About the event

Germany is drying out: The award-winning investigative journalist Uwe Ritzer addresses the imminent water shortage and the coming distribution conflicts

The climate change has reached Germany: Record temperatures, sinking groundwater levels, dried out and sealed soils, which can no longer absorb the rain and thus give rise to flood disasters. Water is becoming a scarce resource also in our country, with the industry, agriculture and households consuming more than is naturally replenished even today. However, for now, nobody really addresses the consequences of this plight, the distribution conflicts, which are taking part already now behind the scenes between companies and communities and which we will all be confronted with soon, as directly as with gas and electricity today. Uwe Ritzer, business and investigative journalist of the "Süddeutsche Zeitung", writes a compelling report about a country in acute climate change and shows what must be done today to ensure our water supply also for tomorrow. A long overdue wakeup call directed to politics and consumers.

The event takes place in cooperation with the Penguin publishing house.

Moderation: Eva Lell (BR)

Personal data

Born in 1965, Uwe Ritzer is a business correspondent of the SZ and became widely known as an investigative reporter for his reports, among other things, about shady dealings in the energy industry and for exposing the manipulation scandal of the German automobile club ADAC. He has been committed to the issue of potable water for years. He has won multiple awards for his work, i.a. the Wächter award, the Henri Nannen award and the Helmut Schmidt journalists’ award. As a book author, he published "Die Affäre Mollath" (2013, with Olaf Przybilla), "Lobbykratie" (2016, with Markus Balser) and more recently "Markus Söder" and "Die Spiele des Jahrhunderts" (2018 and 2020, both with Roman Deininger).

About the series

"Zur Sache ..." / "To the point ..." – Authors at the Staatsbibliothek, is a series of events jointly organised by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and Munich publishing houses, with the kind support of the Sponsors and Friends of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and the book trader Lehmkuhl.

Information on the event at a glance