At 87 years old
The face of the “Current Camera” – Klaus Feldmann is dead
Klaus Feldmann died at the age of 87. photo
© Christophe Gateau/dpa
He was one of the most well-known speakers in the “Current Camera”. Klaus Feldmann read the news on GDR television from 1961 until the fall of the Wall. The journalist was 87 years old.
With an impassive face, he read the texts from the paper in the “Aktuelle Kamera” – the main news program of GDR television. For almost three decades. In the GDR he was as well-known as Ulrich Wickert in the “West” – but also controversial because of his job-related closeness to the state.
Then the wall fell. Klaus Feldmann had to look for a new job. For example, he worked in the press office of a trade union, as a spokesman for local television stations in Brandenburg and was an author. At the age of 87, Feldmann died “in the arms of his wife in Berlin,” as a spokeswoman for Eulenspiegel Verlag said.
From 1961 to 1989, the trained book printer was one of the faces in the “Aktuelle Kamera”. A few years ago, Feldmann told the German Press Agency that there were also “state trumpets” on GDR broadcasting in particular, who spoke reports about socialism as if a red flag had been placed on the table at the same time. He tried to maintain a “certain neutrality”.
Little contact with old colleagues
He reported that he had little contact with former speaker colleagues. “They usually don’t want to have anything to do with time anymore, they don’t want to be reminded.” Follow the news and get information – that’s still important to him, he emphasized. As a very agile 85-year-old, he also commented on the Corona reporting two years ago. It contains too much depressing. “But it’s also part of emphasizing how many people have recovered,” said Feldmann.
He remained loyal to GDR television after the fall of the Wall: in Königs Wusterhausen in Brandenburg, there is an exhibition in the transmitter and radio technology museum about the TV era in the socialist part of Germany – the ex-news anchor regularly looked after visitors there. “We had the first camera woman in Germany,” he enthused about “back then”.
Feldmann also looked back at the GDR broadcasters in a book: In “Verhörte Hörer” (2016) he compiled anecdotes about colleagues from radio and television and himself that should never actually happen under socialism.
Slips of the tongue like “colorful banners and trusses” or the “SED Pilot Office” caused laughter. The fact that such mishaps were often perceived as comical by listeners and viewers in the GDR was only one side. Feldmann wrote that a number of colleagues were constantly afraid that the tongue salad would be interpreted in a politically negative way.
Honecker always first
And a message about Erich Honecker always had to be read out first – but not without a title: General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and Chairman of the Council of State of the German Democratic Republic. In every program, the GDR citizens had to be told who Honecker was, Feldmann noted in the book.
The journalist reported two years ago about his life as a senior: His family, wife, children and grandchildren would keep him young. There is always something going on. “I’m doing quite well, I have a few niggles, but I don’t pay much attention to them, they are not life-threatening.” He had now died “after a long illness,” said Eulenspiegel-Verlag on Tuesday.