor-innen/honorarprofessoren-innen/michel-friedman/ , Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences , accessed on April 4, 2016.
  17. ↑ Michel Friedman heads the European Research Center at the University focus.de, accessed on December 16, 2019
  18. ↑ Michel Friedman, journalist, philosopher and lawyer , Bayerischer Rundfunk, 45 min., Accessed on February 26, 2016
  19. ↑ I've never been as happy as I am today . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of December 9, 2013 , at: faz.net, accessed on February 26, 2016
  20. ↑ The common thread: The worried . In: Frankfurter Neue Presse of January 17, 2015 , at: fnp.de, accessed on February 26, 2016
  21. ↑ Michel Friedman: Future without forgetting . Cologne 1995, p. 70 f.
  22. ↑ Christina Maria Berr and Oliver Das Gupta: "Can such a person still be a reliable police officer?". Friedman's right-wing extremist bodyguard, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung, December 9, 2008
  23. ↑ Michel Friedman: Future without forgetting . Cologne 1995, p. 152.
  24. ↑ http://www.hagalil.com/archiv/98/11/friedman.htm
  25. ↑ Show your face! For a cosmopolitan Germany e. V.
  26. ↑ Harriet Dreier: fight against right. More and more celebrities want to "show their faces". In: Spiegel Online . September 27, 2000, accessed June 4, 2012 .
  27. ↑ Limit of criminal offense not reached: Republicans may call Michel Friedman "Gypsy Jew" , rp-online.de , August 27, 2001
  28. ^ "Gypsy Jew" expensive , taz.de , June 5, 2002
  29. ^ "Completely incomprehensible": criticism of the planned association "Jews in the AfD". www.welt.de, September 25, 2018
  30. ↑ http://www.bild.de/regional/frankfurt/fluechtlingshilfe/fluechtlinge-empfang-in-der-paulskirche-frankfurt-sagt-willkommen-43231236.bild.html
  31. ↑ http://www.fnp.de/lokales/frankfurt/stadtgefluester/Ein-klares-Zeichen-fuer-Fluechtlinge;art51666,1666731
  32. ↑ https://www.merkur.de/politik/moderator-michel-friedman-seehofer-hat-mit-islam-aeusserung-amtspflicht-verletzt-zr-9723116.html
personal data
SURNAME Friedman, Michel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pinkas, Paolo; Pee, Paolo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, politician (CDU), publicist and television presenter
DATE OF BIRTH February 25, 1956
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris