Deutsche Welle Director General Peter Limbourg: "Ines Pohl is an outstanding journalist and an experienced manager. She will further distinguish our multi-language and cross-platform offerings and support DW's transformation into a digital media house. She has gained high esteem within the organization in a short period of time."

Limbourg praised Alexander Kudascheff (65), who is retiring, as "a journalist who has shaped DW over many decades. He has been the best editor-in-chief DW could have hoped for during a time of internal reform and change."

Following his academic education - philosophy, history, politics and Islamic studies - as well as a traineeship with DW, Kudascheff worked on the international broadcaster's Middle East editorial team.

He later became head of domestic politics, chief reporter and finally editor-in-chief of German radio programming.

He was head of DW's studio in Brussels from 1998 and the studio in Berlin from 2007. In 2014, he was named editor-in-chief of all DW journalistic offerings.

Ines Pohl (49) began her career in journalism as a freelancer with Radio ffn and local newspapers after studying Scandinavian and German literature at the University of Göttingen,

She later became head of politics of the Hessische/Niedersächsische Allgemeine (HNA) newspaper and served as a correspondent in Berlin for the media group Ippen.

Pohl has been a member of the board of trustees of "Reporters without Borders" since 2010 and the International Journalists' Programmes (IJP) since 2013. Before joining DW, she was editor-in-chief of the national daily newspaper taz from 2009 to 2015.