Udo Ulfkotte

Udo Konstantin Ulfkotte (20 January 1960 – 13 January 2017) was a German journalist and author who worked for the German main daily newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) from 1986 until 2003. From the end of the 1990s, he wrote several bestsellers and increasingly advocated right-wing populist, Islamophobic, and conspiracy-theory positions. He said that journalists, including himself, and leading newspapers published material that had been fed to them, or bought, by the CIA and other Western intelligence and propaganda agencies.

Early life and education Ulfkotte was born in Lippstadt in Westphalia and grew up in Dorsten and Warburg. After graduating from high school in 1978 at the Marianum Gymnasium in Warburg, he studied law and political science at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg. In February 1987, he received his doctorate under Dieter Oberndörfer at the University of Freiburg with a dissertation on continuity and change of American and Soviet politics in Near and Middle East 1967 to 1980.

Career In October 1986, Ulfkotte became a member of the political editorial board of FAZ, where he belonged to the foreign policy department until 2003 and dealt with Africa, the Arab states and the United Nations. He said that he lived mainly in Islamic countries between 1986 and 1998 (including Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan) and travelled to over sixty states. According to Michael Schmidt-Salomon, he was a "born-again Christian".

During his studies, he was an employee of the CDU-oriented Konrad Adenauer Foundation He was regarded as a specialist in security management and business espionage. Ulfkotte was a lecturer in security management in the field of business administration at Leuphana University of Lüneburg from 1999 to 2007 and taught competition observation in the United States.

In 2004, the Frankfurt am Main public prosecutor's office searched Ulfkotte's private and office space because of the "suspicion of incitement to the betrayal of their secrets" of the Criminal Code. Ulfkotte is said to have known about state protection proceedings before they became publicly known. He denied bribes and said the action was politically motivated. The German Journalists' Association (DJV) said: "If it was a question of silencing a journalist in times of widespread fear of terror, it would have to be massively protested against it". The procedure was closed in 2005. He was also a regular author of the internet portal Kopp-Online and editor-in-chief of the weekly magazine Kopp-Exklusiv.

Political activities Ulfkotte was a co-founder of the anti-Islamic association Pax Europa in 2006, which joined Stop Islamisation of Europe (SIOE), as part of the counter-jihad movement. In 2007, he formed the European Friends of Democracy and Values. In the 2007 Bremen parliament election, he supported the right-wing populist voters' association Citizens in Rage (BIW), which he joined in June 2007.

Also in June 2007, Ulfkotte signed the anti-Islam organisation Federal Association of Citizens' Movements (BDB)'s "Wertheimer Appell" against their supposed "creeping Islamisation" of Germany. On 11 September 2007, Pax Europa together with Stop Islamisation of Denmark (SIAD) and the British No Sharia Here, planned a Europe-wide demonstration against the "Islamisation of Europe" in Brussels. On 9 August 2007, this was banned by the Mayor of Brussels Freddy Thielemans. Pax Europa and SIOE approached the far-right Belgian party Vlaams Belang for their assistance. The associations complained against the ban and were represented by the Belgian lawyer Hugo Coveliers, whom Filip Dewinter of Vlaams Belang, had given them. The lawsuit filed on 30 August 2007 was dismissed. After initial cooperation, Ulfkotte and Pax Europa distanced themselves from Vlaams Belang and the Cologne branch of the German League for People and Homeland (DLVH), the Citizens' Movement Pro Cologne, which had called for participation in the demonstrations. In 2008, Pax Europa merged with the BDB to form the Citizens' Movement Pax Europa (BPE). In July 2008, Die Welt reported on death threats on the internet against Ulfkotte and his wife in connection with an anti-Islamic video posted on YouTube, which was not from the Ulfkottes, but was falsely attributed to them. At the beginning of December 2008, Ulfkotte left the association Citizens' Movement Pax Europa (BPE), which he founded, because of its "increasingly extremist courses". He took part in a Pegida event in Dresden as a speaker on 5 January 2015. An English translation was released under the title Presstitutes. Several media outlets rejected Ulfkotte's claims as frivolous.

Death Ulfkotte died from a heart attack on 13 January 2017 at the age of 56.

Works English-language books

German-language books