“I would like to assume that those who intended me to be honored with the Heidi Krieger Prize for anti-doping fights know me to the extent that they knew: Fischer-Solms was an independent, incorruptible person, and he will be one too stay afterwards.”
Herbert Fischer-Solms, 2012
Journalism, German political sports journalism, has lost a great man, the best expert on German-German sports politics. It is on Sunday night Herbert Fischer-Solms died. He would have turned 76 in December. He shaped generations of journalists, including me. He was a mentor, critic, fatherly friend, smart, persistent, combative and always optimistic. Thanks for everything Herbert.
There are first obituaries by Anno Hecker (“The Voice of Sports on Deutschlandfunk”) and by Bianka Schreiber-Rietig (“A German-German Storyteller”). Herbert was a radio man, so here is Christoph Heinemann’s obituary, on the radio:
Let’s let Herbert speak. A mutual friend wrote me last night that this was one of his best comments. It’s always a typical comment for him. Summer 2012, already retired at the time, on the Drygalla case:
A few years ago, Jonathan Sachse shot a YouTube series with Herbert Fischer-Solms – at Point Alpha. There could hardly have been a better place to sum up a long working life, wonderful. I highly recommend this lesson. Of course, Herbert also explains in it why he spent four decades in the Deutschlandfunk Fischer-Solms and even by his son Fiso. I’m sticking with it too: Fischer-Solms.
And once again Fischer-Solms in the original: his speech at the award of the Heidi Krieger Medal of the DOH. A price that should soon no longer exist – also a piece of German-German sports history, with all its trials and tribulations before and after the fall of the wall, a never-ending topic. Tutoring, political and journalistic education from HFS:
2012_Fischer-Solms_Text_Heidi_Krieger-Prize_a
In 2006, Fiso contributed an interview with Wolfgang Schaupensteiner to our joint book “Korruption im Sport”, a sport network project. Much of it is still red hot:
Corruption-in-sport-2021-2006-copy-postponed
Do it, boy.
RIP.
