His father worked as a high school superintendent. During high school, the family moved to Freiburg, where Fest took his high school diploma. After the end of the war, he began studying law, history, sociology, German and art history at the University of Freiburg. Fest then continued his studies at the universities of Frankfurt/Main and Berlin (West), completing them in 1953. During his time studying in Berlin, Fest joined the Junge Union, which he temporarily led in the Neukölln district of Berlin. He was also a CDU representative for this district. After completing her studies, Fest initially turned to journalism. He joined the Berlin radio station RIAS, where he worked as an editor for political and contemporary historical matters. In 1961, Fest moved to Hamburg to work as chief dramaturge at NDR. He also served as deputy head of the main television drama department.

Two years later, Fest was promoted to editor-in-chief and head of the main current affairs department at the same station. In this role, he also temporarily headed the editorial team of the time-critical political magazine "Panorama". Between 1968 and 1972, Fest took a leave of absence from NDR in order to further his contemporary historical research. In 1963 he had already presented the study "The Face of the Third Reich". Contemporary German history from the First World War to the Weimar Republic and National Socialism to the history of the Federal Republic then formed the focus of his academic research and writing. Fest married and had two children. Fest received greater international attention in 1973 with the publication of his biography of Adolf Hitler, which was celebrated at the Frankfurt Book Fair of the same year and accompanied by the television program "Attempt at a Portrait" produced by the author himself. Fest was awarded the Thomas Dehler Prize in 1973 for his biography of Hitler.

Another highlight of his journalistic activity was the publication of Heinrich Himmler's secret speeches in 1975. At the 1977 Berlinale, the documentary "Hitler - a Career" created by Christian Herrendoerfer received an ambivalent reception: the film, which was based on Fest's Hitler research, The Hitler biographer provided the conception, comments and overall design. In addition to working for the news magazine "Der Spiegel", Fest also worked for the scientific Propyläen publishing house in Darmstadt and Berlin from 1968 to 1976. Even during his scientific and journalistic engagement, Fest remained loyal to journalism. So he worked for the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" (FAZ), whose cultural section he headed from the end of 1973. He worked as editor and political editor of the FAZ for two decades, which enabled him to gain recognition as one of the few conservative intellectuals in the Federal Republic of the 1970s and 1980s, which was characterized by student, women's and civil movements.

In 1981 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Stuttgart and the Thomas Mann Prize from the city of Lübeck. In the mid-1980s, Fest was involved in the outbreak of the so-called "historians' dispute" about the causes of the Holocaust, which was largely fought out between the historian Ernst Nolte and the philosopher Jürgen Habermas, and partly in the FAZ feature section. Shortly afterwards, the historian and journalist also demonstrated his skills in travel journalism: in 1988 he presented a stimulating and precise description of southern Italy with the book "Im Gegenlicht". In the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe from 1989 onwards, Fest critically addressed the end of social utopias in several essays in the early 1990s. He was also awarded the Goethe plaque from the city of Frankfurt in 1992. At the end of 1993, Fest resigned from his position as co-editor and cultural editor of the FAZ.

At the same time, however, he tirelessly continued his journalistic work, whose further stations included a report on the anti-National Socialist resistance, which he presented on the 50th anniversary of Hitler's assassination attempt in 1944, and in 1999 a biography of Hitler's architect Albert Speer. Another highlight of his journalism was the impressive study "The Downfall. Hitler and the End of the Third Reich," which Fest presented in 2002. The book describes the circumstances and mental states under which Hitler and the people around him were striving towards the end of himself and Germany in the last days of the war in the Berlin Führerbunker. With his book and advisory voice, Fest also played a key role in the creation of the film of the same name, which, produced by Bernd Eichinger and directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, was released in cinemas in autumn 2004 and immediately met with a great response. In addition to other prizes, Fest was honored in 2003 for his life's work with the Einhard Foundation's Prize for Outstanding Biography. In 2004, Fest also published his book "Encounters", in which he describes his encounters and exchanges with well-known personalities such as Hannah Arendt and Ulrike Meinhof.

Joachim Fest met on September 11, 2006 in Kronberg im Taunus.

Im Gegenlicht - eine italienische Reise (mit Joachim Fest)

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Joachim Fest

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