Second six-year mandate for Limbourg, first elected in 2013
Peter Limbourg has been re-elected as director general of Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) for another six years, his first mandate having been deemed very successful.
DW celebrated its 65th anniversary this year.
Limbourg’s record was praised earlier this year during a debate at the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament on 20 April 2018.
“Impressive track record” at DW
Addressing the Bundestag, the Christian Democrat (CDU) MP Elisabeth Motschmann rejected calls from the far-right Alternative for German (AfD) for changes to the law governing Deutsche Welle.
In her speech Motschmann commended Limbourg’s track record since his appointment in 2013, describing it as impressive. DW is “one of the top three foreign broadcasters” in 27 of the 30 languages in which it reports, and 97 per cent of users surveyed praise the broadcaster’s credibility, Motschmann said.
DW’s weekly audience across all media has gone up from 101 million to 157 million between 2014 and 2017, and its four TV channels in English Arabic, German and Spanish can potentially reach 465 million households, according to DW 2017 Management Report.
International background, extensive journalistic and managerial experience
The son of a diplomat Limbourg spent his childhood in Rome, Paris, Athens and Brussels. He studied law in Bonn and completed a journalistic traineeship at the German television news agency Deutsche Fernsehnachrichten Agentur (DFA) in Bonn and London (1988-1989).
Limbourg worked as a reporter in Iraq, Israel, Algeria and Leipzig, in the former East Germany, before becoming the Europe and NATO correspondent for DFA and private Sat.1 TV in Brussels in 1990.
Limbourg became head of the private TV ProSieben studio in Bonn in 1996 and also occupied senior positions with N24 (now WeltTV).
Limbourg was Senior Vice President of ProSiebenSat.1 (the 2000 merger of ProSieben and Sat.1) from 2010 to his appointment as DW Managing director in October 2013.
DW is set to forge ahead with a wider offer and gain an even larger audience under Limbourg’s next mandate.