Koch, Thilo 1920-2006

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born September 20, 1920, in Canena, Halle, Germany; died September 12, 2006. Journalist, broadcaster, producer, and author. Koch was a prominent German television correspondent and news host and documentary writer and producer. After World War II, he completed his schooling at the University of Berlin and became a journalist. He was named head of the Berlin studio of North West German Radio in 1954, and he famously tagged along with German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer when the West German leader first visited Moscow in 1955. During the late 1950s, he also worked for Die Zeit, a Berlin newspaper, and hosted the radio program Gruss an die Zone. From 1960 to 1964, Koch was especially well known in Germany as a Washington, DC, television correspondent who helped make American culture popular in his country. He hosted Weltbuhne Amerika and Brief aus Washington during this time. From 1964 to 1982, Koch was a writer and television producer for German networks. After covering the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Koch began to favor documentaries over reporting, eventually making over 150 documentaries in his career. He was also a former editor in chief of ARAL-Journal. Though Koch wrote everything from biographies to poetry, novels, and essays, most of his books are not available in English, with the exception of Fighters for a New World: John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Robert F. Kennedy (1969).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Times (London, England), October 6, 2006, p. 78.