Thomas Medicus, born in 1953, studied German, political sciences and art history in Marburg/Lahn and earned his PhD in 1982. He worked as freelance journalist for outlets such as Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Deutschlandfunk and Baseler Zeitung, and as an editor fpr the Der Tagesspiegel in Berlin and the Frankfurter Rundschau. In 2001 and in 2006 he was a fellow of The Society of the Federal Republic at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research.
In 2007 Medicus was Goethe-Munk writer at the Munk Centre for International Affairs at the University of Toronto. Since February 2008 Thomas Medicus is a visiting scholar at the Hamburg Institute of Social Research. He has been living with his family in Berlin for more than 20 years.

After his studies (music, philosophy and teaching degree for medical grooming), Moritz Matthies decided to become a journalist. The undercover report Nimm mich mit about the Marburg animal shelter gained him a job as an editor at the Discovery Channel, where he was responsible for high-quality documentaries, among others the nature-film-oscar nominated movie Jip und Jep – zwei Affen auf dem Highway.
At the peak of his fame, he withdrew from public. Years of wandering. Matthies traveled to the German zoos and established himself as an author for zoo catalogues. In Berlin, he met Ray's kin, an acquaintance which inspired him to write the novel Ausgefressen.

Matthias Oden studied history, political science, and ethnology. After completing a traineeship at the Financial Times Deutschland he worked as a journalist and later became editor of the lifestyle magazine Business Punk. He then was deputy editor at Werben & Verkaufen, a trade magazine for advertising and communication. He was awarded the Hans Strothoff Prize and the German Journalist Prize.

Florian Opitz was born in 1973 in Saarbrücken. He is a filmmaker, author and journalist and studied history, psychology and English and American literature in Heidelberg and Cologne. In 2000 he got his master's degree. In 1998 Florian Opitz started making documentary films. He developed and produced numerous documentations for different German and European broadcasters and gave documentary classes at various colleges.
For his documentary The Big Sellout, he was given the Grimme-Preis in 2009. Moreover the film was prenominated for the Deutscher Filmpreis (en.: German movie award) in 2008. It was invited to 35 international film festivals and was shown in cinemas of 8 countries. It was one of the five most successful German documentary films in the cinema year 2007.

Helmut Oehring was born in 1961 in East Berlin. He is a self-taught musician and composer and did not write his first music until the age of 25. When he was 29, he became an honorary student of the Academy of Arts in Berlin, which he was chosen to be a member of in 2005.
From 1994 to 1995 he was a scholar at the Villa Massimo in Rome and since then received numerous awards and honours, for instance the Hanns-Eisler-Preis of the Deutschlandsender Kultur, the Orpheus Chamber Opera Award Italy, the Schneider-Schott-Preis, the Hindemith-Preis as well as the Arnold-Schönberg-Preis. He composes both chamber and opera music, film scores and solo music. His work counts up to over 200 compositions by now.

Jon Flemming Olsen is founder, singer und guitar player of the country band Texas Lightning, that entered the charts in 2006 with their Grand Prix-contribution No No Never and received gold and platinum records. Since 2004 he plays the role of snack bar host Ingo in the Grimme-awarded comedy Dittsche – The Really True Life. Moreover Olsen is a designer of musical products and made numerous cover artworks for artists like Udo Lindenberg, Annett Louisan, Stefan Gwildis, Selig and Phillip Boa.

 

 

Claudius Pläging, born in 1975, is a screenwriter and a novelist. He began his career as an editor at ZDF and then worked for many years as a writer for "TV Total" and "Schlag den Raab". In addition to his novels, he has also written gags and sketches for famous German comedians like Anke Engelke and Olli Dittrich. He has been awardes the German Comedy Prize several times and has been nominated for the Grimme Preis. Pläging lives in Cologne.

Klemens Pütz holds a PhD in marine biology and is Germany’s only penguin researcher. For the last thirty years he has explored the life of the penguins. He founded the Antarctic Research Trust, which in 2004 acquired four small, unspoiled Falkland Islands named Rum, Brandy, Whiskey and Sea Lion Easterly. The acquisition of these four islands, which provide breeding place for hundred thousands of penguins, is an important step in his mission to preserve the animals’ habitat in the Antarctic and Subantarctic. Clemens Pütz has fulfilled his dream – with much creativity and against great odds – and even though he now has family in Northern Germany, he is drawn back to the Antarctic every winter. Periodically, he also acts as an expedition leader on cruise trips through the Antarctic and the Falkland Islands where he shares his fascination for the region and its habitants with the tourists by taking them on discovery tours.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jean Peters was born in 1984. He studied political science and is a clown by training. Working as a performance artist, he founded the Peng collective for civil disobedience and subversion, which combines performance art and media manipulation with classical campaigning and investigative research. With Peng he infiltrated the press work of companies such as Shell, Google and Vattenfall. He publicly called for a pan-European refugee aid and founded an opt-out programme for secret service personnel. Because if the Fascists should rise to power again, he wants to be able to brag about having done everything possible to prevent it. 

 

 

 

 

Stephan Puchner, born in1971, is a graduate of the Munich University of Television and Film and was awarded numerous prizes as director and author of short films (among others the Official Contribution to the Contest Cannes International Film Festival and the Hessischer Filmpreis).
In 1997 and 1998 he was responsible for the project development of Bernd Eichingers Constantin Film company and attended to the development of numerous cinema and television films.
Since 1999 Stephan Puchler is freelance author. In 1994 he wrote the music film Música Cubana, The Sons of Buena Vista produced by Wim Wenders and in 2007 Pornorama, produced by Bernd Eichinger and directed by Marc Rothemund (Sophie Scholl). Since 2003 he teaches screenplay and playwriting at the University of Television and Film in Munich.