Christoph von Marschall

Christoph von Marschal speaking in Frankfurt, Germany.

Christoph von Marschall (born in 1959) is a German journalist working as the editor and as a United States correspondent in Washington D.C. for the daily Berlin newspaper Der Tagesspiegel. Before that, he was the director of the commentary section.

He is currently the only German in the White House press corps.

Biography

Christoph von Marschall was born in 1959 in Freiburg im Breisgau. From there, he studied Eastern European history and political science in Freiburg, Mainz, and Cracow, and earned a doctorate in Eastern European history from Freiburg University in 1988. Soon afterwards, he became a foreign correspondent in Hungary for the Süddeutsche Zeitung and remained in this job until 1991. While there, he also worked for the Deutschlandfunk radio service and the magazine Cicero. In 1999, Marschall was awarded a Kellen Fellowship that enabled him to spend one month working at The New Republic and a further month at The Wisconsin State Journal.

In 2002, Marschall received the George F. Kennan German-American Commentary Award of the Foreign Office for a commentary post related to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

In 2007, Marschall wrote a book about the presidential candidate Barack Obama, Barack Obama - Der schwarze Kennedy. The literal translation of its German title is "Barack Obama. The Black Kennedy". The book was a best seller in Germany, where other commentators had also compared Obama with John F. Kennedy.

In 2007 and 2008 Marschall covered the Obama campaign for the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel. He was often interviewed in the American press about Obama's popularity in Europe. Towards the end of the campaign he wrote an op-ed column in the Washington Post in which he complained about the lack of access Obama had granted to foreign journalists.