Tiziano Terzani

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Tiziano Terzani (born September 14, 1938 in Florence , † July 28, 2004 in Pistoia -Orsigna) was an Italian journalist and writer .

Having a good knowledge of the Asian continent, he worked for 30 years as a foreign correspondent for the German news magazine Der Spiegel and became one of the most important correspondents in East and Southeast Asia. He has also worked as a freelancer for various Italian newspapers and magazines. a. at Il Giorno, Il Corriere della Sera , Il Messaggero , La Repubblica . He was one of the most famous Italian journalists on an international level: his reports and stories were read worldwide. He was also the author of several novels that had great success in Italy and Germany , with a circulation of over 2.5 million in Italy and over 400,000 books of Das Ende ist mein Anfang in Germany alone . He has lived with his wife, Angela Staude, herself an author, and their children in Singapore , Hong Kong , Beijing , Tokyo , Bangkok and Delhi .

Life

Childhood and youth

Tiziano Terzani was born on Wednesday September 14th 1938 in Florence , in the social housing estate of Monticelli . His father, Gerardo Terzani, ran a small auto repair shop in Florence. His mother Lina Venuti, a devout Catholic, worked as a hat maker in a tailoring studio. During his childhood, the young Terzani was often brought to the Pistoia Apennines to reduce his susceptibility to disease and to provide him with a healthy climate. The connection to this landscape, especially to the Orsigna Valley, stayed with him for a lifetime. Despite the poverty of his parents, he was sent to high school. As a high school student, he worked as a journalist for the Giornale del Mattino , a Florentine newspaper affiliated with the ruling Democrazia Cristiana party , in order to raise some money . His job there was to report on athletics competitions, cycling races and, above all, football matches at the national youth championships, mostly in the province of Florence . “What luck, what a feeling of power this little label around my neck with the word JOURNALIST on it gave me! [...] To be there wherever something happened. To have the right to be in the front row ... "

University years and Olivetti

In the summer of 1957, as a school leaver, he received a job offer at Banca Toscana, which he refused: “Working in a bank was worse than damnation, that would have been my downfall!” He took the entrance exam for a law degree Elite college Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Pisa and was accepted. In the same year he met Angela Staude, daughter of the painter Hans Joachim Staude and the architect Renate Mönckeberg, granddaughter of the Hamburg mayor Johann Georg Mönckeberg . During the student years, he in Pisa and she in Munich , the two stayed in contact. In 1961 he completed his law degree with top marks, after completing a thesis in international law. After a short study trip to Leeds , he returned to Italy and accepted the offer from the Italian typewriter company Olivetti , as the company's social commitment corresponded to his expectations. "[...] it is actually the case that many of my generation who graduated cum laude ended up either with the Communist Party or with Olivetti , because both gave you the opportunity to get involved socially." After a long internship he got a position in the personnel department, where he recruited young academics for the foreign subsidiaries. On November 27, 1962, he married Angela Staude in Vinci. Olivetti offered him the opportunity to go on a business trip, initially through Europe - with long stays in Denmark , Portugal , Holland , Great Britain - and later worldwide. He undertook his first business trip to the Far East , Japan , in 1965. On this occasion, he briefly visited Hong Kong ; there the dream of a life in China began to take shape: "I was looking for an alternative for the western world, for a different model [...] and China was exactly that." In 1966 he bought a piece of land in the Orsigna Valley, where he later built a small house.

Studied in the USA

After a chance encounter with Samuel Gorley Putt, then director of the Commonwealth Fund Fellowship program, he received a scholarship in 1966 that opened the gates to Columbia University in New York . There he began studying Sinology and History. The scholarship allowed him to travel across the United States. For two years he wrote weekly articles about the elections, the blacks, the protests against the Vietnam War , the March on Washington for Work and Freedom , the murders of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King for "L'astrolabio", the weekly paper of the Sinistra Indipendente ( Independent Left ). He did a week-long internship at the New York Times and found his role models there: “My dream was to do journalism like him ( Edgar Snow ), regardless of the rules of power, without the usual templates, in search of the truth “ In 1968 he moved to California and attended Stanford University , where he studied Standard Chinese . Here, made curious by Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution , he deepened his interest in Maoism and Chinese communism. He became convinced that he had to personally check his examinations on site: “That's why I really wanted to go to China . I was curious, I was a journalist, it was no accident that I studied Chinese . Nothing else was so important to me. I wanted to see this world! ” After the numerous articles for“ L'astrolabio ”he was registered in 1969 by the Council of the Journalists' Association as“ Freelance newspaper ”: a long-awaited professional title. In the same year his first son Folco was born in New York. After completing his second degree, he returned to Italy. Here he tried to get a job as a journalist. At the end of 1969 he began an internship at the editorial team of the Milan newspaper Il giorno. In March 1971, his daughter Saskia was born, and that same year he passed the exams to become a journalist. With the aim of being able to work as a correspondent, he quit the editorial team of Il giorno and started looking for a job across Europe. He found the right opportunity at the German news magazine Der Spiegel , where he received a contract for a year as a freelancer in South-East Asia from the publisher at the time, Rudolf Augstein .

The mirror and Asia

Terzani arrived in Singapore in 1972 where he opened Der Spiegel's first Asian office. His family followed him shortly before the great offensive by the North Vietnamese troops. He drove to the front and documented the war for Der Spiegel and the Italian press - l'Espresso and Il Giorno - with great sympathy for the Viet Cong. He earned much admiration for his courage and the quality of his war reporting. In 1973 the reports were published as a book by the Italian publisher Feltrinelli under the title Pelle di leopardo . In April 1975 he was one of the few Western reporters who witnessed the capture of Saigon by the Viet Cong.

In late 1975 he and his family moved to Hong Kong . In 1976 he began working with La Repubblica , a new Italian newspaper run by Eugenio Scalfari . At the end of March of the same year he published his second work Giai Phong! La liberazione di Saigon at Feltrinelli and won the “Premio Pozzale Luigi Russo” prize in the non-fiction category. In October he had the opportunity to go to Shanghai , where he got his first impressions of politics and Chinese society, after the death of Mao Zedong . In 1978 he witnessed the war between Cambodia and Vietnam : this conflict preoccupied him for a long time; first with astonishment and then with dismay he gathered the stories about the atrocities committed by Pol Pot , what was later called autogenocide or the Holocaust in Cambodia. His wife Angela gained this experience in an abandoned work: Fantasmi. Dispacci dalla Cambogia , published by Longanesi in 2008 .

In 1980, after a long wait, Terzani managed to settle in Beijing to open the editorial office of Der Spiegel : thus he became the first correspondent of a western magazine in China , before Time magazine and Newsweek . In doing so, he realized the dream he had had since his time in America .

But the Communist Party spied on him repeatedly while touring the country alone or with his family. He experienced a poor China that was torn apart by Maoism : he wrote and photographed everything. He was therefore arrested by the Communist Party and charged with "counter-revolutionary activities" and expelled after a month in the country's re-education camp. After the severe shock of this experience, he decided to publish his third work with Longanesi, Stranger Among Chinese. Reports from China , where he told unfiltered his four years of experience in China.

He moved to Tokyo with his family in 1985 , where he experienced a dark chapter in his life. The country, with its excessive consumer behavior, disappointed him very much. He suffered from severe depression there, as he could not bear the empty bustle of the people in the emerging country. In the following years he followed the revolution in the Philippines and dealt with the events in Indochina .

In September 1990 he left Tokyo with relief and moved to Bangkok . During the coup against Gorbachev in the summer of 1991, Terzani was on the border between China and the Soviet Union and immediately decided to fly to Moscow . He visited 9 of the 15 Soviet republics by all means and by all means of transport. This trip made him a direct witness to the collapse of the Soviet Union. From this experience the travelogue arose, which was published in 1992 as a book under the title Good night, Mr. Lenin. A journey through a bursting country appeared and was subsequently shortlisted for the prestigious “Thomas Cook Travel Book Award”. In 1993, following a warning from a Chinese fortune teller, he decided to travel through Asia for a year without the use of airplanes. It was an unusual year, and the result was a fascinating report with deep insights into the Asian way of life between materialistic modernity and traditional magical practices, under the title Flying Without Wings , published in 1995.

In 1994 he moved to India , in Delhi , where he had the opportunity to follow the developments and contradictions of Indian democracy. In August 1996, after 25 years of professional activity and more than 200 reports, the collaboration with Der Spiegel ended and he decided to give up his work as a newspaper journalist.

The disease and the last few years

In the spring of 1997 he was diagnosed with cancer: he decided, in addition to classical Western medicine, to heal himself with the world of alternative healing methods. He decided to take a proactive approach to his illness and to research and report on it, just as he had previously written as a journalist about crises in the world. In 1999 he withdrew to the Indian Himalayas for months , knocked on a Buddhist monastery and devoted himself to writing, painting and healing. In 2001, after the terrorist attacks of September 11th and during the subsequent campaign in Afghanistan , he felt the need to move and to be present as a witness, as a freelance, to be present. He wrote a series of articles and reflections, which he then collected in the volume Letters Against the War and published in 2002. In 2003 he retired to his house on the Pistoia Apennines to write his last work, Another Round on the Carousel , which appeared in March 2004. The book not only reports on his cancer, but also represents an examination of contemporary man, always with a view to the question: What is the true meaning of this life in the face of the inevitable death. In July 2004 he died in his home in the Orsigna Valley - or as he himself liked to say, "he left his body". His last posthumous work, The End is My Beginning , published by Longanesi, is a dialogue that he wrote with his son Folco. In it the son questioned his father, Terzani looked back again at his life and talked about his impending death, which he welcomed as his last adventure.

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Journalism and the search for the truth

“A journalist must have a certain arrogance, must feel free, independent of any power.” Journalism gave Terzani the opportunity to look at the great events of the last fifty years of the 20th century and to be right in the middle of them. In his own words, he was active in the “heroic times of journalism” before it became a media spectacle and strayed from the right path. At the end of his career, he regretted that journalists today hardly write long reports or go into depth. He stood for journalism without any claim to ultimate objectivity, and instead the attempt to open people's eyes and help them understand other perspectives. “I wanted to tell people what they couldn't see, hear, or smell […] If you tell with emotional sympathy what you've experienced yourself, you convey your emotions to the reader. I discovered that early on. And learned from the greats of the profession. ” His role models included Bernardo Valli, Jean-Claude Pomonti, Martin Woollacott, David Halberstam and Sydney Schanberg , who, like Terzani, worked as correspondents in Vietnam and Cambodia. The search for the truth, for the exactness of the facts, accompanied him throughout his life, as if it were “the most important thing in the world”. Only later did he realize that the truth may not even exist or that it was hidden behind the facts, always buried deep. However, in his essays and reports he always tried to explain “the reasons of others” and to report on the events with indignation or enthusiasm. "This feeling that you have something of a sacred right to tell your version of the truth gives you tremendous power."

Early work

His literary work began in 1973 with Pelle di leopardo about the Vietnam War, which is followed by Giai Phong! Saigon's Liberation (1976), translated into many languages ​​and voted Book of the month in America. Holocaust in Cambodia (1980) became a testimony to the genocide committed by the Khmer Rouge.

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La porta proibita (1985) was published in Italy , USA and Great Britain and is a critical look at the new China. Good night, Mr. Lenin! (1992) is a live coverage, a journey through the crumbling empire of Russia, which received the Thomas Cook Award. Flying Without Wings (1995) made Tiziano Terzani very well known. The novel has been translated into 32 languages ​​and is still an international bestseller. In 1998 appeared in In Asia , where Terzani describes the historical, cultural and economic changes of the Asian continent and makes them understandable for the western world.

Late and posthumous work

In 2001 he began Letters Against the War, a collection of letters he wrote for the Corriere della Sera in the months after September 11th . With his letters he addressed a level beyond myopic daily politics. Terzani's plea strongly indicated that the West would ultimately lose if it gave up its moral principles to defeat terrorism and the axis of evil . One of these letters was addressed to the Italian author and journalist Oriana Fallaci , who wrote a letter on the same newspaper with sharp anti-Islamic allegations. In 2004, Another Round appeared on the carousel , Chronicle of an illness from which he will die in the same year. In March 2005, The End is My Beginning was published posthumously; a passionate conversation with his son Folco about the most important events of his life and of the past century. On 200 pages they discuss values ​​and religion, rebirth, Buddhism and New Age.

Films and adaptations

Two months before Terzani's death, Mario Zanot, Italian director, published one last interview with Terzani. This was released as a documentary called Anam, the Nameless . Recognized as Terzani's spiritual testament, it was also a hit with sales of 80,000 DVDs. On October 7, 2010, the film The End is My Beginning , which is based on the book of the same name by Terzani, was released in Germany. The cast was partly German and partly Italian: the role of Terzani was played by Bruno Ganz. The filming of Flies Without Wings will begin in 2013, part of the costs will be covered by crowd funding. An association was founded to collect money and everyone who believes in this project can become a co-producer with a donation and support the filming. The film will re-enact part of Terzani's journey through Asia in 1993 from his novel Flying Without Wings . The shooting will take place exclusively on the original locations: Vietnam , Laos , Cambodia , Burma , Thailand . The producer's goal is to air the film in July 2014, on the 10th anniversary of Terzani's death.

Prizes and awards

  • "Premio letterario internazionale Tiziano Terzani" [31] based in Udine and organized by the association "vicino / lontano", founded in 2005
  • "Premio nazionale Tiziano Terzani per l'Umanizzazione della Medicina" [32] based in Bra and organized by ASL18 Alba-Bra, founded in 2006
  • "Premio letterario Firenze per le Culture di Pace" [33] dedicated to Tiziano Terzani, based in Florence and organized by the association "Un tempio per la pace", founded in 2006
  • "Premio letterario Fogli di Viaggio" dedicated to Tiziano Terzani, based in Campi Bisenzio and organized by the association "Macramè", founded in 2011
  • In 2012 the asteroid (199677) Terzani was named after him.

criticism

It has been alleged that Terzani deliberately kept silent about the Khmer Rouge massacres for ideological reasons when he was reporting in Cambodia in the mid-1970s . Despite his apology a few years later, this criticism has not yet completely died down.

Catalog raisonné

Narrative reports and novels

  • Saigon 1975, Three days and Three Months. 1975.
  • Holocaust in Cambodia. 1981.
  • Stranger among Chinese. Reports from China. 1985.
  • Good night, Mr. Lenin. Journey through a shattering empire. 1992.
  • Flying without wings. A journey to Asia's mysteries. Goldmann, Munich 1995, ISBN 978-3442129522 .
  • In Asia. 1998.
  • Letters against the war . Riemann Verlag, Munich 2002.
  • Another round on the carousel. Of life and death. Droemer / Knaur, Munich 2004, ISBN 978-3426779569 .

Posthumous works

  • The end is my beginning A father, a son and the great journey of life. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-421-04292-7 .
  • My Asian trip. Photographs and texts from a world that no longer exists. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-421-04492-1 .
  • Fantasmi. Dispacci dalla Cambogia. With a font by Angela Terzani-Staude. Longanesi, Milano 2008, ISBN 978-8830424418 .
  • Angkor. With the introduction by Sandra Petrignani. Liaison Editrice, Courmayeur 2009.
  • Tutte le opere 1966-1992. Edited by Àlen Loreti. With an introduction by Franco Cardini. Mondadori Editore, Milano 2011.
  • Tutte le opere 1993-2004. Edited by Àlen Loreti. Mondadori Editore, Milano 2011.
  • "Che fare? E altre prose sulla pace." Edited by Àlen Loreti. Edizioni Via del Vento, Pistoia 2011.

Web links

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ DIED: Tiziano Terzani . In: Der Spiegel . No. 32 , 2004 ( online ).
  2. ↑ http://www.unindovinocidisse.it/de/tiziano-terzani.html
  3. ↑ Source Media Control, July 2013: https://www.mcgfk.com/buch/  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.mcgfk.com  
  4. ↑ Terzani: The end is my beginning, p. 42
  5. ↑ Terzani: The end is my beginning p. 39
  6. ↑ Terzani: The end is my beginning, p. 52
  7. ↑ Terzani: The end is my beginning, p. 62
  8. ↑ Terzani: The end is my beginning. P. 68
  9. ↑ Terzani: The end is my beginning, p. 65
  10. ↑ Terzani: The end is my beginning, p. 90
  11. ↑ Ariane Barth, Tiziano Terzani, Anke Rashatusavan: Holocaust in Cambodia. Rowohlt TB-V., Rnb. November 1982, ISBN 3499330032 .
  12. ↑ Birgit Schönau: The Guru. in Die Zeit vom March 15, 2007, accessed on June 26, 2013
  13. ↑ http://www.freitag.de/autoren/der-freitag/medizin-als-metapher
  14. ↑ Terzani: The end is my beginning p. 111
  15. ↑ Terzani: The end is my beginning p. 109
  16. ↑ Terzani: The end is my beginning p. 122
  17. ↑ Terzani: The end is my beginning p. 110
  18. ↑ Terzani: The end is my beginning, p.123
  19. ↑ Terzani: The end is my beginning p. 119
  20. ↑ Terzani: The end is my beginning p. 122
  21. ↑ Terzani: The end is my beginning p. 111
  22. ↑ http://www.unindovinocidisse.it/de
personal data
SURNAME Terzani, Tiziano
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian journalist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH September 14, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Florence
DATE OF DEATH July 28, 2004
Place of death Orsigna