 He attended boarding school at Aloisiuskolleg in Bonn and went on to study business administration in Berlin, but did not graduate.He started his career in television at Sender Freies Berlin in 1986 first as an intern, then as a reporter for local sportscasts.From 1990 to 1992 he regularly hosted "Punkt 4 Länderreport", a national afternoon newscast on ARD.