Ulrich Kienzle: passed away at 83 – ZDF mourns TV journalist

His verbal battles with "Frontal" colleague Bodo Hauser (1946-2004) were legendary, now TV journalist and Middle East expert Ulrich Kienzle died. Yesterday, Thursday (April 16), he died in Wiesbaden at the age of 83, according to a press release from the broadcaster ZDF, for which Kienzle worked for many years and headed "among other things, the main editorial team for foreign policy".

"Ulrich Kienzle was a top journalist. He took a close look at the world on site to really understand the conflicts that he then reported on," said ZDF editor-in-chief Peter Frey. For example, Kienzle's interview with the then Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, for which he also had to take criticism.

His career as a journalist started at Süddeutscher Rundfunk in the 1960s, later he worked as an ARD correspondent in Arab countries and came to ZDF in 1990. Kienzle also tried his hand at being a book author and worked on his experiences in the Middle East in "Farewell to 1001 Nights – My Attempt to Understand the Arabs".