[1][2] Egon Hoegen was born in Düsseldorf and grew up at Linz am Rhein, still on the right bank of the Rhine, but approximately 80 km / 50 miles upriver.
"[3] He was known as a long-running introducer-presenter on the political talk show "Der Internationale Frühschoppen" which, after briefly functioning as a radio programme, was transmitted by WDR on German-language television in several countries between 1953 and 1987 (and subsequently revived).
Women were warned against using the rear view mirror for applying face make-up, or risking lives by attempting to drive in high heeled shoes.".
[4] He did not write his own texts but, to paraphrase his obituary in Der Spiegel, he made them his own with his resonant vocal euphony and laconic delivery which raised the business of road safety to the level of a personal art-form.
[10] He worked for Turkish State Radio during the mid-1990s on the German language "Tourist Magazine" programme, transmitted on the broadcaster's European service.
[11] It was in 1996 that the journalist Reinhard Lüke, while discussing the fact that Hoegen was still regularly appearing on television despite being well beyond normal retirement age, described him as "the man who for some unfathomable reason is always smiling" ("... den Mann, der aus unerfindlichen Gründen immer lächelt").
This included details of the cars, the count downs toll the start of races and small pieces of commentary.
He did, however, prepare his vocal presentations with great care and attention to detail, so that his annotated scripts, covered in stress indications and pause marks, were on occasion compared to a Schubert manuscript.
He sustained an extensive programme of vocal exercises in order that he might, in the words of one admirer, "fill the room with an invisible power which vibrates deep in the listener's stomach".
He confided one secret to an interviewer: "You have to speak behind the teeth" ("Man muss hinter den Zähnen sprechen.").