Family, friends, and colleagues are reacting Thursday to the death of Derk Sauer. The journalist and media entrepreneur passed away on Thursday at the age of 72 as a result of a serious accident on his sailboat in Greece.
“There are countless things I will miss about my father, but high on the list are our weekly conversations about his next column,” says Sauer’s son Pjotr in a farewell column for Het Parool.
Sauer wrote a column for the newspaper for years. His son calls those contributions “a monumental chronicle of modern Russian history.” In one of his last days, Sauer asked his son to thank his readers in the column.
Pjotr, who himself is a Russia correspondent for the British newspaper The Guardian, describes his father as “endlessly curious and in love with Russia.” In a message on X, he calls his father’s death an “immeasurable loss.”
The Moscow Times praises Sauer for his role in founding the newspaper in 1992. It was the first English-language newspaper in Russia. “Under his leadership, the newspaper became a reliable news source for millions of readers inside and outside the country. And he helped dozens of prominent journalists at the beginning of their careers.” Sauer sold the newspaper in 2005 but bought it back in 2017.
One of the people Sauer mentored is Victoria Koblenko. The actress did a three-month “intense” internship at Independent Media, Sauer’s publishing house in Russia. “Those three months made me more mature than any other period in my life. Lots of inspiration, lots of life lessons,” Koblenko, who was born in Ukraine, writes on Instagram.
Erik Roddenhof, chairman of the board of DPG Media Group, says that Sauer has been of “invaluable worth” to journalism in the Netherlands and Russia. “He was a champion of a free, independent press.”