The former legal advisor of the Second German Television died on Friday at the age of 87.

Which Justiciar?

The one that generations of television viewers got to know and appreciate in his second, formative role in the eighties, nineties and early 2000s: Alfred Biolek, the human understanding and pioneer of screen parlando, is dead.

Michael Hanfeld

responsible editor for features online and "media".

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Anyone who remembers him can imagine that this Alfred Franz Maria Biolek, born on July 10, 1934 in the Czech town of Freistadt, moved with his family to Waiblingen near Stuttgart after the Second World War He worked as an assistant at the chair for foreign and private law in Freiburg, did his doctorate with a thesis on the "liability of manufacturers of defective goods under English law", briefly joined his father's office and then found a job at ZDF. His inclination and great talent, however, indicated early on in his student sideline - the cabaret "Das Trojanische Pferd", which he founded with fellow students in Freiburg.

Biolek completely switched from one subject to the other in the seventies, first as producer of the show “Amlauf Band” with Rudi Carrell, then with his own programs, “Bio's Bahnhof”, “Boulevard Bio” and “alfredissimo!”. He was omnipresent in WDR and in the first ARD program. He sketched the boom in talk and cooking shows that has continued to this day, with his trademark being genuinely interested in his guests. He listened, wanted to get to know celebrities as private people without revealing the most private.

His “Boulevard” was one with moderation, refinement and restraint, without greed for sensation and exposure. In the meantime, Biolek received bitter criticism, for example when he hosted the then Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl in 1996 and never got rid of one critical question. Of course, Biolek had no intention of doing that. The fact that Rosa von Praunheim outed him in an RTL program in the early nineties initially disliked the basically shy Biolek. He later realized that this was doing no harm, not to him personally and not to him in his public role, in which he helped to see being gay for the natural human being it is. Thirty years ago the message had not yet reached everyone in the German public.

"He was not only a gifted talk show host, but also an idea generator, discoverer, sponsor and extremely creative," said the director of the WDR, Tom Buhrow, about Alfred Biolek's death. “He was interested in people, art, culture and sophisticated entertainment.” He had invited artists to his programs who had been almost unknown in Germany until then and then became stars here too, such as Kate Bush or Paolo Conte. "Not to forget, he also discovered Monty Python for us," said Buhrow. The WDR can count itself lucky about the cooperation with Biolek.

For his way of wresting a human side from the media business, bringing the most diverse characters together and engaging them all in the same way for himself and the audience, Alfred Biolek has received well-deserved appreciation over the years, from the Grimme Prize to the Federal Cross of Merit to the German Television Prize, which he received in 2009 for his life's work. No more talk of “liability for damages” in the case of “defective goods”.