Ulla Holthoff

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Ulla Holthoff (born June 7, 1958 in Welver ) is a German sports journalist and former water polo player . She was the first woman to comment on a football game on German television and, as head of the football division at DSF, developed the football talk show Doppelpass , the format of which later served as a model for many sports programs. It is therefore also known as the “mother of modern football reporting”. The idea for a double pass goes back to the German media manager Kai Balsberg . Her sons are the soccer player Mats Hummels and the sports commentator Jonas Hummels .

Life

The daughter of a railroad worker grew up in poor conditions. Her childhood was shaped by a conservative view of the world and women, her mother raised her to be a housewife with strict physical labor. To get rid of her anger about the circumstances at home and to quench her curiosity about the world from which she felt cut off, she took refuge in reading books and in sports, in which no one else in her family was interested. In addition to jogging and cycling, she was enthusiastic about football from an early age and played as a water polo player for the club SC Rote Erde Hamm . It was her goal to become a journalist in order to get to know the world that was denied to her in her youth.

She first went to a typical village dwarf school with two classes in one room, then later to a girls' secondary school, as the parents did not support higher education. In 1977 she made the Märkischen school Hamm with sports Leistungskurs her high school in night school - the first in her family and at that time one of the few girls at a previously all boys school. At school she also met her future husband, the soccer player Hermann Hummels , with whom she was married until 1996.

She got into sports journalism through the local and sports department of the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ) in Hamm after a classmate asked her if she wanted to help out there on Sundays. Two years later she did an internship at WAZ and then founded the first office for freelance journalists in Dortmund with colleagues. At that time Holthoff was one of the best water polo players in Germany. After she had written a critical article about the German Swimming Association , she was not nominated as a national player.

She studied sports science in Cologne and took a job as an editor at Die Welt , but preferred to work for the Süddeutsche Zeitung , as her own liberal attitude did not fit in with the conservative worldview of the world in the long run. After all, she came to television journalism rather by chance when she received an inquiry from ZDF in 1989 while she was working on her thesis. The broadcaster hired her even though she had become pregnant for the second time shortly before the contract was signed and she thought this was an obstacle. In 1990 she was the first woman in the ZDF sports studio to comment on a football game on German television. However, in 1994 she switched to the German Sports Television (DSF) as head of the soccer department, when ZDF did not nominate her as part of the team for reporting on the 1994 World Cup . It was there that she developed the idea of ​​presenting the Bundesliga match day on Sunday mornings as part of a TV regulars table. This resulted in the now established one- two , an often imitated football talk show format. The new format La Ola , a summary of games from other European leagues, was also created by her. When she later fell out with the new management team at DSF, she took over the press work for SpVgg Unterhaching , which had been promoted to the Bundesliga and where her son Jonas also played.

Since 2001 Holthoff has been the chief editor at Bayerischer Rundfunk . At first she took over the long winter sports days on ARD , since then she has been responsible for the focus on sport at BR .

In 2014 she was one of the five finalists for the Prix ​​Veuve Clicquot , which has been awarded to inspiring business women since 1984.

Publications

  • Ulla Holthoff: 1. FC Kaiserslautern: the club, the team, the stars, the coach, the games. Munich 1998, Heyne, ISBN 3-453-14810-X
  • Dieter Kürten (Ed.), Ulla Holthoff: EM '92 Sweden. Gütersloh 1992, Bertelsmann Club, unabridged licensed edition
  • Dieter Kürten (Ed.), Ulla Holthoff: Olympic Summer Games Barcelona '92. Munich 1992, Mosaik-Verlag, 1992 ISBN 3-576-06107-X
  • Dieter Kürten (Ed.), Ulla Holthoff: Olympic Winter Games Albertville '92. Munich 1992, Mosaik-Verlag, ISBN 3-576-10049-0
  • Dieter Kürten (Ed.), Ulla Holthoff: Sweden, EM '92. Munich 1992, Mosaik-Verlag, ISBN 3-576-10034-2
  • Dieter Kürten (eds.), Ulla Holthoff, Ulrich Kaiser: WM '90 [ninety], XIV. [Fourteenth] football world championship in Italy. Munich 1990, Mosaik-Verlag, ISBN 3-570-02882-8

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d Association of Munich Sports Journalists: Personal details.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Bayern 3 "Mensch, Otto!": Ulla Holthoff, sports journalist ( memento from October 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), broadcast on October 8, 2014, 7:00 p.m.
  3. ↑ DWDL de GmbH: "Those who were there back then also got a chance". Retrieved March 5, 2020 .
  4. ↑ a b c d e f Stefan Galler: Mother of modern football. Ulla Holthoff in portrait. Sueddeutsche.de . July 4, 2014. Retrieved on
  5. ↑ Frank Osiewacz: Hermann Hummels hopes for BVB: "Blood is thicker than water". calf. May 25, 2013. Retrieved March 14, 2015
  6. ^ Märkisches Gymnasium Hamm: Screeching alarm at Märkisches. MGH-Hamm.de . October 21, 2014. Retrieved March 14, 2015
  7. ↑ a b Oskar Beck: Oskar Beck column. The mother of modern football. Stuttgarter-Zeitung.de . June 8, 2011. Accessed March 14, 2015
  8. ↑ Falstaff News: Constance Neuhann-Lorenz wins Prix Veuve Clicquot falstaff.de . August 26, 2014. Retrieved March 14, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Holthoff, Ulla
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sports journalist and water polo player
DATE OF BIRTH June 7, 1958
PLACE OF BIRTH Welver