Sandra Maischberger

Growing up bouncing between Frascati near Rome and Garching by Munich, Maischberger’s childhood was a proper European shuffle. Five years in Italian schools meant she started out speaking Italian, but Germany eventually pulled her back in. After high school in Garching, she jumped straight into journalism at the Munich School of Journalism, while also hustling as a freelance journalist at Bavarian Radio—editing, reporting, interviewing, the whole lot. She kept at it until 1993, even running the service department before moving on to TV gigs. By 23, she was already hosting “Live from the Schlachthof” for Bayerischer Rundfunk, then quickly landed shows like “Talk im Turm” on SAT.1 and “0137” on Premiere. Her style—honest, lively, a bit relentless—made her super popular not just in Germany, but in Austria and Switzerland too. She even helped shape “Spiegel TV Interview,” sticking around as host before heading abroad for a while. Marriage to cameraman Jan Kerhart came in ‘94, and they had a son in 2007. Maischberger’s TV journey kept rolling: “Freitag Nacht” on Spiegel TV, “Greenpeace TV” on RTL, and gigs with WDR, ZDF, Amica, and more. By 2000, she was a familiar face on n-tv’s “Maischberger.” Awards started stacking up—the Hanns Joachim Friedrich Prize, the German Television Prize, the Golden Camera. She kept reinventing herself, launching “People at Maischberger” on ARD, and even became a fairy tale ambassador in 2005. A steady stream of documentaries and books followed, plus a Federal Cross of Merit in 2013. Not bad for a kid who started with Italian as her first language.