Udo Reiter

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Udo Reiter (born March 28, 1944 in Lindau , † October 9, 2014 in Leipzig ) was a German journalist. He introduced the fifth program in Bayerischer Rundfunk ( B5 aktuell ), was a co-founder of Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR) and its director from 1991 to 2011 .

Life

Udo Reiter passed his Abitur in 1963 . He wanted to become a pilot at Lufthansa, he had already passed the entrance exams.  Since a car accident on December 5, 1966, he was paralyzed from the fifth thoracic vertebra down. He then decided to study German, history and political science in Munich and Berlin. In 1970 he received his doctorate with a thesis on the expressionist poet Jakob van Hoddis .

At the beginning of the 1970s, Reiter initially worked as a freelancer for Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR). He got his first permanent editorial position as head of the family radio department (broadcast: “Das Notebook”). He later went to the station's science department. In 1972 Reiter was awarded the ARD Kurt Magnus Prize for various radio documentaries, including on the subject of meditations . In 1983 he became editor-in-chief of the station, in 1984 deputy radio director, and in 1986 radio director. With “ B5 aktuell ” he introduced the first pure information channel, strictly clocked in quarter-hour portions, on German radio.

With the reorganization of the liquidated GDR broadcasters in 1990, the Mitteldeutsche Rundfunk (MDR) was created. Reiter became its first director on June 7, 1991. He built the transmitter as a three-country establishment for Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. He was confirmed in office in 1996, 2002 and 2008. During his tenure, the MDR repeatedly attracted attention through political influence and corruption scandals. The handling of the SED regime , its representatives, and the picking up of continuities from this time (cf. Ostalgie ) is controversial, which is sometimes viewed as uncritical . On November 1, 2011, Reiter retired.

After his first wife died from cancer, he married the writer and journalist Else Buschheuer in June 2012 . He was publicly committed to active euthanasia . The Süddeutsche Zeitung published a guest article by Reiters entitled “My death is mine”, in which he passionately pleaded for the right to self-determined death. Franz Müntefering wrote a public reply to this.

On October 2, 2014, Reiter was a guest on the TV show Maybrit Illner , which was about self-determined death, including suicide. On October 10th, he was found dead with a gunshot wound on the terrace of his house, a converted school building from pre-war times in the Leipzig district of Gottscheina ; he had killed himself the night before. The suicide note he found confirms the intended suicide . On October 19, Günther Jauch read the farewell letter in his ARD talk show in front of an audience of millions. Udo Reiter left behind his second wife Else Buschheuer and a daughter from his first marriage.

Reiter was a bearer of the Gregorian Order , the Bavarian Order of Merit and the Federal Cross of Merit .

reception

During his term of office as director of the MDR, there were program successes (MDR television has been the most-watched third program on ARD since 1997), but also controversies:

  • 2000: The MDR lost DM 2.6 million in the context of high-risk bonds in Ecuador .
  • 2001: It became known that some MDR moderators had worked for the state security of the GDR .
  • 2001: The unusual contract with Stephan Sulke , who brokered a housing project for MDR employees in 1992, became known. Due to the loss of value in the meantime due to the real estate crisis and unnecessary excess capacities, the MDR suffered a loss of around 7.3 million DM as a result of this project.
  • 2005: In the summer of 2005, the sports director Wilfried Mohren was dismissed without notice for surreptitious advertising to the detriment of the MDR.
  • 2010: In October, Reiter came under fire for a joke he published on the microblogging service Twitter about a Muslim Federal President .
  • In 2011 it came out that 8.2 million euros had been diverted from the children's channel and partly flowed into the pocket of a managerial employee by means of bogus bills. The MDR controls the business of the children's channel, which ARD and ZDF operate together. Reiter commented on the incident in an interview: "Yes, that was a scandal, and it annoys me tremendously that he has soiled this beautiful small and successful broadcaster."

Quotes about Udo Reiter

“He makes his decisions in the style of a manager, he can use his charming demeanor. 'People who came into his room angry,' says someone who knows him well from that time, 'they came out drunk.' Probably that is why Reiter is not popular everywhere, although flexible and agile. Looking back, an editor says, 'if you have the courage to fight, you ride well with Reiter'. "

- Georg Löwisch : In: Frankfurter Rundschau of December 4, 1996

"He is rascal, fearless and assertive."

- Friedrich Nowottny : 1992

"The editor, who is regarded by many as a hardliner in the BR, has a second, almost boyish face: he is downright infatuated with the anarchic lightness of Thomas (Gottschalk) and knows that such talent cannot be measured against normal staff."

- Gert Heidenreich : Thomas Gottschalk. The biography. dva 2004

“He made MDR television the market leader for third programs, and the station creates an identity. From a distance, the program may seem ostalgic , it binds the audience in a way that others envy. "

- Michael Hanfeld : The eternal director. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . April 7, 2008

“There is no one who supported my early career as decisively as Dr. Reiter during his time as program director for Bavarian Broadcasting. I owe him an infinite amount and our later friendship also arose from this gratitude. Precisely because of this, I found it difficult to understand his public commitment to a self-determined death, which he has now decided much too early. "

- Thomas Gottschalk : at Spiegel Online . October 10, 2014

Publications

  • Jakob van Hoddis. Life and lyric work. Kümmerle, Göppingen 1970, ISBN 3-87452-025-0
  • with Detlef Bendrath: Meditation - rediscovered ways to salvation? Evangelical Central Office for Weltanschauung questions, Stuttgart 1972 ( PDF; 156 KB )
  • Redemption in the lotus position? Meditation today. Furche-Verlag, Hamburg 1974, ISBN 3-7730-0244-0
  • (Ed.): Meditation. Paths to the Self. Mosaik-Verlag, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-570-05428-4 ; Goldmann, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-442-11305-9
  • (Ed.): "... no one to whom history does not have something important to say". Piper, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-492-00459-8
  • Allow me to stay seated. My life. Aufbau Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-351-02762-9 (excerpt: My last freedom . In: Die Zeit , February 7, 2013)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ MDR company: MDR director announces his departure ( memento of the original from October 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mdr.de archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . May 26, 2011
  2. ↑ a b Martin U. Müller , Thomas Tuma : "Some were bastards" . In: Der Spiegel . No. 44 , 2011 ( online - October 31, 2011 ).
  3. ↑ a b Martin U. Müller : On the death of Udo Reiter: A cheerful fighter. In: Spiegel Online . October 10, 2014, accessed November 5, 2017 .
  4. ↑ Thomas Tuma : In the Middle East - so far . In: Der Spiegel . No. 46 , 2009 ( online - Nov. 9, 2009 ).
  5. ↑ Media: MDR director Reiter leaves after bitter months . In: Focus . October 28, 2011
  6. ↑ Kerstin Decker: Secretly married: Udo Reiter and Else Buschheuer have been married since June . In: Leipziger Volkszeitung . November 18, 2012
  7. ↑ Udo Reiter: My death is mine. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of January 4, 2014 (accessed October 10, 2014).
  8. ^ Franz Müntefering: Dangerous melody. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of January 3, 2014 (accessed October 10, 2014).
  9. ↑ Suizid - ex-MDR director Udo Reiter is dead. ( Memento of the original from October 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Leipziger Volkszeitung from October 10, 2014 (accessed October 10, 2014). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lvz-online.de
  10. ↑ Ex-MDR director Udo Reiter has died. Report on t-online.de from October 10, 2014 (accessed on the same day)
  11. ↑ More than four million hear Udo Reiter's farewell letter on the ARD talk show . Leipziger Volkszeitung, October 20, 2014, with the wording of Udo Reiter's statement .
  12. ↑ Review of the TV show about Reiters Freitod huffingtonpost.de, October 20, 2014
  13. ^ Andreas Wassermann, Hans-Jürgen Jakobs : Real estate: The great Reibach . In: Der Spiegel . No. 5 , 2001 ( online - Jan. 29, 2001 ).
  14. ↑ MDR: Absolute hammer . In: Der Spiegel . No. 28 2001, ( Online - 9 July 2001 ).
  15. ↑ According to Wulff's speech: MDR director tweets tasteless Islam joke . In: The world . 4th October 2010
  16. ↑ Christian Stöcker: Twitter faux pas of the MDR director: Bad joke to the power of 20,000 . In: Spiegel Online . October 5, 2010
  17. ↑ Martin U. Müller : Stories from Mr. K. In: Der Spiegel . No. 18 , 2011 ( online - May 2, 2011 ).
personal data
SURNAME Reiter, Udo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist and director of the MDR
DATE OF BIRTH March 28, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Lindau
DATE OF DEATH October 9, 2014
Place of death Leipzig