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Rafael Seligmann, writer and journalist

October 25, 2013

Rafael Seligmann does not shy away from controversy. In his novels, newspaper articles and other non-fiction publications, the 66-year-old has called for a normalization of German-Jewish relations.

https://p.dw.com/p/1A68W

Talking Germany

His parents fled Nazi Germany, but returned to the country in 1957 together with their Israeli-born son. On Talking Germany Seligmann also discusses Jewish Voice From Germany, a quarterly newspaper he founded in 2012.

Rafael Seligmann is a well-connected man with contacts in politics, business and the media. He's also the man behind the Jewish Voice From Germany, an English-language quarterly. Its initial print run of 30,000 has already risen to 50,000 and it's read all over the world - especially in the US.

Rafael Seligmann sees the rebirth of Jewish life in Germany as the ultimate victory over Nazi barbarity. Born in Tel Aviv in 1947, he grew up in Munich and witnessed the normalization of German-Jewish relations first-hand. After giving up a traineeship as a television technician, he studied history and politics after getting a school leaving certificate at evening school, and wrote a doctorate in 1982 on Israel's security policy. He became a journalist and a political adviser and has also written essays and novels about the German-Jewish experience. Rafael Seligmann has three children and lives with his second wife, Elisabeth Seligmann, in Berlin.