Rezo

For the film, see Rezo (film). For the song by Carlos Ponce, see Rezo (song).

Rezo
Born (1992-08-14) 14 August 1992
Wuppertal, Germany
EducationTechnical University of Dortmund
YouTube information
Channels
Years active2015–present
Genres
Subscribers1.72 million (rezo)
1.63 million (Rezo ja lol ey)
1.23 million (Renzo)
606 thousand (Schlumpf)
Views195 million (rezo)
402 million (Rezo ja lol ey)
361 million (Renzo)
201 million (Schlumpf)
Last updated: May 11, 2025

Rezo [ˈɹiːzo] is a German content creator, podcaster, musician and entrepreneur.[1] In addition to his YouTube presence and entrepreneurial activities, he has appeared on entertainment television and contributed his own topical column to Zeit Online from 2019 to 2020. His video Die Zerstörung der CDU (The Destruction of the CDU), in which he criticized the CDU/CSU shortly before the 2019 European elections, particularly for their climate policy, gained a lot of attention and sparked a political debate.[2] The outcome of the election and the decision of many young voters to vote against the Union parties was linked to the impact of the video, for which the term ‘Rezo effect’ became established.

Rezo also runs a podcast with Julien Bam called Hobbylos.[3][4]

Early life and education

Rezo was born in Wuppertal on 14 August 1992[5][6][7][8][9] [10][11] and grew up in a pastor's family.[12] His parents are Protestant ministers, as are several of his relatives. He was bullied during his school years and underwent psychological treatment for a short time.[13] Music provided him with an escape, and he inherited his musical talent from his father.[13][14] From the age of 14 until one and a half years before his master's degree, he played in various bands. He plays the guitar.

According to his own information, Rezo studied computer science at the Technical University of Dortmund and had taken music as a minor subject.[15] From 2015 onwards, he was supported by the Dortmund Model SME Scholarship, which is funded by medium-sized companies.[16] He obtained his bachelor's degree in 2013 and his Master of Science in 2016 with a thesis in the field of graph theory.[17]

Since Rezo says he is vegan and does not use intoxicants such as nicotine and cannabis, he has been classified as straight edge.[14][18] He also publicly advocates for veganism.[19]

Although he does not describe himself as Christian, he says he has internalised Christian values.[13][20] He attributes his eloquence to his upbringing, as there was always a lively culture of discussion at the dinner table at home.[21] However, he sometimes stutters, which makes him uncomfortable in live situations such as panel discussions.[22]

Rezo does not reveal his real name in public and currently resides in Aachen.[7]

A distinguishing feature is his blue-colored hair.

Career

Since September 2012, Rezo has had his own channel on YouTube, with almost 1.75 million users as of 2019 which is mostly about music, including his own performances, as covers, mashups or remixes. On his second channel Rezo ja lol ey, he usually jokes and converses with other YouTubers about line-ups, bizarre chat messages or hate comments.[7]

In 2018, he created an ensemble cast music video of Hall of Fame (song) with 100 YouTube creators to celebrate having reached a million subscribers.[23]

On 18 May 2019, one week before the 2019 European Parliament election, Rezo published under his second YouTube channel Rezo ja lol ey[24][25] a 54-minute video named "Die Zerstörung der CDU", which literally means "The destruction of/by the CDU", in which he said that essential political positions, especially of the parties CDU/CSU and SPD, are destroying "our lives and our future". The 55-minute video, with a list of 247 references and citations of scientific literature, accused the governing conservative alliance for a range of unsustainable policies such as inactivity in politics of global warming, making politics for the rich, war and internet censorship. He explicitly warned against voting for the right-wing populist AfD, as they would "only make the world worse". Towards the end, he stated: "You always say that young people should be political, in which case you have to get to grips with it when they think your politics are shit". His video went viral, receiving more than 13 million views within the first eleven days and triggered a broad social debate.[26][27][28][29] On 24 May 2019, two days ahead of the vote, Rezo was joined by more than 90 known bloggers in a three-minute followup video entitled A Statement of 90+ Youtubers which summarized the statements of the first video. They asked voters not to back Angela Merkel's bloc or the SPD, because of their politics of global warming.[30][31]

In May 2019, after the EU election the leader of the CDU, Merkel's successor Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer announced she wanted to "regulate" political opinion in election campaigns. This was met with a wide political backlash. Bundestag Vice President Claudia Roth stated: "For years, the Union (CDU/CSU) has said that populist-right-wing discourse shifting, sometimes even national-right-wing agitation should not be approached too hard." As soon as a blogger expressed himself critically, "[Kramp-Karrenbauer] fabulates about the restriction of freedom of expression in the election campaign, one can only hope that it is rooted in helplessness and not in political conviction."[32] In spite of the backlash, Kramp-Karrenbauer put the item "asymmetrical campaigning" on the agenda for a meeting of her party leadership on 2 July 2019.[33][34]

In September 2019, Rezo won a Goldene Kamera Digital Award as a special jury prize.[35]

After the Halle synagogue shooting in October 2019, Rezo took to Twitter to criticise German interior minister Horst Seehofer for suggesting increased surveillance of the country's gaming community. Rezo accused Seehofer and the CSU of incompetent leadership.[36]

He also made videos on the "climate crisis", denouncing for instance the doubts on the scientific consensus publicly expressed by one of the EU Parliament's vice-presidents, Nicola Beer.[37]

References

  1. ^ MEEDIA, Tobias Singer. "Youtuber Rezo bringt eigenes Social-Media-Analyse-Tool Nindo heraus". www.meedia.de (in German). Retrieved 5 May 2024.
  2. ^ Amelie Duckwitz (Friedrich Ebert Foundation) Influencer als digitale Meinungsführer Archived 25 March 2022 at the Wayback Machine 2020-07-01
  3. ^ Fischer, Stefan (6 July 2023). "Deutscher Podcast Preis 2023: Die besten Ohrwürmer". Süddeutsche Zeitung (in German). Retrieved 18 October 2025.
  4. ^ "Taylor Swift: »Global Top Artist« 2023 bei Spotify – Enthüllung per Großplakat". Der Spiegel (in German). 29 November 2023. ISSN 2195-1349. Retrieved 18 October 2025.
  5. ^ "Rezo". Internationales Biographisches Archiv. Munzinger Archiv – Ravensburg. 12 January 2021. Retrieved 10 July 2022.
  6. ^ Rezo (25 May 2017). "Zeugnis / Urkunde: Master of Science (M.Sc.)". Archived from the original on 19 February 2021. Retrieved 18 June 2020.
  7. ^ a b c David Ruch (23 May 2019). "Das ist der YouTuber, der die CDU "zerstört"". .t-online.de (in German). Archived from the original on 13 April 2023. Retrieved 19 November 2021.
  8. ^ Rezo, Julien Bam (16 November 2018). Wie gut kennen sich rezo und Julien Bam. Event occurs at 2:27–2:33, 8:59–9:04. Archived from the original on 20 October 2020. Retrieved 18 June 2020.
  9. ^ "Rezo und die neue Generation Subito". Neue Züricher Zeitung. June 2019. Archived from the original on 8 June 2019.
  10. ^ Rothe, Yannick von Eisenhart (22 May 2019). "YouTuber Rezo im Interview: "Ich sage nicht, dass die komplette Verantwortung für alle Probleme bei der CDU liegt"". Der Spiegel. Archived from the original on 6 September 2021.
  11. ^ Wegner, Jochen; Amend, Christoph (11 October 2019). "Interviewpodcast: Rezo, warum willst du Bundeskanzler sein?". Die Zeit. Archived from the original on 10 September 2021.
  12. ^ How well do rezo and Julien Bam know each other? Archived 16 October 2021 at the Wayback Machine In: YouTube from 16 November 2018, 8:59 min.
  13. ^ a b c Alexander Kühn, Lothar Gorris et al. (2019), "Kinder der Apokalypse", Der Spiegel, no. 23, pp. 1, 5, 12–21
  14. ^ a b Connie Hasenclever (2018), "Kapitel 4: Neue Sichtweisen entdecken und von bahnbrechenden Erfindungen erfahren – Eine Blitzkarriere im Web hat der YouTube-Star Rezo hingelegt", NFTE Schülerbuch: Von der Idee zum Ziel (PDF) (6 ed.), Bonn: Free Pen Verlag, p. 55, ISBN 978-3-945177-57-0
  15. ^ Hajo Schumacher (27 May 2019), "Rezo und die Grenzen der Politik", Rheinische Post, pp. A6
  16. ^ "Verleihung DoMo-Stipendien". Alumni der Informatik Dortmund. 4 January 2016. Archived from the original on 31 January 2016. Retrieved 13 May 2020.
  17. ^ Picture with Rezo and an anonymous certificate as Master of Science. Archived 19 February 2021 at the Wayback Machine In: Imgur.
  18. ^ Nicolas Freund (24 May 2019). "Profil – Rezo". SZ.de. Süddeutsche Zeitung. Retrieved 13 May 2020.
  19. ^ "REZO: »Vegan? Alles andere wäre nicht logisch!«". veganmagazin (in German). 22 November 2019. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  20. ^ Sophie Aschenbrenner, Nicolas Freund (21 May 2019). "Wie der Youtuber Rezo die Logik der CDU zerlegt". Jetzt. Süddeutsche Zeitung. Retrieved 13 May 2020.
  21. ^ Christopher F. Schütze (19 October 2019), "Delivering the Voice of a Generation", The New York Times, p. 6
  22. ^ Alexander Kühn (14 January 2020). "YouTube-Star Rezo: "Wichtig ist, was die Wissenschaftler sagen!"". Dein Spiegel. Retrieved 14 January 2020.
  23. ^ "Rezo: 100 YouTuber singen zusammen". 24 November 2018. Archived from the original on 8 February 2022. Retrieved 8 February 2022.
  24. ^ Jonas Schaible (22 May 2019). "Wie sehr kann dieses Video der CDU schaden?". T-online.de (in German). Archived from the original on 13 April 2023. Retrieved 19 November 2021.Jonas Schaible: [1] Archived 13 April 2023 at the Wayback Machine on his YouTube second account.html "Destruction" on YouTube - How much can this video harm the CDU?], T-online.de dated May 22, 2019.
  25. ^ Wie im alten Ägypten - AKK reagiert auf Anti-CDU-Video von Rezo Archived 12 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine, n-tv vom 23. Mai 2019.
  26. ^ "German YouTuber Rezo's video attacking Merkel party goes viral". 22 May 2019. Archived from the original on 26 October 2021. Retrieved 19 November 2021..
  27. ^ Müller, Enrique (23 May 2019). "Un 'youtuber' pone en jaque al partido de Merkel con un vídeo viral". El País (in Spanish). Madrid. ISSN 1134-6582. Archived from the original on 5 December 2020. Retrieved 29 May 2019.
  28. ^ "Un Youtubeur fait trembler la CDU d'Angela Merkel" (in French). 24 May 2019. Archived from the original on 19 November 2021. Retrieved 19 November 2021.
  29. ^ Schuetze, Christopher F. (25 May 2019). "Youth's Video Takes Aim at Merkel's Party in Run-Up to European Elections". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 29 May 2019. Retrieved 19 November 2021.
  30. ^ Shortly before the European elections: Rezo publishes new video - Over 90 Youtuber stand behind him Archived 13 February 2021 at the Wayback Machine, Westdeutsche Zeitung of 24 May 2019.
  31. ^ Criticism of GroKo and AfD - YouTube stars support Rezo with more video Archived 12 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine, Der Spiegel, 24 May 2019.
  32. ^ "Ein beispielloser Angriff auf die Meinungsfreiheit" Archived 13 February 2021 at the Wayback Machine, Die Zeit, 28 May 2019.
  33. ^ Digitale Inkompetenz: AKK lädt CDU mit Fax zur Konferenz ein – und das Internet lacht sich schlapp (in German). Stern.de. 29 May 2019. Archived from the original on 8 November 2020. Retrieved 23 April 2020.
  34. ^ German CDU chief under fire for comments about campaigning on YouTube Archived 14 February 2021 at the Wayback Machine, Politico, 28 May 2019.
  35. ^ https://www.goldenekamera.de/digitalaward/article227135225/Preistraeger-Special-Award-Rezo.html Archived 25 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine , Goldene Kamera, 26 September 2019.
  36. ^ Schuetze, Christopher F. (18 October 2019). "The German YouTuber Emerging as the Voice of a Generation". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 21 October 2019. Retrieved 21 October 2019.
  37. ^ Ruth Ciesinger: Rezos Appell in der Klimakrise: „Ihr habt die Zukunft der jungen Leute in der Hand“ Archived 11 March 2022 at the Wayback Machine. tagesspiegel.de. 4 September 2021, accessed on 5 September 2021. In German.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.