Renate Holland-Moritz (1935–2017)

Renate Holland-Moritz was born in Berlin, Germany, and grew up in her father's hometown of Steinbach-Hallenberg. After completing secondary school, she began working as an intern and assistant at various East Berlin daily newspapers, and was briefly an editor and then a freelance journalist. In 1956, she began writing for the satirical magazine Eulenspiegel. Her articles and film reviews, written from 1960 to 2015, made her famous and grew to achieve cult status due to their razor-sharp wit. She also published about 20 books, two of which were adapted into television films. Among the best known is Die tote Else - Ein wahrhaftiges Klatschbuch (The Dead Else - A Veritable Gossip Book, 1986) in which she reported on her encounters with celebrities. Three of her books were written with her then-husband, writer and journalist Lothar Kusche. In 1978, she was awarded the Goethe Prize of the city of Berlin.