Former AP German-language service head Ulrich Renz, who covered Nazi trials, dies at 90

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BERLIN (AP) — Ulrich Renz, a former head of The Associated Press German-language service who also covered the trials of leaders of the Auschwitz death camp in World War II, has died at the age of 90.

Renz died Monday, according to Peter Gehrig, a close friend for 50 years and a former AP colleague who lived in the same senior citizen residence in Frankfurt. No cause of death was given.

Widely known as “Uli,” Renz began working for the AP in Germany in 1971, after a stint at United Press International. At AP, he first worked on the foreign desk and eventually headed the German-language service at its Frankfurt headquarters from 1986-92.

The German-language news service was begun after World War II to help establish a free press and support democracy in postwar West Germany. It was sold to the German news agency DDP in 2009.

Renz was born in Stuttgart in 1934 and grew up in the village of Giengen an der Brenz in southwestern Germany. After graduating from high school, he worked as a reporter for the Heidenheimer Zeitung newspaper, where he stayed until moving to UPI in 1959.

During his decades as a journalist in Germany, he focused on reporting about the country's highest court, the Federal Constitutional Court, and wrote extensively about the trials of many former Nazis, including the Auschwitz trials.

The 1963-65 trial in Frankfurt of 22 men who helped run the Auschwitz death camp in Germany-occupied Poland was one of the biggest following the Allies’ Nuremberg war crimes trials immediately after World War II. It confronted people in then-West Germany with the Nazi past and is credited as a turning point in German efforts to address the crimes of that period.

After retiring in 1992, Renz devoted his time to researching the life of Georg Elser, a carpenter who tried to kill Hitler in Munich but was thwarted because the Nazi leader unexpectedly left the room minutes before a bomb exploded. Renz published several books on Elser‘s life and the failed attempt, gaining recognition from scholars and political leaders. He was honored with the German Cross of Honor for his work.

“Renz’s passion for researching the Third Reich sprang at least partly from his father’s refusal to talk about his own role in it as a civilian administrator in Nazi-occupied Poland,” Gehrig said. “Across vanquished Germany, there wasn’t much interest into digging into the dark past. Uli was among the young Germans who thought otherwise.”

Former AP Bonn correspondent Terrence Petty said that “as a journalist and digger into uncomfortable truths, Uli was an inspiration to those who knew him and worked with him, myself included.”

Renz enjoyed biking, visiting coffee shops in Frankfurt and reading, although recently his sight had diminished, Gehrig said.

Renz is survived by his son, daughter-in-law and a granddaughter.