Ullrich Fichtner


Ullrich Fichtner is a senior German journalist and editor-in-chief of Der Spiegel magazine.

Work

Ullrich Fichtner started his career during High School, contributing articles to local newspapers. During his university studies in Bremen and Berlin he worked as a freelance journalist for The Associated Press, covering the fall of the Berlin wall in November 1989 and the breakdown of the communist-led Eastern German State.
As a Berlin correspondent of the national daily Frankfurter Rundschau he followed Germany's way through the reunification process and portrayed Berlin as an emerging capital city of Europe. In 2000, he joined the national weekly Die Zeit as a junior editor.
In 2001 he was hired as a reporter-at-large by Der Spiegel, one of Europe's largest and most influential news magazines. He contributed largely to Spiegel's in-depth investigation about the 9/11 terror attacks, focussing on Mohamed Atta’s leading role in the plot.
As a world affairs reporter he intensely covered the Iraq war, portraying the commanding US general David H. Petraeus on several occasions. His war features were widely discussed not only in Europe, but also in the US. Other main stories dealt with the Middle Eastern peace process and the impact of China’s rise.
Based in Paris, France, from 2002 through 2010, he is SPIEGEL's New York correspondent since 2011.
He is an author and co-author of several books. His essay “Tellergericht”, a critical survey of Germany's food culture, helped foster a nationwide debate over culinary habits.

Awards

Fichtner's work has been awarded with all major German prizes for excellence in journalism. In 2000, 2001 and 2004 he won the „Egon-Erwin-Kisch-Preis“ for the „Best Reportage of the Year“. In 2005, he and a team of colleagues were awarded a “Henri-Nannen-Preis” for their investigation about the terrorist attack on a school in Beslan, Russia. In May 2009 he and a team of colleagues added another Nannen-Preis for a 35-pages-report about the roots and reasons of the financial crisis. Fichtner's third Nannen-Preis came in 2011 for an in-depth story about a German-led military strike against civilians near the Afghan city of Kunduz. In 2012, he and a team of SPIEGEL writers won another Nannen-Preis for a report-at-large about the Euro currency turning into "the most dangerous currency of the world".

Books