Christoph von Marschall

Christoph von Marschal speaking in Frankfurt, Germany.

Christoph von Marschall (born in 1959) is a German journalist working as the editor and as a United States correspondent in Washington D.C. for the daily Berlin newspaper Der Tagesspiegel. Before that, he was the director of the commentary section.

Biography

Christoph von Marschall was born in 1959 in Freiburg im Breisgau. From there, he studied East European history and political science in Freiburg, Mainz, and Cracow, and earned his Ph.D. in Eastern European history from Freiburg University in 1988. Soon afterwards, he was a correspondent in Hungary until 1991 for the Süddeutsche Zeitung. There, he worked for Deutschlandfunk and the magazine Cicero.^[1] In 1999, von Marschall was awarded a Kellen Fellowship that enabled him to spend one month each working at The New Republic and The Wisconsin State Journal. ^[2]

In 2002, von Marschall received the German-American Commentary Award of the Foreign Office for a commentary post related to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

In 2007, von Marschall wrote a book about the presidential candidate Barack Obama, Barack Obama - Der schwarze Kennedy. The literal translation of its German title is "Barack Obama. The Black Kennedy".^[3] His book was a best seller in Germany, where other commentators had also compared Obama with John F. Kennedy.^[4]

In 2007 and 2008 von Marschall covered the Obama campaign for Der Tagesspiegel. He was often interviewed in the American press about Obama's popularity in Europe. Towards the end of the campaign he wrote an op-ed column^[5] in the Washington Post in which he complained about the lack of access Obama had granted to foreign journalists.^[6]

References