Eduard Zimmermann was born on 4 February 1929 in Alte Heide in the
borough of Schwabing-Freimann in
Munich, Germany to a
teenage mother who worked as a waitress. Shortly before the
Second World War Zimmermann moved to his grandparents house in
Ottobrunn. At the end of the war Zimmermann moved to the city of
Magdeburg where his mother had married a
hotelier, and where Zimmermann was first employed at his stepfather's hotel. Following the Second World War the man who would later be known as a 'criminal hunter' and 'crook's bane' eked out a living as a
thief and
black market trader, for which he served a sentence at Fuhlsbüttel Prison. With a false identity and diploma he finally found work as a roadworks engineer in Sweden. Zimmermann returned to the
Soviet occupation zone in Germany on an assignment for
Dagens Nyheter newspaper. There he was charged with espionage in 1950 and sentenced to 25 years in prison. He served five years of his sentence in
Bautzen and was released early on 17 January 1954 in the run-up to the
Berlin Conference. Subsequently, he worked as a journalist and editor at
NDR and
ZDF. From 20 October 1967 to 24 October 1997 Zimmermann presented 300 episodes of the ZDF TV series
Aktenzeichen XY... ungelöst (
Case number XY … Unsolved), whom he also co-hosted with his adopted daughter
Sabine from 6 November 1987 until 24 October 1997 (Sabine would remain at the said programme until 7 December 2001), as well as 180 episodes from 1964 to 1997 of
Vorsicht Falle! – Nepper, Schlepper, Bauernfänger (
Beware, Trap! – Scammers, Hustlers, Conmen). He then retired from the television business and maintained an Internet security portal in co-operation with
ZDF. Zimmermann was a co-founder of e.V. (White Ring), an organisation that assists victims of crimes, and was its chairman for many years. On the occasion of
Aktenzeichen XY's hundredth episode on 7 October 1977 Zimmermann received the
Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany on ribbon, presented by Federal President
Walter Scheel, and was subsequently awarded the Order of Merit First Class on 16 June 1986, presented by Federal President
Richard von Weizsäcker. In 1982 he received the
Humanitarian Award of the German Freemasons. Zimmermann himself revealed his past as a criminal in 2005 through his autobiography, titled
Auch ich war ein Gauner (
I was a crook too). In a newspaper interview he said that his time as a criminal had made him tough: Zimmermann's last appearance on TV was on the 400th episode of
Aktenzeichen XY on 10 May 2007. He died on 19 September 2009 in
Munich from
dementia. == Notes and references ==