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There are loud and quiet journalists, extroverted and introverted, brute and subtle.
Stephen Brown was (what a terrible, unimaginable past tense) a man of soft, clear, yet sharp tones.
The editor-in-chief of “Politico” Europa, which, like WELT, belongs to Axel Springer, used his X-ray vision to get to the bottom of the complex European reality around him in Brussels, but also on his travels through this densely exciting continent.
Anyone who had the pleasure of lunch or breakfast on an editor-in-chief's trip experienced a sympathetic thoughtfulness and seriousness towards the reality to be described and analyzed, which reminded one that Stephen had studied modern literature at Cambridge.
He had fully arrived in politics, but retained the philosophical as a nature.
Stephen asked questions where others chatted away.
In the questions themselves, he always left traces in the answers that make the empty and punched out appear to be not a good option.
He had seen a lot of the world and was the Reuters office manager in Buenos Aires, Stockholm and Rome.
As a traveler, he always took his family and probing curiosity with him.
If he gave up his reticence and got into the storytelling, one was immediately taken by the delicacy of the perceptions and punch lines.
Stephen had a cool, almost Nordic sense of humor.
It could be served sugar-sweet and elegantly bitter.
With the founding of “Politico” he found his journalistic home, which he should fill like no other.
He worked there for five years and 10 months as head of news, then managing editor, then editor-in-chief.
A job that fulfilled and fulfilled him.
He presented himself to his team like a man, and at the same time we kept talking openly about what could be done better, how and where.
As a member of the editorial board together with the fantastic “Politico” founder John Harris in Washington, we mixed journalistic craft issues with the analysis of world events in the talks.
It was a gift to have a discussion with Stephen and John in this group.
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I will miss Stephen very much.
Not just his honesty in the feedback, but his fine way: the incredibly well-tempered.
His impressive success at “Politico” speaks for him.
The void he leaves will be very large.
FC Bayern has given him a riddle and also dealt with what German football is all about.
Whether he used that as a metaphor for his riddles about the Germans, or whether he really meant the record champions, I won't find out any more.
Stephen died surprisingly, unexpectedly and infinitely too early on the morning of this Thursday.
He was only 57 years old.
Stephen's death makes his team, his colleagues and me very sad.
We bow to him.
We'll miss you, Stephen.