Ulla Ackermann

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Ulla Ackermann (* 27. November 1950 in Cologne as Ulla Schmitz ) is a German travel journalist who briefly great success as a writer celebrated.

Life

Ulla Ackermann comes from Cologne . She got the name Ackermann through her marriage to the journalist and writer Rolf Ackermann , with whom she has two grown sons. They lived together for a few years at a lodge in Kenya . After the divorce from Rolf Ackermann, she lived alone with her sons in the port city of Mombasa in Kenya. In 1995 she returned to Germany, worked as a travel journalist for the Frankfurter Rundschau and wrote travel guides on African countries, including South Africa, Namibia and Kenya. In 2003 she published the autobiography Mitten in Afrika - at home between paradise and hell under the name Ulla Ackermann in Verlag Hoffmann und Campe , which initially became a bestseller with around 25,000 copies sold , but was soon discovered as largely fictitious and withdrawn from the market . Other publications by the author, however, are still available in bookshops. The focus is on travel guides about Africa and Italy.

After the scandal of the autobiography, the journalist was now called Ulla Schmitz, from 2005 on the North Sea island of Spiekeroog editor and almost exclusive author of the newly formed Spiekerooger newspaper that as a mouthpiece of the local interests of the shipowner Niels Stolberg was and allegedly financed by this was what, however, both Schmitz and Stolberg denied. She also wrote the text for a cookbook with recipes from Spiekeroog under the name Ulla Schmitz.

Fake autobiography "In the middle of Africa - home between paradise and hell"

The autobiography Mitten in Afrika - Heimat between Paradise and Hell , which came on the market in February 2003, was represented for several weeks in the bestseller lists of the German-speaking countries (including five weeks in the Spiegel bestseller list ). The sales figures were boosted by numerous appearances on talk shows and readings by authors. Among other things, she was a guest on February 18, 2003 in the program Boulevard Bio , moderated by Alfred Biolek , on the topic of “Departure into the Unknown”.

When her fake autobiography was published, the author lived in Garrel near Oldenburg in Lower Saxony . The blurb stated “ Kenya and near Oldenburg ” as residences.

content

The author claims that she was born as a wealthy daughter of “a gypsy and a big bourgeois ” in Cologne . As a teenager, she turned her back on her caring parents and moved in with rich relatives in Italy . A little later, from Milan , she started an international career as a model . A failed marriage with a Roman nobleman followed, further short relationships and several births.

The author, who had raised her children on her own in the meantime, was unable to complete a journalism degree due to lack of money. Instead, she was hired directly as a war reporter for two renowned European television stations (“CBT” in Great Britain and “TRN” in Italy). The fact that their predecessors died in the crisis area did not influence their decision.

In various African countries she had experienced immeasurable brutality and great suffering for a total of 16 years, between the late 1970s and the mid 1990s. Thousands of people - including many colleagues - died before their eyes. Her two-year-old daughter fell victim to malaria . In fact, the author had no daughter but two sons, whose names were changed in the book. She herself narrowly escaped death several times and was ultimately seriously injured.

The author met such well-known personalities as Nelson Mandela , Idi Amin and Osama bin Laden in very bizarre circumstances. Mandela, for example, interviewed her several times in prison on Robben Island and "after 1980" in Pretoria . She saw the corpses of children in Idi Amin's freezers. In Somalia , she was an eyewitness to a lynching of another journalist. Above all, she experienced the black Africans as "dead killing machines", while the beauties of nature and the white inhabitants embody good Africa for her. At the end of the story, exhausted and injured (a soldier had "smashed her knee" with the butt of a rifle), the author seizes the chance to live a safer life as a travel journalist.

Exposure of the forgery

Before the fake was exposed, Mitten in Afrika received mixed reviews. In the Berliner Zeitung , Stefan Ehlert praised the author that she “did not get into old-man talk a la Scholl-Latour or Michael Birnbaum ”, but was “emotional and honest to the point of naivety”, which she felt in view of her traumatic experiences (including death from malaria of the little daughter). The book is "less than an analysis of the African tragedy" worth reading, but "personal life confession". Michael Bitala, reviewer of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, on the other hand, described the content as “pure nonsense” and accused the author of racism , since “not a single intelligent African” appears in the entire book.

The author's soaring ended abruptly when, in the second half of June 2003, the former South Africa correspondent Almut Hielscher discovered in the news magazine Der Spiegel that the life story published by Hoffmann and Campe Verlag was fictitious in decisive passages. Journalists who themselves were active in African theaters of war at the said time contributed significantly to the discovery of the forgery. The author obviously pursued the strategy of incorporating into her work mostly deceased colleagues or elusive personalities of contemporary history, which made it difficult to expose. However, the mere fact that no one in the close personal network of the war reporter community knew the supposed colleague led to considerable doubts about the authenticity of the reports. Even the TV networks CBT (UK) and TRN (Italy), for which she allegedly worked, did not exist; Program manager Rainer Moritz later stated that the author had promised these former employers not to give her real names, but that he knew them. All of the films she allegedly made had also disappeared. In particular, there was no evidence of the existence of her interviews with Mandela, especially since, according to his own autobiography, The Long Road to Freedom, he was never imprisoned in Pretoria during his entire prison term.

The former Africa correspondent Bettina Gaus described Ackermann's description of the black population of Africa as "overt, racist nonsense".

Hielscher quoted the editor Jens Petersen as saying: “I'm not an Africa expert [...] [We] e pull through eight to ten titles every six months. And when Ms. Ackermann presented her project to us very emotionally, it sounded very experienced. ”Nevertheless, the Hoffmann und Campe publishing house initially stuck to the author. Rainer Moritz explained that Hielscher had quoted Petersen's statements "completely out of context". He attributed the criticism of the book to "envy and resentment of some colleagues" and applied for an injunction to prohibit Spiegel-Verlag from repeating the statements.

However, when obvious historical errors and contradictions in the autobiography could be proven, those responsible at the publishing house, who had initially dismissed the inconsistencies and even threatened critics with legal action, had to admit that the allegations were correct. After the author admitted the forgeries, the publisher apologized to the public, recalled all copies from the book trade and, if requested, reimbursed the purchase price of € 21.90.

Rainer Moritz stated that the author “simply put on a perfect show” and even affirmed the truth of her description ; she has "also deceived her own private environment about her life story for many years". He himself had doubts about the authenticity of the biography, but “had to stand behind the author” as long as there was no “evidence” against her.

In addition to the failure of the editing department, Bettina Gaus also noted a failure of the “editors of television programs” who “see themselves exclusively as brokers of the material available to them [...] but not as independent journalists”.

Works

Under the name Ulla Ackermann

  • (with Rolf Ackermann and Ingrid Laurien) Kenya. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-423-03756-3 .
  • (Ed. By the study group for tourism and development , editor Ulla Ackermann) Understand Thailand. Study Group for Tourism and Development, Ammerland / Starnberger See, no year [approx. 1997] (= sympathy magazine No. 3)
  • (Text by Ulla Ackermann) Kenya. Polyglott-Verlag, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-493-61568-X .
  • (with Anthony Cassidy (photos)) Rome: the guide to the city. Koval, Unterfischbach undated [approx. 1999], ISBN 3-931464-28-8 .
  • (with Thomas Härtrich) Dream roads South Africa, Namibia. Südwest, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-517-06094-1 .
  • (Birgit Borowski, edited by Ulla Ackermann) Namibia. 3. Edition. completely revised and redesigned. Baedeker, Ostfildern 2002, ISBN 3-89525-477-0 .
  • South Africa: with Lesotho and Swaziland, Artemis Limes, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-8090-0858-3 .
  • Senegal, Gambia: Discover and experience Senegal and Gambia. Gräfe and Unzer, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-7742-0730-5 .
  • Tanzania & Zanzibar. DuMont, Cologne 2000 (= DuMont-Reise-Taschenbücher 2197 ). ISBN 3-7701-5303-0 .
  • In the middle of Africa: at home between paradise and hell , Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-455-09383-3 .
  • In the middle of Africa: at home between paradise and hell (audio book on 5 CDs), Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-455-30326-9 .
  • (with Thomas Härtrich) The most beautiful routes in South Africa and Namibia. Bruckmann, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-7654-4257-7 (new edition of Traumstraßen South Africa, Namibia from 2000)

Under the name Ulla Schmitz

  • Welcome to Amsterdam . Lingen, Cologne 2005.
  • Welcome to Venice . Lingen, Cologne 2006.
  • (with Robert Geipel (photos)): How to cook on Spiekeroog and around: a culinary journey across the island and to the nearby mainland . Inselzauber Medien, Bremen 2007, ISBN 978-3-938737-18-7 .
  • (with Robert Geipel (photos)): Passionate cooking with Bastian Bittlingmaier: 12 months - 36 recipes and lots of interesting facts . Inselzauber Medien, Bremen 2007, ISBN 978-3-938737-27-9 .
  • Namibia MairDumont, Ostfildern 2008, ISBN 978-3-8297-0499-1 .
  • Welcome to Lake Garda . Lingen, Cologne 2012.
  • Welcome to Rome . Lingen, Cologne 2012.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Almut Hielscher: AUTHORS: Paradise and Hell . In: Der Spiegel . No. 23 , 2003 ( online ).
  2. ↑ a b c "In the middle of Africa": "Obviously a case of fraud" - manager magazin. In: manager-magazin.de. June 26, 2003. Retrieved January 29, 2017 .
  3. ^ Author Ulla Ackermann: Out of Africa. In: Spiegel Online . December 2, 2005, accessed January 29, 2017 .
  4. ↑ Hasnain Kazim: Capitalism: The Unwanted Love of a Millionaire. In: Spiegel Online . July 13, 2006, accessed January 29, 2017 .
  5. ↑ a b c Birgit Gärtner: Cooking like the nasty Frisians. In: taz.de . November 24, 2007. Retrieved January 29, 2017 .
  6. ↑ a b Bernd Dörries: Nowhere in Africa - A book has to disappear. In: sueddeutsche.de . May 17, 2010. Retrieved January 29, 2017 .
  7. ^ "Boulevard Bio" Departure into the Unknown (TV Episode 2003) - IMDb. In: imdb.com. February 18, 2003, accessed January 29, 2017 .
  8. ↑ a b Wieland Freund : Lives in Kenya and near Oldenburg :. In: welt.de . June 26, 2003. Retrieved January 29, 2017 .
  9. ↑ a b The Invention of Africa. In: FAZ.net . June 25, 2003. Retrieved January 29, 2017 .
  10. ↑ a b Stefan Ehlert: The war correspondent Ulla Ackermann reports: Sexy violence. In: berliner-zeitung.de. February 25, 2003. Retrieved January 29, 2017 .
  11. ↑ Michael Bitala , Süddeutsche Zeitung , May 26, 2003, cited above. according to review notes about the middle of Africa at perlentaucher.de
  12. ^ A b Günther Hörbst: The publishing director's collar fell apart. In: Abendblatt.de . Retrieved January 29, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Ackermann, Ulla
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schmitz, Ulla (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German travel journalist
DATE OF BIRTH November 27, 1950
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne