- Jacques Berndorf is the pseudonym of German journalist Michael Preute, who sets his mysteries in the Eifel region of Germany.
- According to SWR (Südwestrundfunk), he last lived in seclusion in the Vulkaneifel.
- Berndorf knew early on that writing is his great passion. As a teenager he wrote short stories. After an interlude as a medical student, he went to the "Duisburger Generalanzeiger" as a journalist. He switched to magazines, made a career.
- For twelve years he was a reporter all over the world, in wars and crises, in Lebanon, Vietnam and South Africa. "And at some point it turned out that I couldn't take the pictures anymore," he said. He became addicted to alcohol and got out.
- He himself had a number of things in common with his cranky investigator Siggi Baumeister: both lived on Heyrother Strasse, were journalists by training, and loved pipe tobacco and cats.
- As Jacques Berndorf, he wrote 23 novels about his investigator Siggi Baumeister and sold more than six million copies of his Eifel crime novels. The first book was published in 1989 under the title "Eifel-Blues".
- Jacques Berndorf's detective stories were always animated by the enlightening urge of the journalist Michael Preute, as the man behind the pseudonym was called.
- In 2019, Jacques Berndorf declared that he would stop writing after 30 years of Eifel crime stories.
- Born in Duisburg, he usually researched for months with the homicide commission, psychiatrists and weapons experts before he wrote a thriller.
- In 2012 it became known that the district of Euskirchen and the KBV-Verlag had awarded the "Jacques-Berndorf-Prize for Eifel crime novels" to the best young author who clearly has a crime novel set in the Eifel.
- After dropping out of medical school, Preute initially worked as a journalist, completed a traineeship and worked as a court reporter, among other things. He later reported from many war and crisis regions and settled in Berndorf in the Eifel in 1984 in order to concentrate on his work as a writer from then on. His new place of residence also inspired his pseudonym.
- His Eifel thrillers have long had cult status.
- In total, Berndorf wrote around 40 books.
- Jacques Berndorf brought crime to the provinces. In his detective stories, he distributed his corpses across the entire Eifel region: in the quarry, on the Vulkan-Maar, under oak trees. "I've always been interested in death," the crime writer once said at home at his living room table in Dreis-Brück in the Vulkaneifel region. As a "very quiet landscape", the Eifel invites you to let crime stories play there. "She has something for me that stimulates the imagination. Very strong.".
- In 1984 he came to the Eifel rather by accident. "I had journalistic assignments in Bonn and Brussels, and the Eifel was right in the middle." He moved into a "tiny farmhouse" in the town of Berndorf - after which he later named himself.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content