2023-12-12 00:43:33
ZDF had and has several directors. The founding father Karl Holzamer, the diplomat Karl-Günther von Hase, the underestimated Markus Schächter, the understatement master Thomas Bellut and the rookie Norbert Himmler.
Michael Hanfeld
responsible editor for features online and “media”.
Perhaps the most influential figure at the helm of the public broadcaster was Dieter Stolte, who was director from 1982 to 2002. If there was someone who could be called “Mister ZDF”, it would be him. Dieter Stolte died in Berlin on Sunday at the age of 89.
In office longer than Helmut Kohl
He came into office in 1982, the year Helmut Kohl became Chancellor. And he exceeded his term. Stolte held his position for twenty years. And in the end, when the search for a successor developed into an epic party-political battle, it even seemed conceivable that Stolte would stay longer.
Stolte had to cope with an epochal change for ZDF that today seems like a chapter from the early history of the media. In the mid-1980s, private broadcasters emerged and sent public broadcasters into a panic. The young audience ran away from them; it was no longer self-evident that the program had to be seen. There was a need for investment, new ideas and programs.
Stolte recognized the existential challenge of public broadcasting, he bought big football at great expense – the national team games, world and European championships, the Bundesliga ended up on ARD after a stopover with the private sector.
A tactician like no other
Stolte was an unsurpassed tactician, a public broadcaster negotiator. He fought for an increase in the broadcasting fee (today the broadcasting fee) and balanced the parties’ access to his station. He looked at his own program with a conservative-liberal worldview and made many things possible – programs for the large audience as well as politics at prime time. He is credited with founding the cultural broadcaster 3sat, the “Literary” and the “Philosophical Quartet”. In the 1990s, one could still imagine something under the public broadcaster’s proclaimed “basic service mandate”; Stolte could do that anyway.
Born in Cologne in 1934, he came to ZDF in its founding year in 1962, as assistant to the then director Karl Holzamer. In 1973 Stolte changed to Südwestfunk SWF, but returned after three years and became program director of ZDF. After his time as director, Stolte moved his life from Mainz to Berlin and moved to an editorial position at Springer-Verlag and to the board of the Axel Springer Foundation.
Dieter Stolte, says acting director Norbert Himmler, “built ZDF into a modern, competitive media company”. He was “one of the formative architects of ZDF and its programming,” “as we still know them today. 3sat, Arte, KiKa, Phoenix, ZDF’s first digital channels – all of this happened during his four terms in office.” For Dieter Stolte, setting up the ZDF studios in the eastern German states was “a matter of the heart”. He saw television not only as a “reporter, but also as a motor of German unity”. He was a staunch supporter of the public service system.”
Published/Updated: Recommendations: 4 Peter Voß Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 9 Michael Hanfeld Published/Updated: Recommendations: 14
Not to forget his commitment to ZDF as a social institution, to the “Aktion Sorgekind”, which is now called “Aktion Mensch”, the German Cancer Aid, Welthungerhilfe and the German Foundation for Monument Protection. It is thanks to Stolte that ZDF, as a national public broadcaster, survived all the hazards of media policy debates.
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