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Willi Steul (* 28) April 1951 in Niederbrech, district of Limburg is a graduate ethnologist, journalist and broadcasting manager. From 1 April 2009 to 31 August 2017 he was Director of Deutschlandradio.

Live life
Steul studied ethnology, philosophy, Catholic theology and history in Oxford, Paris, Frankfurt am Main and Kabul from 1969. He conducted ethnological fieldwork in Afghanistan, worked briefly as a lecturer at the University of Kabul and deputy head of the Kabul branch office of the South Asia Institute of the University of Heidelberg. In 1978 he received his doctorate in ethnology at the University of Heidelberg.

From 1970 he worked continuously as a freelance employee, especially for daily and weekly newspapers, in order to finance his studies. From 1973 to 1975 he was a scholarship holder of the journalism school of the Catholic German Bishops' Conference at the "Institut für Förderung publizistische Nachwuchses e.V." in Munich.

After his doctorate, he worked for a year as a political editor at the SWF in Baden-Baden and as an ARD Middle East correspondent in Beirut (Lebanon). After that, he was SWF correspondent in Bonn for two years and additionally special correspondent of the ARD for Afghanistan. From 1982 to 1987 he worked as an ARD radio correspondent for Greece, Turkey and Cyprus. After that, he was head of the current affairs service at SWF in Baden-Baden for one year. In 1990 and 1991 he was an ARD radio correspondent for disarmament, UN and Switzerland in Geneva before becoming a special correspondent for the Gulf War. From 1992 to 1994 Steul was deputy director of the SWF/SDR studio in Bonn and from 1994 to 1998 editor-in-chief and deputy director of DeutschlandRadio Berlin.

From 1998, he was State Broadcasting Director Baden-Württemberg and Deputy Director of the SWR in Stuttgart. He competed with the SWR administrative director Peter Boudgoust and the SWR television director Bernhard Nellessen for the successor of the SWR director Peter Voß, but did not succeed.

Steul is Chairman of the Deutsche Freundeskreis Europäischer Jugendorchester e.V., which annually hosts the international music festival Young Euro Classic in Berlin and since 2007 also in Hamburg. From 1 April 2009 until his retirement on 31 August 2017, he was Director of Deutschlandradio.

He is a member of the Catholic student association K.D.St.V. Ferdinandea-Prague to Heidelberg in the CV.

Steul has been married to artist, art historian and educator Marie-Bénédicte Dutreux since 1978 and has four children. He has also held French citizenship since 2003.

Awards
On 10 November 2003, Willi Steul was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on the Band. In 2012 he was appointed Commander of the French National Order of Merit.

Works
Together with Wolfgang G. Beitz: Aid for Afghanistan. Publishing house Bonn Aktuell, Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-87959-168-7