Max Hermes
Stand: 03.06.2022
Max Hermes was born in 1989 and has been working at WELT since 2019. Since the summer of 2021, he has been part of the broadcaster’s permanent reporter team.
Max Hermes was born in North Rhine-Westphalia in 1989 and gained his first journalistic experience in the editorial offices of local newspapers and regional radio stations in his home state.
After studying journalism in Cologne, he completed his training at the RTL School of Journalism as a trainee and then worked for two years in the Leipzig RTL field studio as an editor and reporter. He has been part of the team at the news channel WELT since 2019 and has been part of the channel’s permanent team of reporters since summer 2021.
As one of the youngest WELT reporters in Ukraine, Max Hermes recently reported for weeks from the war zone.
In his own words, Max Hermes explains why he chose the profession of reporter: “As a reporter, I have the privilege of meeting people I wouldn’t otherwise have access to – and I’m also allowed to pester them with questions. For someone like me, who was born with a great deal of curiosity, it’s the perfect mix.” For him, the best moments are those when people thank him and his team for his reporting.
“You can’t get that out of your head”
After spending many months in front of the camera for WELT on German and European politics, the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine began for Max Hermes at the end of February 2022, one of the most demanding assignments of his previous work as a reporter:
“When Putin’s soldiers attacked the country, I stood at the Polish border and witnessed how thousands of people fled every day – often with only a small bag in which they had stuffed the bare essentials. You can’t get that out of your head. Later I traveled to the Ukraine several times, where I was able to report for many weeks from a wide variety of regions, including the front. I am deeply impressed by the unbelievable willpower that this people has despite the terrible events.”
Working as a war reporter
In addition to broadcasting live from the Ukrainian border area and the west of the country, Max Hermes has also been reporting from heavily contested regions such as Kharkiv and Donbass in recent weeks. The Luhansk region recently showed just how high the personal risk war correspondents expose themselves to in the context of independent journalism. After French cameraman Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff was shot dead while filming his own evacuation from a danger zone, Hermes and his team witnessed the arrival of the dead and surviving journalists. Hermes describes his impressions of this experience in the WELT video.
role models in journalism
Max Hermes attaches great importance to the fact that international press teams penetrate into contested, remote or politically isolated areas, despite the high personal risk they are taking: “Basically, I really like the style of big American broadcasters like CNN, which also do so with enormous effort report from the most remote regions of the world and often get very close to the protagonists.”
For Max Hermes, good journalism is characterized by illuminating all facets of a story: “…talking to people instead of reporting down from the ivory tower” – that’s important to him. Information from social media also plays an important role for Hermes: “All statements must have gone through a fact check. When the research is complete, we want to tell the story in a way that is understandable for the viewer and at the same time lively.” For him, good journalism is always the result of teamwork.
Dealing with stressful situations and balance
When working as a reporter, Max Hermes particularly takes the advice of colleagues to “don’t be too dogged” to heart. He emphasizes: “Sometimes we should stop for a moment in certain situations, look at the things that went well and be happy about them. This is often more difficult than always wanting more and further.”
Max Hermes finds a balance to the hectic everyday life of a reporter in sport. In his free time, the journalist is a passionate group fitness trainer: In Berlin, he takes to the stage in the classrooms of several fitness studios and makes people sweat: “All stress is immediately forgotten.” preferably in a sunny, warm place.