Sydow had been interested in political journalism from an early age, often carrying around issues of his later employee's magazine and impressing classmates by acting as a "walking encyclopedia".[1] While working on his degree in Islamic Studies at the Free University of Berlin, he co-founded the Alsharq [de] blog in 2005, a platform for students to publish own articles about the Middle East. In 2013, this blog was nominated for the Grimme Online Award.[2]
In 2009, he began working for zenith, an independent German magazine specialized on events in the Arab world. During the Arab Spring in 2011, Sydow first became known to a wider audience by appearing as an expert on the topic in several forms of media.[3] Sydow joined Der Spiegel in 2012 and soon became their main correspondent in the Middle Eastern region, soon acquiring an internal reputation for his particularly meticulous and precise methods.[4]
Sydow, who was married and had two children, killed himself on 1 June 2020.[4]
