Bernhard Töpper

Bernhard Töpper was a German lawyer and television journalist who for more than three decades shaped legal and court reporting at ZDF. He died on 24 September 2026 at the age of 81. ZDF announced his death the following day, remembering him as a trusted interpreter of the law who made complex rulings and statutes understandable to a general audience. Editor-in-chief Bettina Schausten said the broadcaster mourned a highly regarded colleague who had marked its programme for decades.

Töpper was born on 25 November 1944 in Breslau, then part of the German Reich. He took his Abitur in 1965 at the Lutherschule in Hanover, studied law in Munich and Göttingen with journalism as a secondary subject, and already as a student freelanced for ZDF's Lower Saxony regional studio. After his second state law examination he joined ZDF's law and justice desk in 1974, becoming a staff editor in 1976. He served as assistant to editor-in-chief Reinhard Appel, worked on heute-journal, helped build the magazine tele-illustrierte with Alexander Niemetz, and from June 1984 until his retirement in 2009 headed the Recht und Justiz department for a quarter of a century.

From 1990 he presented the series Wie würden Sie entscheiden?, which invited viewers to compare their judgment with court decisions, and from 1993 he also hosted the magazine Recht brisant on ZDF and 3sat. In 1998 he was admitted to practise as a Rechtsanwalt. His work brought awards including the German Bar Association press prize (1985), the Hartmannbund film and television prize (1992) and the Regino television prize (2002). He co-authored several Beck and dtv legal guidebooks tied to his programmes, on tenancy, damages, divorce and criminal procedure.

For many German viewers, Töpper remained the public face of accessible legal journalism on public television. ZDF's tribute placed him among the colleagues who had explained the courts without talking down to the audience, a role he held from the mid-1970s until long after his on-air peak. His death closed a chapter in the channel's Recht und Justiz tradition that he had led for twenty-five years, and left Wie würden Sie entscheiden? as the series most closely linked with his name.