Gabor Steingart

Life

Steingart was born 1962 in Berlin-Kreuzberg as a son of a Hungarian political asylum seeker and a Berlin woman. He studied political science and macroeconomy at the Philipps-Universität Marburg and at Freie Universität Berlin. After finishing his university studies he went to the Georg von Holtzbrinck-Schule für Wirtschaftsjournalismus in Düsseldorf. Steingart first worked for the economic magazine Corporate Finance and after that for Wirtschaftswoche. He joined Der Spiegel as a business correspondent in 1990 and became its Berlin bureau chief in 2001, a post he held until 2007. He then moved to the United States of America and worked as the magazine's senior Washington DC correspondent. On 5 April 2010, he became the chief editor of Handelsblatt, Germany's leading economic newspaper.

Works

Steingart has written several highly popular books. Deutschland. Der Abstieg eines Superstars (2004), in which he criticised the country's lackluster economy and the politicians' inability to reform, stayed on the bestseller lists for months. Steingart was named Wirtschaftsjournalist des Jahres (Economy journalist of the year) in 2004. His next book, Weltkrieg um Wohlstand. Wie Macht und Reichtum neu verteilt werden (2006) was published in 20 countries. A revised version (The War for Wealth) was published in the United States in 2008. The former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger described the book as "a lucid and compelling reality check". In his Spiegel columns, Steingart was a persistent and abrasive critic of U.S. President Barack Obama.

Books