Гүнтер Вальраф: Жасырын журналист және әдеби өмірбаяны

German writer and journalist

Günter Wallraff (born 1 October 1942) is a German writer and undercover journalist.

Günther Walraff was born in Burscheid as the son of a Ford worker and a factory owner's daughter. After attending high school, he trained as bookseller until 1962. He began writing poetry as early as the 1950s. Wallraff invoked his constitutional right of conscientious objection to conscription in Germany into armed military service, thus being required to carry out alternative civilian service. Having missed the deadline for filing his refusal, he was nevertheless drafted into the Bundeswehr. Wallraff refused to use the weapon within the Bundeswehr. During his time in the Bundeswehr in 1963, he kept a diary about his service. When he announced the publication of the diary, the military leadership offered to release him if he refrained from publishing it. Wallraff rejected that. He was admitted to psychiatric ward of the Bundeswehr hospital in Koblenz (Bundeswehrzentralkrankenhaus Koblenz). In 1964 he was diagnosed by a military doctor with an "abnormal personality" and "unfit for war and peace" ("untauglich für Krieg und Frieden") and was released from service. In the 1960s, the Bundeswehr was a place where many former Nazi officers served, Wallraff later said. His experiences from this time were published in 1970 in the anthology "From one who moved out and learned to fear". In this book he processed his time in the psychiatric ward of the Bundeswehr hospital in Koblenz. The involuntary role as a psychiatric patient became a key experience and starting point for his later literary work. Wallraff described himself as a person with a weak ego. However, this weak ego also accounts for his ability to empathize with others. Throughout his life, Wallraff repeatedly hosted persecuted prominent artists in his house for a period of time. For example, Wolf Biermann after his expatriation from the GDR or Salman Rushdie after he was given a fatwa. In 1977 Wallraff worked for four months as an editor for the tabloid Bild Zeitung newspaper in Hanover, calling himself "Hans Esser". In his books Der Aufmacher (a pun meaning both "Lead Story" and "the one who opens") and Zeugen der Anklage ("Witnesses for the Prosecution") he portrays his experiences on the editorial staff of the paper and the journalism which he encountered there, which at times displayed contempt for humanity. In 1987 the journalist Hermann L. Gremliza claimed that he, rather than Wallraff, had written parts of Der Aufmacher. The book also formed the basis for the English language film The Man Inside from 1990, starring Jürgen Prochnow as Wallraff. Ganz unten ("Lowest of the Low") (1985) documented Wallraff's posing as a Turkish "Gastarbeiter", and the mistreatment he received in that role at the hands of employers, landlords and the German government. In 1986 he was awarded Laureate of the International Botev Prize. In December 1996, Wallraff met with PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan at a Syrian training camp to discuss The Surahs of Kurdish dissident Selim Çürükkaya, who was threatened with death because of this book. Wallraff was warmly received by Öcalan thanks to his role as the Turkish worker "Ali", but failed in getting the murder order overturned. The conversation was printed by Die Zeit. In January 2003, Russia turned away Wallraff and two other Germans, the former labour minister for the CDU Norbert Blüm and Rupert Neudeck, head of the relief organisation Cap Anamur, as they tried to enter the country to work on a human rights article about Chechnya. In May 2007, Wallraff announced that he had started yet another undercover journalist work, this time at a German call centre. During 2009 he wore blackface around Germany in an undercover story to expose latent or explicit racism against black men, releasing the documentary Black on White to show his experiences. Wallraff was criticized by some for this work, such as a suggestion that Wallraff was only interested in earning money from his investigations, or that the method itself was racist. His investigative methods have led to the creation of the Swedish verb wallraffa, meaning "to expose misconduct from the inside by assuming a role". The word is currently (as of 2023) included in the dictionary Svenska Akademiens Ordlista.

Wallraff has been heavily criticised by those on the receiving end of his style of investigation, via attempts to frame his work as breaching privacy rights or revealing trade secrets. Attempts were made on a number of occasions to legally prevent Wallraff's investigative methods, but his actions were regularly ruled constitutional by the courts. The courts opined that freedom of the press and public interest in areas concerned with the formation of public opinion favoured Wallraff's actions. In balancing public interest with the competing interests of those immediately affected by his actions it follows however that private conversations, for example, may not be published. In September 2003, investigations were made by the Stasi Records Agency into the Rosenholz files on Stasi workers which somehow got into the hands of the CIA; as a result, it was claimed that Wallraff had had connections to the Stasi in the 1960s. Wallraff disputes that he ever actively worked for them. On 17 December 2004, the Hamburg district court ruled on a suit brought by Wallraff that he must not be described as an Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter or Stasi collaborator (he was being called this above all in newspapers belonging to the Axel Springer Verlag, the publishers of Bild) as no proof of collaboration could be furnished in the documents which had been presented.