After Bild's editor-in-chief Julian Reichelt was kicked out, a joke made the rounds on Twitter: “The big question is whether Stuckrad-Barre will now become a member of KIZ.” In a song by the Berlin scandal rapper, it had previously been said: “If you are in the crew want to come in / Bring Julian Reichelt's head to me ”.
And in fact, the name of the writer Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre had repeatedly appeared in disclosure reports about possible misconduct by Reichelt in dealing with female employees.
When it became known in the spring that compliance proceedings were in progress against the former Bild boss, initially only a “pop journalist who wrote” or “former author of the Axel Springer Verlag” was whispered as one of the central whistleblowers. In March, the platform called Medieninsider the name: “That means Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre.” He had repeatedly asked his “close friend and Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner” about Reichelt and criticized the editor-in-chief so much that it was the relationship who charged both, it was said at the time.
That there could be something to this version became apparent at the latest when the New York Times reported in October about a private message that Döpfner had sent to Stuckrad-Barre: Reichelt was “really the last and only journalist in Germany who still bravely rebelled against the new GDR governmental state, ”it said accordingly. Döpfner himself came under fire for the private message, fired Reichelt, and complained about "men" who had clearly organized the procedure in the background.
So one would like to know what Stuckrad-Barre has to say about all of this. An interview has been on YouTube since Monday evening, which the moderator Kurt Krömer conducted for his rbb format “Chez Krömer” with Stuckrad-Barre. To Krömer's comment that there was a lot going on at Springer, Stuckrad-Barre only replied: “Yes? I don't know. ”He's currently writing a book, so he doesn't read much else. Krömer does not ask too much, instead he slips into the role of a lawyer and advises his interviewee: “The legal situation in the Springer case is very, very mined. Don't say anything, nothing at all! That is the only protection you have. "
However, he elicited a brief comment from Stuckrad-Barre when he asked whether a scandal like the one in Austria about Sebastian Kurz's resignation as Chancellor was also possible in Germany.
"The fact that greasy people are thrown out because of a text message probably only exists in Austria," says Stuckrad-Barre.
The rest remains a murmur.