Theresa Breuer, freelance journalist

Theresa was spending a short time in London, when I caught up with her recently. Originally form Germany, since 2009 she has been based in the Middle East, currently in Beirut. She works as a freelance foreign correspondent for many of Germany’s magazines and newspapers, writing stories ranging from cultural life in Bagdad to saving kidnapped girls from Isis controlled territories and beyond. Theresa tells me that she’s always wanted to be a journalist and she’s attracted to the Middle East mainly because ‘there was just always something on the news about the middle east when I was growing up and it just sounded like an interesting place’. Me and Theresa are about the same age and I know exactly what she’s referring to. I also always felt that particular excitement about the news, and the Middle East specifically felt like a place where developments constantly demanded world attention.

Theresa studied political science in Berlin and journalism at a journalism school in Munich. After graduation, she received a generous scholarship that enabled her to go to Israel and Palestinian territories for six months, and through that, become a working journalist. She started pitching stories to various magazines and realised that if your ideas are good, doors are bound to open to you.
She now spends her time researching and writing long feature stories, that usually have a political angle. Recently, she also started working more with filming. Theresa’s partner is a professional photographer and together they turn her stories into short documentaries.

1. Who were your role models (real and/or fictional) when you were little? What about now?

Having looked at Laura Pannack’s interview, I’m glad I had some time to think about it. I realise that the first role models I’ve ever had were the Spice Girls. It was the first time that I ever got in touch with feminism and I was about ten years old. They were proclaiming girl power and friendship amongst women, and not being dependent on your lover, but still liking men. That probably influenced me a lot more than I’d be willing to admit. It was cool, because when I look at origins of feminism, especially in Germany, a lot of it seems to be suspicious of men and always seem to be a bit like ‘you definitely shouldn’t try to be pretty or sexual’ and I feel like the Spice Girls turned that around. You were allowed to be sexy, cool, independent, smart and all the things at the same time. I found that really appealing.
Now my role models, I’m afraid it might be a bit boring for your readers, are mostly german people. There are several writers I really admire for several reasons.
Carolin Emcke, who’s a philosopher and journalist. Having the intellectual capacity of Carolin Emcke would be amazing. She’s probably in her mid or late forties and writes mostly for quite an intellectual newspaper in Germany called Die Zeit. She writes about political topics and backs a lot of it with philosophical ideas and concepts and she’s just insanely smart and not afraid to show it. I like that about her.
There’s Christoph Reuter, who’s a journalist for Der Spiegel. He writes mostly about Syria, speaks Arabic fluently, knows everything about Syria, is insanely brave and has uncovered a lot of things about the war in Syria, the background and structures of Isis. And he is probably the war reporter I admire most. He completely lacks the bravado that a lot of war journalists have. He seems driven by the cause and the story and not by the fame he gets through it, which is really cool.
And the last person I want to name is Max Gold who is a german writer and he started in satire, writing for a magazine called Titanic. It is a satire magazine and I love it, because he as a writer and the magazine as a whole, they see through all the bullshit. Whether it’s right wing bullshit or left wing bullshit. I feel like it’s quite rare with the media that people keep an open mind. Everyone comes from a certain political background, way of thinking, there’s always a bias in journalism, I think. I don’t want to say that it’s a bad thing. I just don’t believe in the idea that you can be 100% objective and I feel that satire comes closest to it because they don’t (well good satire doesn’t) side with one side. They observe everything really closely and make fun of everything that is worth making fun of, and hopefully that causes people to think about what’s really being said and done. I’m a big fan of satire and Max Gold.

2. What do you value most in yourself? And in others?

In others I really value loyalty, friendship and honesty. I admire people who see through bullshit and maybe to give you the most simple example… I really don’t like it when people post inspirational posts on Facebook by, let’s say Paolo Coelho, whom, I think, Max Gold once called a literary demagog. I like people who think for themselves and don’t repeat after what somebody else says or writes. I value intelligence and ability to think.
In myself I value most probably that I really enjoy life. That I feel like I’m exactly where I want to be with whom I want to be, in the region I want to be. I feel like if I’m going somewhere else tomorrow I wouldn’t hesitate. I don’t hesitate to try new things. Or go to places. You know when sometimes people say ‘I wish I could do that’ or ‘I wish I could be there’… I don’t have that. I’m really happy with my life. That’s what I value most. Often, when I look at other peoples lives, there are certainly aspects where I think ‘oh this is great, what this person is doing is great’. But there isn’t a single person that I know, that I wish I was in their place. Like I’m just really happy in the place that I am. I’ve been like this, more or less, since I graduated from high school and I could chose where I want to live and I wasn’t dependent on my parents. I’ve done very little that I didn’t want to do. I usually do what I want to do.

3. What was your biggest disappointment?

I don’t feel like I’ve been let down by other people. I guess the biggest disappointment would be in myself. I’ve been disappointed in myself in the past. Basically, for hurting other people. I’d say I was just not mature enough to see how my actions would influence other people and I hope that I’d learned from them.

4. What’s the most ambitious thing that you have accomplished?

Well… Living as a foreign correspondent in the middle east – that’s probably it. I remember when I did my first internship at my local newspaper, I was 19 at the time. At the end of my six weeks the editor in chief sat down with me and asked me ‘how was it? Did you like it? Do you think journalism is for you?’ And I said ‘Yeah I’ve always wanted to be a journalist, eventually a foreign correspondent’. And he looked at me and said ‘yeah everybody wants that, maybe you shouldn’t….’ Basically, good luck.
And I guess theres isn’t a magazine or a newspaper that made me their correspondent, but I really like living as a freelancer. So that’s my biggest accomplishment.

5. What is success for you?

The very obvious success for me is being able to make a living out off a profession you love. But, at the risk of sounding super cheesy, I think it’s even more important to have good relations with my family, my friends, my partner. Being kind to them, being in the good trusting loving partnership where you’re on equal level is probably what I consider biggest success.

6. Five famous people at your dinner party. Who are they?

Oh yeah! I was thinking about that dinner party haha! I’m serving steak. Bloody. Haha!
I would invite Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Isis boss.
Bashar al-Assad, the dictator of Syria.
Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel.
Jesus and Mohammed.

First of all, I’ve always been fascinated by dictators, and it’s so rare to catch a glimpse to dictator’s psyche that I would hope to gain some access to that. And I’ve been fascinated by icons of course. I’ve always wondered if you could confront Jesus or Mohamed, nowadays with what people have done and said in their name… what they would say to that? That makes me really curious. Seeing what Mohamed has to say to Isis leader would be really interesting. Just having these men, who probably, I don’t know about Jesus or Mohamed, but the other three seem like complete egomaniacs to me, having them in the room, maybe trigger some conversations. I would just like to sit and watch.

7. What advice do you wish someone had given you when you were a teenager?

Not respond to questions like – ‘where do you see yourself in five years?’ or ‘where do you see yourself in ten years?’ Because I feel like there’s too much pressure to have a plan – where you want to be in life, what you want to do and what you want to achieve. I do think it’s good to have a general outline or to know where your talents lie or what you feel passionate about, but I feel like having your mind set in one way isn’t really helpful. And I think that embracing the randomness of life and what comes your way will probably make you less tense and happier. My dad, he still does that – ‘where do you see yourself in five years’. And I make the mistake of answering that. And when I’m done answering he goes – ‘where do you see yourself in ten years’. Honestly? Five years ago I knew I wanted to be a foreign correspondent somewhere, or a freelance journalist somewhere, but apart from that I didn’t know anything. It depends on the people you’re going to meet and or the partner you’re going to have or whether you’re not gonna have a partner. I don’t wanna go through life and just look straight. I sometimes just wanna stand still and look around and be like ‘oh this is interesting’.

8. The best and worst things about my job are…

The best is certainly the freedom. I can choose where I want to go, what kind of stories I want to do, whether I want to work really hard for two weeks in a row or get up at noon, have a big breakfast and then stay in bed all day to watch Netflix. The worst things are probably the insecurity, the guilty conscience that will inevitably creep up after not having had a job for too long. I find that a lot of german magazines are really fair when it comes to payment, but, still, when I look at my friends who have proper contracts… They get money when they go on vacation, they get money when they get sick, and I don’t have that. For now its fine, because my partner works, I work, it’s just the two of us, we’re both not very materialistic and we do have a lot of cash to spend on travel and going to restaurants, and just basically oysters and champagne and all the pretty things in life. But I do wonder what it will be like when we think about starting a family, and that freedom that I now value will turn into full on panic, for not having enough work and that it doesn’t pay well enough. So we’ll see. But again this is something I try not to worry about too much, because who knows what’s going to come next year or in two – three years.

9. Describe yourself in the words of someone who’s in love with you.

I asked my partner this morning. He said: independent, intelligent, one of the rare people who really want to live in the world, and sexual. And he’s obviously said that, because we haven’t seen each other in two days and things are going really well. There are certainly days where he would have said – not very communicative with her feelings. I would probably also say quite loud. I know that people in the past have described me as arrogant, which is probably true sometimes.

10. Who would you like to nominate for my next interview and is there anything you want to ask them?

Her name is Elizabeth Andrewartha. She is an actress and she lives in London. We went to high school together in the states for one year and we were more or less the only europeans there and bonded over that. I think she’s really impressive, very fierce, very smart, she’s very self confident. Ask her whether she’s happy?! That’s something I’m wondering.