Volker Handloik

Volker Handloik

Volker Handloik (born July 19, 1961 in Rostock ; † November 11, 2001 at Dasht e-Qaleh , Takhar Province , northeast Afghanistan ) was a freelance journalist and reporter .

Life

Volker Handloik grew up in Rostock. He attended high school in Rostock and trained as an offset rotary printer from 1978 to 1981 in the printing shop of the Ostsee-Zeitung in Rostock, the then SED district newspaper. After completing his apprenticeship, he worked as a rotary printer until 1982. He then worked at VEB Fischfang Rostock and the Reichsbahn. He came to Berlin in 1984 through his work as a brakeman and shunter for the Deutsche Reichsbahn . From 1984 to 1989 he studied art history in Berlin and his hometown. His first journalistic attempts also date from the 1980s. In 1987 the Ostsee-Zeitung in Rostock published an article Handloiks about socialist architecture in the city. Former colleagues from Rostock referred to Handloik, who also published punk comics, as a punk at this time . With Heinz Havemeister , Michael Thulin (d. I. Klaus Michael ) and Susanne Schleyer , he published the unofficial magazine Liane from 1988 to 1990 . From 1989 to 1991 he worked as a book author and exhibition curator. In 1990 he organized a Digedags exhibition in Leipzig, the catalog of which was published as a special issue in Liane magazine. From 1991 to 1992 he worked as a press officer at a youth center in Berlin.

Handloik, who was enthusiastic about jazz music, played the saxophone and played in the Berlin bands "Expander des progress" and Die Skeptiker .

From 1992 the reporter, who was awarded prestigious journalism awards and was self-taught as a journalist , worked freely for various media. He was particularly interested in war reporting. Handloik only barely escaped with his life in 1995 in Grozny ( Chechnya ), where he reported for Focus , when a car bomb exploded in front of the main entrance to the government building near which he was staying. Five people were killed and 61 injured. In 2000, Handloik, who spoke English, French, Spanish and Portuguese as well as Russian, moved to Moscow, but kept a room with a friend in Berlin in the Prenzlauer Berg district .

He worked for newspapers, journals and magazines such as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , Süddeutsche Zeitung , taz , Berliner Zeitung , National Geographic , den stern , Focus , mare , GEO , Merian and Spiegel Reporter . He and two French journalists were killed in northeast Afghanistan when the group of six reporters was ambushed by the Taliban . Handloik had been on a research trip on behalf of Stern.

Death in Afghanistan

Volker Handloik was in November 2001 together with the reporter for the Australian daily newspaper Sydney Morning Herald, Paul McGeough, the French reporters Johanne Sutton, Pierre Billaud and Véronique Rebeyrotte as well as the Russian journalist Levon Sedunts in the Kalakata Mountains at the invitation of the Northern Alliance commander Amer Bashir Northeast Afghanistan on the way. Bashir wanted reporters to see the Northern Alliance's victory over the Taliban. The armored vehicle was attacked with grenades and rifles from three directions in the dark. The vehicle braked in the hail of bullets. Handloik, who had been sitting on the roof, fell down. Also Johanne Sutton (born December 1, 1966 in Casablanca ), a reporter for Radio France Internationale and Pierre Billaud (born May 21, 1970 in Agen ) by the French radio station RTL fell from the vehicle or jumped off. The bodies of Handloik, Sutton and Billaud were taken to a Northern Alliance camp the next day. The Australian McGeough reported seeing a gunshot wound on Handloik's head. The death of the three journalists sparked a debate about the dangers of war reporting.

Awards

In 1995 Handloik was nominated for the Egon Erwin Kisch Prize . In 1998 his report “Nachtwind - four tales from the sea” for the magazine mare was among the ten best reports of the year at the prestigious Hansel Mieth Prize for Print Media. Handloik received the Hansel-Mieth-Preis in 2003 posthumously for the reports "The Riviera of Orthodox Believers" (Issue 30, 2002) and "The Woman Who Had No Purple Pants" (Issue 31, 2002) published in the magazine mare after his death. .

Web links

• Literature by and about Volker Handloik in the catalog of the German National Library