Karlsruhe Dialogues 2009

Ronny Blaschke M.A.

Speaker 

 

Ronny Blaschke was born in 1981 in Rostock/Germany and today works as a sportswriter in Berlin. He did an internship at the sports editorial of the newspaper WELT am SONNTAG when still having attended school. He studied sport- and political science at the University of Rostock and graduated in the year 2005. During this time, he did further internships at the magazine Sport-Bild and in the sports editorial of the Hamburger Abendblatt, the Berliner Zeitung as well as the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Blaschke regularly writes for the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Berliner Zeitung, the Financial Times, the Frankfurter Rundschau and the Stuttgarter Zeitung, the taz, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Spiegel Online and for various magazines such as 11 Freunde. In this context, he also deals with topics that go beyond sports.

His main areas of interest besides reporting of sport events in the Northeast of Germany and of major events (such as the football world championship in 2006) are different sport-sociological topics, fan-cultures and integration in football as well as forms of violence and discrimination (hooliganism, racism, anti-Semitism and homophobia).

In 2007 he published his book “Im Schatten des Spiels – Rassismus und Randale im Fußball” and in 2008 followed the book “Versteckspieler – Die Geschichte des schwulen Fußballers Marcus Urban”. He moderated different events about sports, for example the nationwide fan-congress in 2007 in Leipzig, the discussion about right-wing extremism held by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in 2007 in Berlin and the integration-event at the University of Hannover in 2008. He moderated the seminar for sportswriters about the handling of violence in sports by the media (2008) as well as the conference against violence in Rostock in 2008. In addition, he has been a speaker and guest in several panel discussions.

In his internet blog http://ronnyblaschke.de he writes about the instrumentalisation of sports. Blaschke has received several awards for his work: In 2005 he was awarded the Sparkassenpreis für Sportjournalismus in the category newcomer. In 2007 he received the Deutsche Fußball-Kulturpreis in the category footballbook of the year as well as the prize “Der lange Atem” by the VJB for violence in football.

ZAK asked Ronny Blaschke to answer the following question:

What Can Citizens do Against Right-Wing Extremism? 

"Citizens can do nothing to prevent Nazi gatherings, to forbid the NPD, or to break up their structures of companionship. What they can do, however, is to promote tolerance and to counteract rightist extremist signals in their environment with arguments. The foundation: education, knowledge of the Basic Law and the Constitution, and persistence and an understanding of democracy."