Profile

Grew up in Rastede, a central location for Oldenburg horse breeding, studied German and English at the Free University of Berlin. Editor-in-chief of "Oldenburger Sportpferd" at the age of 23. 1992 internship in the sports editorial department of ZDF. At the end of 1994, he completed his studies with a master's thesis on the "Representation and meaning of horses in the courtly novel". He then worked in radio at Sender Freies Berlin (SFB, now RBB), focusing on the Berlin 88Acht radio station, initially as a reporter and later as an editor. As a live reporter, he covered everything from the Love Parade to state visits and the Berlin Marathon. As an editor, he was responsible for the morning show, "Guten Morgen Berlin!" Parallel: Freelancer for various horse magazines, author of several films about famous stallions and Trakehner breeding with the TV production Vogel (now wehorse) and TV reports.
In 2003 he moved to Hamburg to work for the equestrian magazine St. Georg. Research with reverberations in the public debate were the 2005 article "Dressur pervers" - the discussion about training methods in dressage sport ("Rollkur" or "Hyperflexion"), later he tracked down the subsequently convicted animal abuser Christine Wels.
Editor-in-chief from 2012. Jan Tönjes has reported from World and European Championships as well as Olympic Games and has won various media awards. Since 2018, he has been on the board of the International Association of Equestrian Journalists (IAEJ), which elected him President in 2022.
Alongside his writing activities, Jan Tönjes is also known as a presenter. He was a guest lecturer at the Nürtingen-Geislingen University of Applied Sciences (HfWU) for several semesters.
Jan Tönjes has three grown-up children. He lives in Hamburg and is currently taking a break as an active horse breeder. The family is (and remains) committed to one thing: home-bred horses with a high thoroughbred content.