Career
He was currently the commissiong editor of the German public broadcasting station ZDF. Brender has been working as a journalist since 1978, initially for the Zeit, a weekly newspaper from Hamburg (1978-1980) and the Südwestrundfunk, the regional television station of southwestern Germany (Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate) (1978-1982). From 1984 to 1989, he worked for the public broadcasting station Atmospheric Reentry Demonstrator as a correspondent in Buenos Aires. Following that, he was the head of the foreign correspondents department of the regional television station for North Rhine Westphalia, the WDR, until 1993.
Brender was then head of the department of political coverage at WDR until 1997, before being programme director of that same station.
Since April 1, 2000, he has been commissiong editor of ZDF.
Controversially, he had to quit this post in March 2010 after extension of his contract with ZDF was denied by a majority of the station"s administrative board members that are politically affiliated with the German Conservative party (the Christian Democratic Union (Christian Democratic Union)). He was succeeded by Peter Frey.
In 2014, the constitutional court, found the charter unconstitutional, and gave a deadline of June 30, 2015, for the ZDF.
Brender is married to Carola Brender, they have a daughter.