Henryk Broder - Life

Life

Born in Katowice, Silesia, Poland, Broder moved to Cologne with his family in 1958. Both of his parents were survivors of Nazi concentration camps. In Cologne, he studied economics, law and psychology but failed to graduate. Together with fellow student and nascent writer Fred Viebahn (de), whom he had known since high school times, he founded and edited two short-lived radically liberal quarterlies ("PoPoPo" and "Bubu/Eiapopeyea"). In the late 1960s he took over the St. Pauli-Nachrichten (de) together with the journalist Michel Roger Lang, a then highly successful tabloid newspaper in Hamburg, along with Günter Wallraff, Stefan Aust and the photographer Günter Zint (de), in order to agitate the working class of the city with a combination of leftist articles, nude photography and lonely hearts ads.

In the 1970s, he wrote for the satirical magazine Pardon(de). From 1979 to 1981 he published, together with fellow journalist Peter Finkelgruen (de), the periodical "Freie Jüdische Stimme" ("Free Jewish Voice"). In 1981, he left Germany to work in Israel for a while, but continued to write for high level periodicals as Die Zeit, Profil, Die Weltwoche, and Süddeutsche Zeitung. In the 1980s he also hosted the television talk-show Leute, along with Elke Heidenreich, which ran on Sender Freies Berlin; one of their guests was African-American poet Rita Dove, who had just won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize and is married to Fred Viebahn, Broder's old friend from Cologne.

Broder wrote a series of books which dealt with the relationship between Germans and Jews, respectively the growing German Jewish community. Together with Eike Geisel, Broder published essays, books and a documentary about the Jüdischer Kulturbund (Jewish Cultural Union), a previously-unknown chapter of Jewish German cultural life during the Third Reich. He wrote books about foreign policy with special regard to Israel, Islam and the growing German Jewish community.

Ever since Operation Entebbe, Broder grew more and more critical of the German approach towards Israel and what Broder sees as appeasement towards Islamic threats. In Broder's opinion, Antizionism is in essence anti-Semitic.

Broder's trademark is his polemical, blunt and quick-witted style. He publishes hate mail and heated exchanges between him and critics on his website at henryk-broder.com. The result of some of Broder's polemics were a series of lawsuits, some won and some lost by him. Many of Broder's writings for outlets such as spiegel.de and welt.de are archived at the Achse des Guten (de) weblog which he, together with two other prominent German journalists, operates as a collaborative platform for the unfettered expression of about two dozen of his colleagues.

Broder is married to a publisher, and they have a grown daughter. He lives in Berlin and Augsburg (Bavaria).