Friedman was born to a Polish-Jewish family. His parents and his grandmother were Schindlerjuden, i.e. Oskar Schindler had recruited them for slave labor, thereby rescuing them from a concentration camp. They had been in the most infamous of all camps, the extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. After the Second World War, his family opened a fur shop in Paris. In 1965, the family returned to Germany and settled in Frankfurt am Main. Friedman began studying medicine, but then switched to law. He graduated from law school in 1988 and became a doctor of law in 1994. He has a brother living in Israel.
Career
After qualifying as a lawyer in 1988, Friedman became a partner in an international law firm specializing in financial and media law. He is today a professor for real estate and media law. From 2000 until 2003, Friedman served as President of the European Jewish Congress. Friedman's career in TV began with a talk show called Caution! Friedman on public broadcaster Hessischer Rundfunk in 1998. Since 2004, he has been presenting "Studio Friedman" on Germany’s Welt channel. His talk show Auf ein Wort premiered on Deutsche Welle in 2017.
In 2003, Friedman was convicted in a case involving prostitution and drug usage. Friedman had been accused of offering cocaine to Ukrainian prostitutes he had ordered through an escort service that was being investigated for forced prostitution. Friedman's crime was discovered almost by chance, when police wiretaps for the investigation into forced prostitution led them to the name "Paolo Pinkas", which turned out to be Friedman's alias when using the service. However several Jewish leaders claimed Friedman's arrest was part of an anti-Semitic witch-hunt. Investigators raided his home and found small quantities of cocaine. He was fined €17,400 for possession of cocaine, on 8 July 2003. The settlement enabled him to avoid a trial. After publicly admitting to the drug possession Friedman stated "I have made a mistake. Drugs are no help. I am resigning from all public offices that I hold." As well as resigning from the Central Council of Jews Friedman also resigned from the Christian Democratic Party. However, since he did not apologise to the forced prostitutes themselves, the German women's' rights organisation Terre des Femmes and others strongly criticised Friedman's speech. When Friedman interviewed Youth and Sports Minister Akif Çağatay Kılıç in 2016 about the Turkish coup d'état attempt, mass layoffs and arrests that followed the failed putsch, and the media situation and the position of women in Turkey, the Turkish government confiscated the recordings. In response, Deutsche Welle Director-General Peter Limbourg condemned Turkey the seizure of the video tape as "a blatant violation of press freedom."
Personal life
Since July 2004 Friedmann has been married to Bärbel Schäfer, a former German TV celebrity. They got married at Park East Synagogue. The couple has two sons, Samuel and Oscar.
