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At the age of 14, Pleitgen was already working as a freelancer for sports and court reporting for the local edition Bünde der Freie Presse Bielefeld. He also began a two-year traineeship here in 1959. At the beginning of 1963, Pleitgen joined WDR television in Cologne, where he worked for the "Tagesschau" until 1970. This is where the journalist's foreign reporting began, who reported from Brussels and Paris on the discussions between the "European Economic Community" (EEC) and NATO and in 1967 reported from the Middle East on the "Six-Day War" between Israel and its Arab neighbors. In 1969 he married Gerda Lichtenberg. Together they became parents of four children. In 1970, Pleitgen was appointed as a foreign correspondent for ARD in Moscow, from where he kept the German television audience informed about the internal events in the Soviet Union until 1977 in such a way that he soon became a "Cold War reporter".
In mid-1977, Pleitgen moved to East Berlin in the same role after Klaus Bednarz replaced him in Moscow. Until 1982, the foreign correspondent had a lasting impact on the German public's image of the other German state through his reports and reports from the GDR. As the successor to Peter Merseburger, Pleitgen went to Washington in mid-1982 to document the era of the Reagan administration as ARD's USA correspondent until 1987 - not without critical judgments about the president's policies. After Pleitgen temporarily managed the ARD studio in New York in 1987/88, he was appointed editor-in-chief of WDR television in mid-1988. A little later he also took over the moderation of the foreign magazine "Weltspiegel". At the beginning of 1994, Pleitgen was promoted to radio director of WDR, whose five programs he restructured in terms of content. In mid-1995, Pleitgen was appointed director of WDR, succeeding Friedrich Nowottny.
The new boss of the largest ARD broadcaster focused on quality in his programming by trying to increase viewership through good television journalism (reports, documentaries) and upscale entertainment films. During his term in office, Pleitgen also promoted the expansion of ARD's online program in the spirit of the new media revolution. Finally, he himself played an active role in the programming as the moderator of the Sunday ARD "Press Club". Pleitgen was confirmed as director of WDR for another term in 2000. At the beginning of 2001, Pleitgen was also appointed chairman of ARD. In the following months, the new chairman of "First" was particularly involved in the dispute over the television broadcasting rights for the 2002 and 2006 World Cups. At the end of 2002, Pleitgen resigned from the ARD chairmanship. In addition to being director of WDR, he now took on the role of deputy chairman of ARD.
In September 2004, the deputy chairman of ARD and director of WDR took action against the planned introduction of a state-determined quota in public broadcasting: In this context, Pleitgen warned against interference with the broadcasters' program autonomy. In January 2005, the WDR director also spoke out in favor of expelling politicians from broadcasting committees in the future in order to guarantee the independence of the media. On December 17, 2006, after almost 300 broadcasts, Fritz Pleitgen hosted the ARD "Presseclub", one of the oldest series on German television, for the last time. Monika Piel followed him. In May 2005, Pleitgen was awarded the "Médaille Charlemagne pour des Médias Européens" in Aachen as a European media personality. From April 1, 2007 to the end of 2011, Pleitgen was chairman of the management board of Ruhr 2010 GmbH.
He was honored with the Great Cross of Merit in 2012 for his voluntary, social commitment, such as as President of the German Cancer Aid. He was also awarded the "Golden Blokhin Medal" from the Blokhin National Medical Research Center of Oncology in 2019. In June 2020 it became known that Pleitgen was suffering from pancreatic cancer.
Fritz Pleitgen died on September 15, 2022 in Cologne.
