Annual review: These personalities died in 2024

His nickname was Kaiser, he was considered the shining light, the most influential personality in German football – and one of the greatest of his profession in the world. When Franz Beckenbauer died on cold January 7, 2024 at the age of 78, the whole world bowed to one of the most important footballers in history. FC Bayern Munich said goodbye to him with a large memorial ceremony in the Allianz Arena. Just a few weeks later, on the night of February 20th, Andreas Brehme, the winning goal scorer in the 1990 World Cup final against Argentina, suffered a fatal heart attack. He was only 63 years old.

But Beckenbauer and Brehme weren’t the only prominent personalities we had to say goodbye to this year. In the music world, two of the greats, producers Frank Farian and Quincy Jones, went on their last journey.

The death of singer Liam Payne also made headlines in October. The former member of the band One Direction fell from the third floor balcony of his hotel room in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires. “A drug cocktail consisting of alcohol, cocaine and a prescribed antidepressant” was later found in his blood, the Argentine prosecutor’s office said.

Also the former star-Reporter Gerd Heidemann died in 2024. He was best known for discovering the so-called “Hitler diaries”. The books were supposed to be records of the dictator Adolf Hitler. However, the Federal Archives in Koblenz analyzed the documents and concluded that they could not be authentic. Heidemann had fallen for the fraudster Konrad Kujau, who had falsified the supposed diaries himself over several months. The case became one of the biggest journalism scandals in Germany.

Other prominent personalities such as Ira von Fürstenberg, Fritz Wepper, Ruth Maria Kubitschek and Alain Delon passed away this year. It reminds us of her and many others star here in a picture gallery.