13 Facts About Claas Relotius

Claas-Hendrik Relotius was born on 15 November 1985 and is a German former journalist.

Claas Relotius resigned from Der Spiegel in 2018 after admitting to numerous instances of journalistic fraud.

Claas Relotius studied political and cultural studies at the University of Bremen, graduating with a Bachelor's degree.

Claas Relotius received several awards for his reporting, including the Deutscher Reporterpreis on four occasions, most recently in 2018.

Claas Relotius was the German-language CNN "Journalist of the Year" in 2014 for a story written for the Swiss magazine Reportagen and won the European Press Prize in 2017.

Many details in Claas Relotius's articles, including nearly everything in the Fergus Falls story, were found to be made up.

Claas Relotius faked interviews with the parents of NFL footballer Colin Kaepernick.

On 19 December 2018, made public that Claas Relotius had admitted that he had "falsified his articles on a grand scale", inventing facts, persons and quotations in at least 14 of his stories in, an event occasionally being referred to as "Spiegelgate".

Claas Relotius told his former colleagues that he was sick and needed to get help.

For example, Claas Relotius lied about seeing a hand-painted welcome sign by the city limits that read: "Mexicans Keep Out".

Claas Relotius was accused of embezzling donations intended for Syrian orphans he claimed to have met in Turkey.

Claas Relotius appealed to readers for donations to help orphans, and the donations were paid into his personal bank account.

From 2012 to 2018, Claas Relotius received a total of 19 awards in journalism, including the Austrian Magazine Prize, the Catholic Media Prize, the Peter Scholl Latour Prize and the German Reporter Prize four times - three of them for the best report of the year.