YouTube

Hdo the main thing. Friedrich, called Fritz, Meinecke doesn’t hesitate. By bike from Berlin to Istanbul, through the desert in cheap equipment or spending the night in the snow when it’s double-digit below zero. When Meinecke sets his mind to something, he sees it through. And if something doesn’t suit him, he tinkers with it until every detail is right. Giving up: a foreign word. However, those who criticize him are sometimes dismissed as “soft do-gooders”. If he doesn’t like an opinion, he likes to call it “bullshit”. The place for all this: Youtube.

Fritz Meinecke has had more success with his outdoor and survival formats than almost any other German Youtuber. The second season of “7 vs. Wild”, in which seven web video producers are individually abandoned on a tropical island to make their way there for a week, is currently attracting millions of viewers. The format that Meinecke brought to life is a real recipe for success: Of course, the television adventurer Bear Grylls also let himself be abandoned in the wilderness at the time, but he always had his own camera team with him. In “7 vs. Wild”, on the other hand, everything is supposed to be real – from the jump out of the helicopter to the littered beaches and the danger of crocodiles. Everyone has to film it themselves.

With detours to Youtube

Meinecke is a participant. In advance, he rates his ability to prove himself on site better than that of his fellow campaigners – quite unpretentious, of course. He only trusts one other participant to be able to hold a candle to him. And he has no less than twelve years of Bundeswehr experience under his belt, deployments in Kunduz, Mazar-e Sharif and Kabul, and he also wears the Cross of Honor armed forces in gold. Some may think that is arrogant, but Meinecke means it very seriously; he is sure of himself. With nothing but a machete on a stretch of beach that’s barely more than two meters wide at high tide, with the impenetrable jungle at his back, he seems comfortable most of the time.

But Meinecke’s path led anything but straight to the island. Before he came to YouTube, the man from Magdeburg did many other things. He started an apprenticeship as a car mechatronics technician, broke it off again, then trained as a bank clerk, worked briefly in the job and then volunteered for 15 months in the Bundeswehr. Finally, further training as a digital artist for video games followed. In 2016, Meinecke then flickered on the History Channel together with Wigald Boning. Meinecke is therefore prepared to upset everything until he has found his way. He is a doer – and was already before the youth language rediscovered the word for itself.