Adrian Geiges (born 3 September 1960) is a German writer and journalist born in Basel, Switzerland.

Life

Adrian Geiges, born September 3, 1960, is a journalist from the

Black Forest The Black Forest (german: Schwarzwald ) is a large forested mountain range in the state of Baden-Württemberg in southwest Germany, bounded by the Rhine Valley to the west and south and close to the borders with France and Switzerland. It is t ...

in southern Germany. He became the

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

of the Chinese subsidiary of the German publisher

Bertelsmann Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA () is a German private multinational conglomerate corporation based in Gütersloh, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is one of the world's largest media conglomerates, and is also active in the service sector and ...

. In his autobiography, “How the World Revolution Once Accidentally Started in the Black Forest“, he describes how he transformed from a West German

communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

to a

capitalist Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, priva ...

, ironically in the People’s Republic of China. He had a year-long training at a secret

cadre school The May Seventh Cadre Schools () were Chinese labor camps established during the Cultural Revolution that combined hard agricultural work with the study of Mao Zedong's writings in order to "re-educate" or ''laogai'' (reform through labor) cadres an ...

in former communist

East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

. His autobiography describes moral conflicts, typical of the many in his country of his generation who started as extreme leftists and evolved at breakneck speed into aggressive capitalists. These developments in Geiges’ political and work commitments led to far-reaching changes in his personal life, including in his love and sex life. In German media his book has been seen as a biography of a lost generation that dreamed of a better future without noticing the present. The leading German newspaper '' Sueddeutsche Zeitung'' calls it a book "that sometimes lets you roar with laughter and sometimes makes you sad." Since the summer of 2004 Adrian Geiges has been the

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...

Correspondent of the leading German weekly news magazine ''

Stern The stern is the back or aft-most part of a ship or boat, technically defined as the area built up over the sternpost, extending upwards from the counter rail to the taffrail. The stern lies opposite the bow, the foremost part of a ship. Ori ...

''. Before that he founded the Chinese enterprise of G+J, the Bertelsmann corporation’s magazine division. In the 1990s he had worked as a television reporter for

Spiegel TV ''Der Spiegel'' (, lit. ''"The Mirror"'') is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of 695,100 copies, it was the largest such publication in Europe in 2011. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...

and RTL in Moscow and New York. He has studied

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...

and Russian. In early 2013 he moved to Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and has been working there as a documentary filmmaker. He is living in a favela and has written about his experiences in Brazil in his book "Brazil is Burning".

Works

* ''Brazil is Burning'', Quadriga 2014 * ''With Confucius to World Power'', with Stefan Aust, Quadriga 2012 * ''How the World Revolution Once Accidentally Started in the Black Forest.'' Eichborn 2007 * ''Russia Explosive'' (together with Andre Zalbertus). vgs 1994 * ''Love is Not on the State Plan'' (together with Tatjana Suworowa), Japanese Edition. JICC 1992 * ''Love is Not on the State Plan'' (together with Tatjana Suworowa ), Russian Edition. Sobesednik 1990 * ''Revolution Without Shooting'', Turkish Edition, Iletisim Yayinlari, 1990 * ''Love is Not on the State Plan'' (together with Tatjana Suworowa). Wolfgang Krüger/S.Fischer 1989 * ''Revolution Without Shooting''. Pahl-Rugenstein 1988 * ''Awakening China''. Pahl-Rugenstein 1987 * "Xi Jinping. Der mächtigste Mann der Welt". Piper, München-Berlin, 2021.

References

* * *

External links

Adrian Geiges' Official Website

{{DEFAULTSORT:Geiges, Adrian Living people 1960 births German male writers