Andreas Kieling: This is the animal filmmaker who was thrown out of “7 vs. Wild”.

Andreas Kieling’s sacking from the YouTube format “7 vs. Wild” still causes unrest. “Due to an incident between Ann-Kathrin Bendixen and Andreas Kieling during the pre-season in Canada, we decided not to let Andreas Kieling participate in Season 3 of ‘7 vs. Wild’ before the contestants were suspended. It It’s a border crossing that we didn’t want to and couldn’t tolerate,” the production said in a statement. Kieling defended himself through his lawyer.

Andreas Kieling: Who is the documentary filmmaker?

“We reject the unfounded and vague allegations against my client,” he told the “Bild” newspaper. “At no time did my client cross borders or encroach on them. The vague allegations and insinuations, which give rise to a wide range of speculation, are inaccurate.”

Kieling is a film producer and documentary filmmaker. His focus is on adventure and wildlife films. Actually perfect conditions for participation in the survival show “7 vs. Wild”, because he often came into contact with wild animals.

Kieling spent his childhood in East Germany. “It was actually clear to almost everyone that the Wall would come up at some point. The only question was: when and how?” he said years ago in a conversation on “Deutschlandfunk”. In 1976 he tried to take matters into his own hands and fled. At that time he was only 16 years old. “So it wasn’t about eating bananas and living a consumption-laden life,” he said of his urge to come to West Germany. Instead, an authoritarian upbringing shaped Kieling’s childhood, and his idea of ​​freedom was already big back then.

Escape from the GDR at the age of 16

“I swam through the Danube back then, from what was then Czechoslovakia to Austria, and was shot by Czech border guards,” he said on Deutschlandfunk. He was able to save himself to Austria and burst into a wine festival full of drunken guests in Burgenland. “People first thought I was one of them, I was just totally drunk. Then someone saw that I was bleeding profusely and was constantly fainting,” he said.

Nature also influenced his further professional steps. Kieling worked as a seaman, later as a hunter. Several stations abroad shaped him. It was only in the 90s that he began to make a name for himself as a documentary filmmaker, and in the noughties he increasingly appeared in TV productions. This year it became clear that his interest in wild animals could be his undoing.

In April, he explained in an interview with the “Teleschau” agency, from which “Focus Online” quoted, among other things, why he recently had to cancel an appointment. “I’ve just come from , where we have a well drilling project for water,” says Kieling. “I lived like the locals in a corrugated iron shack. Suddenly my dog ​​started digging through my things. I then saw a snake’s tail disappear under my things,” he said.

Snake Bite and Bear Attack

He turned everything upside down to find the snake. It was a black mamba. “When I had it, I wanted to take a selfie with the snake before I carried it far away,” quoted the “Bild” newspaper. For this he “pulled up his lips with a stick so that you can see the fangs nicely. At that moment she “bited her left index finger with a fangs,” says Kieling.

A bite with dire consequences. Normally the poison is deadly, Kieling explained in an interview with “Teleschau”. “You live about two to four hours. She only injected a little bit of venom. I was paralyzed, breathing stopped almost completely. I lay there between life and , and my guide’s wife was doing wet wipes and the occasional mouth- to mouth resuscitation because I was choking,” he said. After a few days he felt better, but he suffered from cardiac arrhythmias. Apparently, the black mamba wasn’t the first snake to get in the way of the cameraman, but the third. Kieling was once bitten by a poisonous sea snake on the Komodo Islands.

It wasn’t long before Kieling was in the headlines again. This time he had apparently messed it up with a bear. “Bear attack a week ago while filming about rare waterfowl in the High Carpathians! The bear is fine, he just followed his instincts! I’m fine again!” Kieling wrote on Facebook and sent “nature-loving greetings”. his fans. You could see the back of his down jacket, which was torn in one place. Kieling posted another photo of the consequences of the alleged bear attack: the animal filmmaker is sitting on a slope covered in blood, his hair soaked in red, his left hand as well. “Without warning and explanation, a violently shocking image,” commented one user.

In “7 vs Wild” Kieling should have proven his skills alongside Joey Kelly, among other things – but nothing will come of it now.

Sources: / / / Facebook /

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