About Me | GERALD DRISSNER

Who I am
Where I’ve been

Gerald Drißner (Drissner), born in 1977, grew up in Austria in a mountain village in the Arlberg region. He is a graduate economist and Arabist. He learned journalism at Germany’s most renowned journalism school (Henri-Nannen-Schule).

Gerald Drißner has lived in more than half a dozen countries. He currently resides in Berlin, Germany.

MOUNTAIN VILLAGE

Gerald is an experienced skier and alpinist, having grown up in one of the best ski areas in the world: the Arlberg region.
He has been programming since his youth and was connected to the outside world via his mailbox (BBS) even before the Internet.
Gerald attended secondary school in Innerbraz in Klostertal.
Later he graduated from the commercial college in Bludenz.
He then studied economics at the universities of Innsbruck and Münster (graduating in 2003 with a degree in economics; Mag. rer. soc. oec.).

JOURNALISM

Gerald has more than twenty years of experience in magazine and newspaper journalism and has been working as a freelance journalist for over 15 years.
He started as a freelancer at the Vorarlberger Nachrichten at the age of 16.
During his studies, he did a traineeship at the Austrian news magazine profil in Vienna.
After completing his training at the Henri Nannen School of Journalism (2004/05) in Hamburg, he was a staff-reporter at Stern magazine in Hamburg.
Later, Gerald left the position at his own request to study Arabic in Egypt.
In Cairo, Gerald worked as a guest editor at the Egyptian daily al-Masry al-Youm.

ARAB WORLD

Gerald has lived abroad for over twelve years in the Middle East, North Africa (Egypt, Tunisia), Turkey and Greece.
Gerald studied Arabic at the University of Alexandria/Egypt (2007 – 2012)
He has visited the most important Arab countries.
Gerald was one of the few German-speaking journalists to experience the Arab Spring in Egypt firsthand, as he was studying Arabic in Alexandria at the time.
During the financial and refugee crisis, Gerald lived in Athens (Greece) for two years and dealt intensively with the economic and social consequences.