Status: 09.12.2022 4:18 p.m
He was present on television for decades – as a correspondent, talk show host and “heute journal” moderator. Now Ruprecht Eser has died at the age of 79, as ZDF announced.
The television journalist and former “heute journal” moderator Ruprecht Eser is dead. He died at the age of 79, as announced by ZDF. Eser worked for the public broadcaster in various functions for 37 years. He is still known to many as the moderator of the main news program in the period of reunification.
ZDF editor-in-chief Bettina Schausten said: “We mourn the loss of a full-blooded journalist and persistent interviewer who shaped the political reporting of ZDF for decades, especially during the German years of reunification.” She herself learned a lot from Eser. He remains a “role model for critical and fair journalism”.
Ruprecht Eser was editor-in-chief at the “heute journal” during the turning point in 1989/1990. According to ZDF, he described accompanying this time as a highlight of his journalistic life.
Image: dpa
Career start at the BBC
Eser was born in Lutherstadt Wittenberg in 1943. First he worked for the German Service of the BBC, in 1970 he came to ZDF. Until the 1980s, he headed the reportage/documentation editorial team in the ZDF main editorial office for domestic politics.
Eser reported from London for the first time in 1984 and 1985, after which he moderated the “heute journal”, whose editorial management he also took over during the period of reunification in 1989/1990. He described accompanying this time as a highlight of his journalistic life, wrote the ZDF.
Short interlude at Vox
In 1992, Eser became program director for the private broadcaster Vox, which had just been founded. But only a year later he was back at ZDF and moderated the talk show “half 12 – Eser und Gäste” on Sunday mornings until 2003. From 1997 to 2003 he also headed the ZDF main editorial office for social and educational policy and was responsible for “ML mona lisa”, among other things.
He then returned to London: from 2004 to 2009 he reported on events in the United Kingdom for the second time as head of the ZDF studio in London. After his active service, Eser taught as a professor for television journalism at the University of Leipzig from 2011.