Jacques Berndorf died on July 3rd at the age of 85. This was confirmed by the publisher of the Eifel thriller author.
Michael Preute, who became known as an author under his pseudonym Jacques Berndorf, died on July 3rd. He was 85 years old. His publisher Ralf Kramp confirmed this to Südwestrundfunk (SWR). The journalist and writer, born in Duisburg in 1936, was particularly successful with his Eifel thrillers.
Adopted home inspired him to author names
After dropping out of medical school, Preute initially worked as a journalist, completed a traineeship and worked as a court reporter, among other things. He later reported from many war and crisis regions and settled in Berndorf in the Eifel in 1984 in order to concentrate on his work as a writer from then on. His new place of residence also inspired his pseudonym.
As Jacques Berndorf, he wrote 23 novels about his investigator Siggi Baumeister and sold more than six million copies of his Eifel crime novels. The first book was published in 1989 under the title “Eifel-Blues”. Books like “Eifel-Schnee”, “Eifel-Feuer” or “Eifel-Jagd” followed. There were also other thrillers and non-fiction books. In 2019, Jacques Berndorf declared that he would stop writing after 30 years of Eifel crime stories. According to SWR, he last lived in seclusion in the Vulkaneifel.
