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Journalist Merseburger 1974: An enviable life in an exciting time
Photo: Roland Scheidemann / picture alliance / dpa
He was the last of that handful of great journalists in the '60s and '70s who encouraged me to become a journalist with attitude.
Peter Merseburger has now died at the age of 93.
We saw each other again a few months ago, both a little touched - which he probably would never have admitted.
After all, we fought one of his biggest battles together: the scandal surrounding the 1974 film about an abortion that was not broadcast.
He was, as the saying goes, "controversial."
It was illegal, but provocatively announced publicly by doctors, and was carried out for the first time in Germany using the gentle suction method.
Editor-in-chief Merseburger and NDR director Martin Neuffer accepted my contribution late on Sunday evening.
On Monday afternoon, the ARD directors prohibited the broadcast of the abortion film, having given in to pressure from the Catholic Church and the "Bild" newspaper.
To date, it is the most blatant case of censorship in public institutions.
And what did Merseburger do?
He did not give in, but demonstratively did not moderate the program and put a speaker in his place.
The next day we – he, the director and I – gave a press conference, which was crowded with international media.
In the days that followed, NDR broadcast the report.
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Newspaper report from 1974 with a picture of Merseburger, Schwarzer: Politics had taught him life
I didn't just admire Merseburger for his strength of character in that case.
And I wasn't the only one.
He was, as the saying goes, "controversial."
Much hated by some, but also much admired.
He carried both with serenity.
He was considered a leftist, but he was more of an enlightener and a liberal who sympathized with the SPD.
Political belief was not his thing.
He was characterized by independence, poise and composure.
Life had taught him politics.
Born into a bourgeois, rather apolitical family in 1928, he experienced the Federal Republic at first hand from the moment he was born as a student and journalist.
The horror of his colleague Rudolf Augstein – who was sent to war as a young man and never got over this trauma throughout his life – was spared the Merseburger, who was a few years his junior.
Peter Merseburger, who was also a journalist at SPIEGEL, became known to a broader public in the years 1967 to 1975 as head of the political TV magazine Panorama, which was a much more respected program at the time.
As a freelancer between 1973 and 1975, I always experienced him as an open, collegial boss.
Any kind of demonstration of power was alien to him.
And his empathy, which was never entirely free of irony, was certainly charming.
Nevertheless, Merseburger naturally lived in a
man's world.
This is also shown by the selection of those whom he biographies in later years: Brandt, Heuss, Schumacher, Augstein.
If I look at Merseburger's life today, I have to say: he had an enviable life in an exciting time - to which he contributed.