Her heart beat for problem teenagers.
Whoever zapped through the TV in the afternoon in the early 2000s could not avoid Ruth Herz. As a TV judge, she was the face of the RTL program “Das Jugendgericht” for several years. Now Ruth Herz has died, as reported by RTL.
“Ruth Herz passed away at the age of 79. Between 2001 and 2005 she played herself in the leading role as a judge on ‘The Juvenile Court’,” says the station’s Instagram channel. “All our thoughts and deepest sympathy are with her family and loved ones,” it said.
Ruth Herz was born in Israel (her father was a lawyer), went to school in Ratingen, and did her Abitur in the Netherlands. She then studied law in Geneva, Munich and Cologne.
While her TV cases were fictional, Ruth Herz was real. In 1974 she was sworn in as a judge at the district court. Two years later, Herz became chairwoman of the juvenile court, and in 1998 she was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit for her services in establishing offender-victim mediation for young convicts.
After giving up the gavel in 2005, Herz moved to the famous Oxford University for a research project on media and justice. She has also been a Visiting Professor at Birkbeck College, University of London and also at Princeton University.
Ruth Herz is survived by two children and her husband Gabriel Gorodetsky, an Israeli historian.
