Michael Jentzsch

Michael Jentzsch, born August 23, 1975, in Bremen, is a German writer and comedian who still lives in the city, where he also works as a teacher of English and sport at the Hermann-Bose-Gymnasium.

From age eight to fifteen he lived in Africa as the son of a missionary, first in Niger on the edge of the Sahara and then on the coast of Liberia, where his father worked for the Christian radio station ELWA. There he formed a close friendship with Benjamin Kwato Zahn, who came from the Nimba mountains. In 1990, when Jentzsch was fifteen, his family fled the outbreak of civil war in Liberia through Ivory Coast to Germany, and he went on to train as a teacher of sport and English while also playing basketball.

Kwato Zahn's family was killed during the civil war, and he himself was forcibly recruited as a child soldier by the National Patriotic Front of Liberia while fleeing toward the Nimba mountains; he later deserted and worked as a teacher, school director, diamond prospector, farm laborer and goat herder to survive. Fourteen years later, Jentzsch set out to find his friend, and the two eventually co-wrote a book about their childhood friendship and Kwato Zahn's later life, Blutsbruder: Unsere Freundschaft in Liberia, which became a bestseller on Der Spiegel's list.

Jentzsch has campaigned for support of the Liberian people and for awareness of African culture, receiving the Bremen Citizens' Award in 2007, and in 2011 he was voted the best teacher in Bremen and the second best teacher in Germany on the rating platform spickmich.de.