Markus Lanz

Between October 2012 and 2014 he presented the monthly German TV show Wetten, dass..? as successor to Thomas Gottschalk.

Since October 2009 he has hosted the talkshow Markus Lanz three evenings a week.

Since 2008 he has hosted the weekly cooking show Lanz kocht!.

Lanz plays the piano and played in a band with his brother. He has a son (born 2000) from a previous relationship with TV presenter Birgit Schrowange. In July 2011 Lanz married Angela Gessmann.

Lanz is a member of the German speaking majority in the Italian province of South Tyrol. He grew up in Geiselsberg, a village that lies 1,344 metres above sea level in the central Alps. He has stated that his family was poor, and that his father died at an early age, leaving his mother to care for 3 children. His good school grades earned him a scholarship to the monastery of Neustift, where he went to private catholic secondary school. He finished high school in Humanistischem Gymnasium in Bruneck and completed military service as a radio operator in the alpine division of the Italian army before working at the radio station Radio Holiday. In 1992 he graduated from the Bayerische Akademie für Werbung und Marketing in Munich with a degree in Business Communications.

In 1992 he started a two-year trainee program at Radio Hamburg in Hamburg. In 1995 he became the news announcer at the regional TV station RTL North and in 1997 started as presenter of a regional evening news show in Schleswig-Holstein.

Markus Lanz (born 16 March 1969 in Bruneck, South Tyrol, Italy) is a German-Italian television presenter and producer who currently lives in Hamburg.