Christoph Tiemann

Tiemann was born in December 1977 in Dortmund, North Rhine-Westphalia and grew up in Selm to a Protestant family, the son of a civil servant and chemical laboratory technician.^[1][2] He attended Gesamtschule (comprehensive school) in Lünen and later went on to graduate from the University of Münster in 1998, studying psychology and religion.^[2][3] During his studies, he began his broadcast radio career as a presenter for Radio Q [de], a campus radio station in Münsterland.^[4]

Tiemann began his professional radio career in 2003 on 1LIVE, a radio station part of North Rhine-Westphalian public broadcaster WDR.^[5] He then joined the satirical radio program Zugabe [de] on WDR 2 since 2004.^[6] He was a writer and an actor on radio play crime series Eins Live Dekoder in 2005 on Deutschlandfunk.^[7] Since 2005 he has been a member of the Münster-based improvisational theatre placebotheater and has been an actor since 2006 at various theatre productions held at Theater Münster and Theater Oberhausen.^[8][9] Between 2007 and 2008 he produced the video podcast Das W-Team for Funke Mediengruppe.^[10] He also produced the radio play Mutabor in 2008, which was nominated for an award during the ARD Radio Play Days the same year.^[11] Since 2009, Tiemann began broadcasting on WDR 5 with his weekly column Tiemanns Wortgeflech, in which he entertainingly explains the origins of idioms and proverbs.^[12] For the 200th episode, he published a book version of the column titled Gebratene Störche mit phatten Beats.^[13]

In 2010, Tiemann debuted his solo cabaret Kabarettverbot and was awarded the prizes Reinheimer Satirelöwe [de] and the Scharfe Barte [de] by the cities of Reinheim and Melsungen in 2011 and 2013, respectively.^[14][15] He made his debut with his ensemble Theater ex libris with an adaption of the American children book series Three Investigators in 2010 and since then have produced and performed over one hundred readings by 2016.^{[16][non-primary source needed]} Adaptions of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Dracula and A Christmas Carol have also been produced as live audio plays by Tiemann and Theater ex libris since 2017.^[17] The basis for the audio plays have been from the various authors' original texts which he edits and adapts for live audio performing.^[18]

During the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany, Tiemann introduced live streaming of selected audio plays in 2020 and 2021 after several cancelations of in-person performances.^[19] He released the first studio-recorded audio play adaption of A Christmas Carol on CD in May 2021.^{[citation needed]} In 2023, he debuted a new podcast about his ensemble and the first episode was released on 5 March.^{[20][non-primary source needed]}

• Tiemann, Christoph (2014). Gebratene Störche mit phatten Beats: Redewendungen und Wortneuschöpfungen auf der Spur. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag. ISBN 978-3499628719.