Die Anna Clauss from Tubingen (formerly Kistner) graduated from the Geschwister-Scholl-School (GSS) in 2001. She discovered her interest in journalism during her studies in Passau. She performed at poetry slams there and wrote articles for the local newspaper in Passau. After graduating as a cultural economist, Clauss applied to the German School of Journalism in Munich. The training in the fields of print, radio, online and television lasted two years – after which the Süddeutsche Zeitung offered her a job as an editor. At the age of 30, she was poached by the news magazine Spiegel, which was looking for female reinforcements in the Munich office. At first, the 41-year-old wrote reports from southern Germany, for example about the free bus service in Tübingen – the title of the text “Chocolate for everyone” is still hanging on the pin board next to her office desk in Munich. Clauss now works as head of the “Opinion and Debate” department at Spiegel. In addition, the Swabian, whose parents still live in Tübingen, has gained a reputation as a CSU expert and Söder opponent, as she repeatedly appears on talk shows from “Markus Lanz” to “Maybritt Illner”. In 2021 her first book “Söder – the other biography” was published.
Moritz Hagemann
“Local journalism in particular means a lot to people,” says Moritz Hagemann. He noticed that when he first met him in Horb am Neckar – he has been editor-in-chief of the NECKAR-CHRONIK there since April, which belongs to the SCHWÄBISCHEN TAGBLATT publishing house. The 32-year-old has been working in local journalism for a long time and has held a number of positions at TAGBLATT: He started in 2008 as a freelancer in the sports department. “Sport is an incredibly good school. On the one hand, because sport always has to be up-to-date, but also because in sport you deal with many different people from all walks of life,” says the Tübingen native. He also learned that when he was an intern in regional sports at the Süddeutsche Zeitung. His studies in applied media in Munich and in Mittweida, Saxony, also revolved around sports, with a focus on sports journalism and sports management. In 2014 he returned to Tübingen and began a traineeship at TAGBLATT in 2016. The connection to the newspaper was not only there because of his time as a freelancer – his father has been working in the advertising department for decades. “There was always an interest,” he says. After his traineeship, Hagemann was taken on as an editor with a focus on regional business, and in 2019 he switched to online editing. He has been in charge of the NECKAR-CHRONIK since April.
Verena Mueller
The photographer Verena Müller was born in Tübingen in 1984 and grew up in Hechingen. After graduating from high school, she trained as a photographer in a classic portrait studio. This was followed by an internship at the reporting agency Zeitenspiegel in Weinstadt. She then went to Hanover to study photojournalism and documentary photography at the university. She did her practical semester at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, for which she worked as an editorial photographer for six months. The 38-year-old has been working as a freelance photographer for newspapers and magazines such as the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit and Stern for over ten years. Verena Müller lives in Stuttgart.
Joachim Hentschel
Joachim Hentschel (born in 1969 and grew up near Ulm) was always interested in publishing: as a child he produced radio programs with a cassette recorder and made his own newspapers and magazines with a typewriter and colored pencils. However, Hentschel never did a newspaper internship. “It always seemed like an elite club to which I had no access,” he says – but he later became a journalist. During his teacher training course in Tübingen and a practical year in England, he noticed: “Teaching was more boring than I thought.” So Hentschel worked as a freelancer for a PR agency in Stuttgart. At the same time he applied to TAGBLATT as a freelancer. He was 26 years old when his first article appeared. In 2000 he received the offer to do a traineeship at TAGBLATT. After that, Rolling Stone magazine offered him a job. At the same time, he worked as a freelancer for the FAZ, Vanity Fair and the Süddeutsche Zeitung, among others. In 2008 he became editor of the men’s magazine GQ, in 2010 deputy editor-in-chief of Rolling Stone. He later switched to the business magazine Business Punk as an editor, and in 2014 he became deputy editor-in-chief of the computer magazine Wired. He has been working as a freelance journalist and editor since 2020 and lives in Berlin.
Sophie Holzapfel
Sophie Holzäpfel knew early on that she wanted to write – just not how to go about it. It was only a few years later that she gained insights into journalism during her studies in “Integrated Media” at the University of Oldenburg. “My teacher, who worked as a freelance journalist, advised us to gain practical experience, to go out and write,” says the 26-year-old. Following this advice, Sophie Holzäpfel applied as a freelancer at TAGBLATT in November 2021 – and got her first assignment: to write an article about the demonstration of a threshing machine. This taught her about farm work in the 1950s and 1960s. A subject she had never dealt with before. “It felt a bit like the door of an unfamiliar world opened a crack and I had the opportunity to look inside. That feeling has lasted to this day,” says Sophie Holzäpfel. Since she’s been a freelancer for TAGBLATT, she’s gotten to know Tübingen – where she grew up – all over again.
Wolfgang Bauer
The Zeit reporter and crisis reporter Wolfgang Bauer also began his journalistic career at TAGBLATT. There he started working as a freelancer in 1994, parallel to his studies in Islamic studies, geography and history in Tübingen. He wrote his first article about the mediatization of the imperial city of Reutlingen, another earlier article was about fixing on Reutlingen’s playgrounds. At the end of 1995, the native of Hamburg accompanied the then TAGBLATT photographer Andreas Lobe on a donation transport by Caritas to Bosnia to write about the situation after the Bosnian war – his first point of contact with war reporting. In 2001 he switched from TAGBLATT to Focus. First he was an editorial representative in Munich, then he worked as a freelancer. At the same time, Wolfgang Bauer began writing for magazines such as Mare, Geo, Brigitte and National Geographic. In 2011 he started working for the weekly newspaper Die Zeit, initially as a generalist. Wolfgang Bauer has been a reporter for the editor-in-chief since 2016. He also works as an author, most recently his reportage on Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban was published. Bauer has received numerous national and international journalism awards. The 52-year-old lives in Reutlingen.