Monika Piel (born 9 April 1951 in Bensberg) is a German

television journalist Broadcast journalism is the field of news and journals which are broadcast by electronic methods instead of the older methods, such as printed newspapers and posters. It works on radio (via air, cable, and Internet), television (via air, cable, ...

and

radio journalist Broadcast journalism is the field of news and journals which are broadcast by electronic methods instead of the older methods, such as printed newspapers and posters. It works on radio (via air, cable, and Internet), television (via air, cable, ...

Life and career

Piel studied

Business economics Business economics is a field in applied economics which uses economic theory and quantitative methods to analyze business enterprises and the factors contributing to the diversity of organizational structures and the relationships of firms with ...

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 m ...

. Afterwards she studied Jura and

Oriental Studies Oriental studies is the academic field that studies Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology. In recent years, the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Middle Eastern studi ...

without graduating. During her studies she worked as an assistant at the panel discussion ''Der Internationale Frühschoppen'' under Werner Höfer. From 1979 to 1989 she worked as an editor and presenter for the current radio magazines of

WDR 2 WDR 2 is a radio station owned and operated by the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) public broadcasting organization in Germany. It focuses on contemporary pop and rock music for an adult audience and on information. It is also WDR's broadcast sport ev ...

. From 1982 to 1984 she worked for WDR as a freelance journalist in

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

. From 1989 to 1993 Piel was a radio correspondent for economic and financial policy at the WDR studio in

Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr r ...

. She then spent a year as head of the radio programme group for business, agriculture, environment and transport. In 1994 she was appointed as an editor-in-chief of radio and became a program director at WDR 2. From the end of 1997 to 2007 she was radio director of WDR and from 2001 to 2003 she headed the ARD Radio Commission. On 1 April 2007, she took over as the new director of WDR the successor to

Fritz Pleitgen Fritz Ferdinand Pleitgen (21 March 1938 – 15 September 2022) was a German television journalist and author. He was correspondent in Moscow, East Berlin and Washington. Pleitgen was a supporter of Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik. In 1988, Pleitgen b ...

. When she was elected to the Broadcasting Council, she received 38 votes with two dissenting votes and two abstentions. Piel had no competitors after two candidates,

ZDF ZDF (, short for Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen; ; "Second German Television") is a German public-service television broadcaster based in Mainz, Rhineland-Palatinate. It is run as an independent nonprofit institution, which was founded by all fe ...

editor-in-chief

Nikolaus Brender Nikolaus Brender (born 24 January 1949) is a German journalist. He was the commissiong editor of the German public broadcasting station ZDF between 2000 and 2010. Life Brender was born in Freiburg im Breisgau, then French zone of occupation, ...

and NDR Justiciar Werner Hahn, had withdrawn. From 2007 to 2013 she worked as director of German broadcaster WDR. She prematurely terminated her employment on 30 April 2013 for health reasons. She had

sleep disorder A sleep disorder, or somnipathy, is a medical disorder of an individual's sleep patterns. Some sleep disorders are severe enough to interfere with normal physical, mental, social and emotional functioning. Polysomnography and actigraphy are test ...

s and

tachycardia Tachycardia, also called tachyarrhythmia, is a heart rate that exceeds the normal resting rate. In general, a resting heart rate over 100 beats per minute is accepted as tachycardia in adults. Heart rates above the resting rate may be normal (su ...

and was diagnosed with

arteriosclerosis Arteriosclerosis is the thickening, hardening, and loss of elasticity of the walls of Artery, arteries. This process gradually restricts the blood flow to one's organs and tissues and can lead to severe health risks brought on by atherosclerosis ...

in January 2013.Interview mit der Zeitschrift ''Stern''
stern.de 30. Oktober 2013
/ref> From 2011 to mid-2016, she was CEO of the Cologne Cathedral Cultural Foundation and has been a member of the Board of Trustees since August 2016. Piel is married to the WDR 2 radio representer Roger Handt. They have a daughter and live in

Voreifel The Voreifel ("Fore-Eifel" or "Pre-Eifel") is the name of a settlement area in the southern part of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It is a term that grew out of the local speech. The region of the Voreifel includes the towns and vil ...

External links

* *
Monika Piel at WDR
2010

FAZ, 27 January 2013

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Piel, Monika People from Bergisch Gladbach German television journalists German broadcast news analysts 20th-century German journalists 21st-century German journalists 1951 births Living people Westdeutscher Rundfunk German women television journalists ARD (broadcaster) people Westdeutscher Rundfunk people 20th-century German women 21st-century German women