Volkhard Windfuhr

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Volkhard Windfuhr (* 1937 in Essen ; † October 19, 2020 in Cairo ) was a German journalist and Arabist .

Life

Windfuhr spent the first two years of his life in Essen. When his father was drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1939 , he, his mother, and his brother moved to live with their grandparents in Hildesheim . During the final years of the war his father fell and the family home was destroyed in a bombing. As a high school student in Hanover his interest in the Orient was aroused. He taught himself Turkish and at the age of 17 went on a trip to Asia Minor. Infected by her enthusiasm for the Orient, his mother took a job as a teacher at the German school in Cairo in 1955and went to Egypt with her sons. During this first long stay outside Europe, Volkhard Windfuhr was gripped by the spirit of optimism in Egypt at that time, which arose as a result of the 1952 revolution . After graduating from high school, he deepened his language skills while studying oriental languages ​​at Cairo's Ain-Shams University .

Windfuhr worked for the Egyptian Broadcasting Union during his studies at Cairo's Ain Shams University . Because of his language skills, he was promoted to foreign correspondent for Radio Cairo . As a presenter of various cultural programs, he made contacts with Egyptian intellectuals. He translated short stories and plays and wrote subtitles for Egyptian films. Disappointed with developments, especially in the final phase of Arab socialism , he turned his back on Egypt in 1967. From 1967 to 1969 he was a research assistant at the Orient Institute in Beirut . There he researched contemporary Arabic literature. In 1970 he accepted a position as editor at Deutsche Welle in Bonn, where he was responsible for the Arabic program because of his language skills. In 1974 he opened Spiegel's first foreign office in the Arab world, which he moved from Beirut to Cairo in 1976 after being kidnapped during the Lebanese civil war . Until 2013 he worked as a correspondent for the news magazine. From 1994 he was chairman of the Foreign Press Association (FPA) in Egypt, one of the largest associations of foreign correspondents worldwide. In his final years he was a frequent guest on Egyptian television. He conducted interviews with numerous personalities from the Arab world , including Yasser Arafat , Gamal Abd el-Nasser , Anwar el-Sadat , M. Hosni Mubarak , Mohammed Mursi , Muammar al-Gaddafi , Nagib Machfus .

Volkhard Windfuhr was married to an Egyptian woman until her death. In addition to the Arab culture, his passion was the railroad. In 1994 he founded the Friends of Arab Railways association . As part of the activities of this association, he organized a trip on the Egyptian phosphate railway line from the mines in the Kharga oasis to the Red Sea in the wagons of the Egyptian king.

criticism

In August 2013, during the unrest in Egypt following the overthrow of President Morsi , Windfuhr came under fire for issuing a press release as chairman of the Egyptian FPA, which some colleagues interpreted as one-sided partisanship for the military government and its affiliated security forces .

honors and awards

Works

  • ed. with Georg Stein: One day in September: 11.9.2001. Background, consequences, perspectives. Palmyra, Heidelberg 2002;
  • Battle for Muhammad's legacy. Bloody internal feuds divided the believers. In: Dietmar Pieper, Rainer Traub (ed.): Der Islam. 1400 years of faith, war and culture. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2011, p. 56 ff.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "SIS mourns death of Dean of Foreign Correspondents in Egypt Volkhard Windfuhr" on ahram.org.eg of October 19, 2020, accessed on October 20, 2020 (en.)
  2. ↑ Volkhard Windfuhr: Away with the taboos. In: Wirtschaftswoche of October 13, 2014, p. 28
  3. ↑ Egypt: “There can be no reconciliation”. Frankfurter Rundschau / dpa , August 17, 2013, accessed on August 23, 2013 .
  4. ↑ Nourhan Dakroury: Head of Foreign Press Association in Egypt: It's our duty to Provide adequate coverage of the situation. Daily News Egypt, August 19, 2013, accessed August 23, 2013 .
  5. ^ Jan Ludwig: Short circuit in Cairo. FAZ.net , August 23, 2013, accessed on August 23, 2013 .
  6. ↑ "Sisi bestows order of merit on Foreign Press Association chief: Official" In: Egypt State Information Service (SIS) by December 10, 2019 (English)
  7. ^ Sisi Grants FPA Chairman Order of Merit. In: SEE news from December 8, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Windfuhr, Volkhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist and Arabist
DATE OF BIRTH 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH eat
DATE OF DEATH 19th October 2020
Place of death Cairo