 Following this he spent time as a Fulbright scholar at the "William Allan White School of Journalism" of the University of Kansas.He began his career as a journalist in 1956, freelancing for the Norddeutscher Rundfunk, the local public broadcaster for Hamburg and surrounding areas of the Federal Republic, and for the Deutsches Allgemeines Sonntagsblatt, a weekly newspaper published by the Evangelical Church in Germany.In 1960 he switched to the Westdeutscher Rundfunk, a public broadcaster based in Cologne, and became part of the editorial team of the Tagesschau, the broadcaster’s news service.