Ulrike von Möllendorff

Ulrike von Möllendorff (born July 5, 1939 in Berlin ; † September 24, 2017 there ) was a German journalist and television presenter .

Live and act

Ulrike von Möllendorff came from the Altmark noble family von Moellendorff (Möllendorff) from the parent company of the same name in Goldbeck , Möllendorf district near Osterburg . Her father was the architect Wolf von Möllendorff . He was the head of the Berlin master school for arts and crafts. After completing her school education, von Möllendorff attended the Berlin University of Fine Arts and studied painting with Alexander Camaro . At the age of 18 she married the film producer Gerd Weber and joined the advertising company of her then brother-in-law as a director and camera assistant . When their marriage broke up after two years, she found a new job as a reporter at the Sender Freies Berlin (SFB) . She worked for ten years as a reporter for the Berliner Abendschau and thus, alongside Evelyn Lazar, was one of the few women on the news program at the time .

In the early 1970s she followed her husband at the time, the ZDF television journalist Ernst Martin , to Bonn . In November 1973 Möllendorff began to work as a freelance employee at ZDF. She was editor and presenter for the magazine Die Drehscheibe and moderated it until 1979. She also continued to work for the SFB as a presenter for Umschau , a daily broadcast in the joint morning program of ARD and ZDF .

today presenter

In 1978 a woman was wanted for the main edition of the ZDF- heute- news. After a selection process in which several candidates were tested, the decision was made in favor of von Möllendorff. On October 16, 1978, at 7 p.m., she welcomed the viewers for the first time as editor in the studio in today's news. At a time when women had not yet established themselves as presenters of sports and news formats, the appointment triggered mixed reactions from the press and the public. The TV magazine Funk Uhr commented at the time: "If there is nothing important to report, you can guess which earrings she wears today, for example." Ulrike von Möllendorff was the studio editor of the heute program until December 1990 and for many years the only woman who presented the 7pm edition.

further activities

In addition to her screen work, von Möllendorff, who lived in Hamburg , also presented some radio programs , such as NDR 2 in the morning and the record box . In the 1980s she was again and again the first choice for ZDF for experiments with new formats, for example in October 1989 when she hosted the pilot program for the ZDF Mittagsmagazin . She presented the first edition of the Sunday show for 3sat .

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Ulrike von Möllendorff returned to her hometown Berlin and her journalistic beginnings after 20 years. There she moderated the Berliner Abendschau for the SFB from February 1991 to January 24, 1997 . After that, her contract was no longer renewed.

She was married to Ernst Martin for the second time, and for the third time since 1981 to the Hamburg industrial manager Horst Volckmann († 2004). Most recently she lived in Berlin. She died at the age of 78 of complications from cancer and was buried in the forest cemetery in Zehlendorf .

Web links

• Ulrike von Möllendorff in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Obituary notice from October 8, 2017 on tagesspiegel.de , accessed on October 8, 2017
2. ^ ZDF.de: 40 years of women on ZDF
3. ↑ Ulrike von Möllendorff in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
4. ↑ Ralph Kotsch: Ulrike von Möllendorf's departure and the anger at the evening show. In: Berliner Zeitung , November 26, 1996, accessed October 8, 2017.
5. ↑ Moderator Ulrike von Möllendorff is dead . In: Der Tagesspiegel Online . October 8, 2017, ISSN  1865-2263 ( tagesspiegel.de [accessed October 9, 2017]).
6. ^ Knerger.de: The grave of Ulrike von Möllendorff