During the day, ARD shoots in the clinic, in the evening it goes to Berlin for the Corona special broadcast by Pinar Atalay on RTL, and the next day, after work, there is an interview with the FAS: The pulmonologist Cihan Çelik is a popular representative during the corona pandemic of the clinic staff who have treated thousands of Covid-19 patients since March 2020.

Julia Anton

Editor in the Society department at FAZ.NET

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In a calm voice, Çelik then talks about everyday life in the Covid isolation ward that he runs at the Darmstadt Clinic. From patients who do not have enough air to breathe. From people who become infected because they live in precarious circumstances. From a patient who wanted to be vaccinated - but whose children kept canceling their appointments. Of the challenges in treatment because there is still no really effective drug against Covid-19. From sick high-risk patients who would be dependent on herd immunity. And of doctors and nurses who are disaffected and overworked - but many of whom still go back to work every day to help.

It is precisely Çelik's calm and sober demeanor that makes his reports so impressive.

Even laypeople can easily follow his explanations of treatment methods; in talk shows he sometimes wears sneakers with a suit.

And above all, he shows that despite all the polarization, discussions are still possible without extreme positions: If he is asked about lockdown measures or the compulsory vaccination, he does not make any absolute claims, but always restricts that he can only use his expertise as a medical professional speak.

A job that is close to people

Expertise that the federal government has also drawn on: Çelik is part of the #Impfwissen campaign. In this context, he explains in his mother tongue, Turkish, why it is important to be vaccinated against the virus. “The need for information must not fail because of the language,” says Çelik.

He was born in 1986 in Seeheim-Jugenheim in southern Hesse, and Cihan Çelik grew up with an older sister in neighboring Pfungstadt. Her Turkish grandparents came to Germany as guest workers. Doctor was by no means his dream job from childhood, he says. As a teenager he was more interested in astrophysics, but mathematics didn't really work. Then during the high school the inevitable question of how to proceed. It was clear that it should be a course of study, even though his parents did not have a university degree themselves: "My sister was my great role model," says Çelik. Four years earlier, she had enrolled at a university with great certainty.

“In the Turkish generation of immigrants there is a certain longing for bourgeoisie, that is, for an academic career that also offers professional security,” says Çelik.

Many therefore studied business administration or law, but he wanted a job that was close to people - and so he began studying medicine at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität in Heidelberg in 2007.

After completing my studies, I went back to Hesse, first to the German Clinic for Diagnostics in Wiesbaden, and later to the Horst Schmidt Clinics.

The pandemic is leaving its mark

When he wanted to get to know another hospital in 2018, Çelik moved from Wiesbaden to Darmstadt and moved closer to his home town again.

“I'm a Hessian boy,” he says with a laugh.

In Darmstadt he made his specialist in internal medicine and pulmonology.

"Pneumology is an area of ​​internal medicine in which one does not work surgically, but in which one works endoscopically and interventionally and not only treated with medication," says Çelik.

That makes the subject varied, and knowledge about this discipline, which is still young in Germany, is in demand in the clinics - especially since the corona pandemic, of course.