Joachim-Ernst Berendt
Joachim-Ernst Berendt (20 July 1922 in Berlin – 4 February 2000 in Hamburg) was a German music journalist, author and producer specialized on jazz. Life Berendt's father, Ernst Berendt, was a Protestant pastor belonging to the Confessing Church who was imprisoned and died in the Dachau concentration camp. J.-E. Berendt started studying Physics, but his studies were interrupted by his enlistment to the Wehrmacht. Already during the Nazi Germany years Berendt took an interest in jazz; enthusiasts in this period retreated to the underground. After World War II, he helped founding the Südwestfunk (SWF) radio network in the then French occupation zone of Germany. From 1950 until his retirement in 1987, he was in charge of the jazz department of the SWF. In 1952, the first German edition of Berendt's Jazz Book was published. It became a definitive book on jazz translated into many languages and is still being updated and reprinted. For almost 40 years, Berendt produced the jazz program of the Baden-Baden station of the German public radio and TV network ARD. His weekly TV show Jazztime Baden-Baden and his daily radio shows were pioneer work in promoting jazz in post-war Germany. Berendt later focused on world music