The journalist and author Peter Scholl-Latour died on Saturday at the age of 90 years in Rhöndorf am Rhein, as the Ullstein publishing houses in Berlin mitt rushed. Scholl-Latour became known with reports about foreign countries and wrote bestsellers such as “Death in the rice field.”
With his criticism of the Ukraine-reporting of many media, he joined again recently reinforced in the public on. “We live in an age of mass media idiocy!” Said the reporter Legend of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. “If you look at once, such as one-sided report, the local media, of TAZ to the world, about the events in Ukraine, then you can really tell from a disinformation on a grand scale, flanked by the technical possibilities of the digital age, then you can only to find that globalization has resulted in the media world to a distressing provincialism. similar was and is yes regarding Syria and other hot spots instead. “
From the ARD ZDF
Many of his more than 30 books tell of crises, conflicts and wars. He landed almost always bestsellers. Scholl-Latour coined the image of the Germans of the Arab world, Asia and Africa sustainable. Also for television, the native of North Rhine-Westphalia reported from distant lands from numerous conflict zones.
The Propylaea-Verlag tribute Scholl-Latour as “one of the greats of German journalism”. He had “wars and civil wars of our time from Algeria through Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan met up close” and brought the Germans with reports, films and books closer to the world.
Only spokesman, then Reporter
Scholl-Latour was born on March 9, 1924 in Bochum. His mother escaped as Alsatian Jew almost deportation. He went in the Swiss Fribourg in a Jesuit college. In 1945 he was briefly in Gestapo custody. After the Second World War, he enlisted in an elite French unit and fought as a paratrooper in Indochina.
He worked during his studies as a travel journalist for German and French newspapers and broadcasters. 1954 and 1955 he was speaker of the Saarland, but a year later he decided finally for journalism.
As of 1960, three years ARD correspondent for Africa and then founded the ARD studio in Paris, whose director he was until 1969. Two years later he became chief correspondent for ZDF and led from 1975 to 1983 additionally the Paris ZDF studio.
He belonged to the privileged journalists, the revolutionary leader Khomeini could interview
As a special correspondent Scholl-Latour was regularly in Vietnam, where he and his camera crew in 1973 gesnommen been captured by the Viet Cong. After one week the group was released. Nevertheless, he went back in the Asian country, also to Canada, Cambodia, China and Afghanistan.
The reporter was among the privileged journalists accompanying the revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini’s return to Iran and then during revolution were interviewed more than once. Since 1978 stood Scholl-Latour in contact with Khomeini.
Since the late 80s he made especially by television features and books of talk
In addition to his work for the ARD and ZDF was the journalist briefly also chief editor of the magazine “Stern”. Since the late 80s he worked as a freelance publicist and made especially by television features and books speak of himself
Scholl-Latour published numerous non-fiction books, in which he combined the description of historical development lines with journalistic accounts -. A way of working which also earned him criticism and accusations of simplification. His latest book “The curse of the evil deed. Failure of the West in the East” to be released in September, according to the Propylaea publisher.
Gregor Gysi, chairman of the parliamentary party Die Linke, called Scholl-Latour “a very independent, very headstrong and outstanding personality”. “If you only had the ability to listen attentively, interested to read it, you had not always agree with him, but was smarter,” Gysi said according to a statement of his party.
WDR director Tom Buhrow tribute Scholl-Latour in a statement: “We have lost a great journalist and reporter with his experience, experiences and assessments enriched Peter Scholl-Latour our work and our view of the. world. ” In February he had said in an interview with FOCUS about his life as a reporter, “I would be dead if I would have had to stop working.”
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