Fritz Pleitgen
TV journalist suffering from cancer undergoes chemotherapy
Fritz Pleitgen has pancreatic cancer.
© imago images / Horst Galuschka
The former WDR director Fritz Pleitgen has been suffering from cancer for several months. “I consider every day a gift,” he says.
The former WDR director and TV journalist Fritz Pleitgen (83) made his cancer public in June of last year. In an interview with the magazine “Bunte” he is now giving a health update. “I’m not always fine, but mostly. I see every day as a gift,” explains the 83-year-old. He is currently undergoing chemotherapy.
When he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he thought: “That’s it”. Because he was particularly afraid of this cancer. “I knew the statistics and how low the chances of survival are,” says Pleitgen. He then said to his wife Gerda, to whom he has been married since 1969: “I have bad news.” According to him, however, she has gathered strength “to appear composed and thus to strengthen my back”. The two of them focused their hopes on a quick operation, which Pleitgen has now undergone. Now he hopes “that cancer will give me a little more good time”.
Fritz Pleitgen was director of WDR from 1995 to 2007, and also chairman of ARD from 2001 to 2002. From 2006 to 2008, he was President of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). Before that, he was a foreign correspondent during the Cold War and reported on the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. From 1993 to 2006 Pleitgen also moderated the “ARD Press Club”.