Claus-Erich Boetzkes: Confident, relaxed, eloquent

After around 25 years daily News-Speaker Claus-Erich Boetzkes said goodbye to retirement – a look back at the overwhelming news stories, in which he always remained calm – and sometimes also provided creative word creations.

Claus-Erich Boetzkes was a permanent member of the team for around a quarter of a century daily News – an eventful time in which it gave colleagues and viewers some memorable moments. Whether technical problems, overflowing news stories or sentences where you sometimes only noticed when you listened carefully that something was wrong: Hardly anyone remained as confident in confusing situations and with their own slip of the tongue as the 65-year-old from Upper Swabia.

Hardest working day: September 11, 2001

As a moderator, Boetzkes accompanied the audience through memorable events such as the attacks of September 11, 2001 or the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan. In fact, September 11, 2001 was the most difficult day in all these years. “We had absolutely no idea what was going on at the moment,” says Boetzkes, who, for once, also moderated the 8 p.m. edition of the Tagesschau.

One unbelievable piece of news followed the other, there were also technical problems, and the satellite lines kept breaking down – “so that new correspondents kept coming who I neither knew what to say nor that they were coming – and I have to say one Fifteen minutes can be incredibly long. “

Retirement without resolutions

So now the well-deserved retirement. “Funny, very strange,” says Boetzkes. Not that he could do without that daily News would have ever been bored: whether as an honorary professor at the university, traveling or with the children, he “got around” the time very well.

It’s only logical that he didn’t make any resolutions for his first year of retirement either. “I’ve always been amazed that people make resolutions – I’ve always tried to live in such a way that it works in principle. In this respect: no resolutions, but a firm effort to make something really good out of time.”