Konrad Adenauer, Romy Schneider, Orson Welles – just three of the countless interview partners Georg Stefan Troller has had in front of the microphone during his eight-decade career as a television journalist.
Born in Vienna, he learned bookbinding before he had to flee the newly enlarged German Reich as a Jew in 1938; as a U.S. soldier, he was later part of the unit that liberated the Dachau concentration camp. After his studies in the U.S., a Fulbright scholarship took him to the Sorbonne; over the next decades he became a Paris correspondent, first for RIAS, then for WDR and ZDF. In the series »Personenbeschreibung« (Description of Persons), he transformed the journalistic technique of the interview into a high art form for seventy episodes, which became influential and still shapes journalists today.
Later he published numerous books, of which his autobiography, »Selbstbeschreibung« (Self Description), stands out particularly. He is still active today as a publicist and publishes the monthly column »Trollers Jahrhundert« in the Literarische Welt.
Georg Stefan Troller turns 102 this year. We are extremely pleased to welcome him as an honorary member of PEN Berlin.