Günter Wallraff

Günter Wallraff
Günter Wallraff in 2013
Born	(1942-10-01) 1 October 1942 (age 74) Burscheid, Germany
Occupation	Writer, undercover journalist

Günter Wallraff (born 1 October 1942 in Burscheid, Rhine Province) is a German writer and undercover journalist.

Wallraff came to prominence thanks to his striking journalistic research methods and several major books on lower class working conditions and tabloid journalism. This style of research is based on what the reporter experiences personally after covertly becoming part of the subgroup under investigation. Wallraff would construct a fictional identity so that he was not recognisable as a journalist. In this way, he created books which denounce what he considers to be social injustices and which try to provide readers with new insights into the way in which society works.

Wallraff was one of the first people in Germany to invoke his constitutional right not to do armed military service. Despite this refusal, Wallraff was forced to serve time in the Bundeswehr.

Wallraff first took up this kind of investigative journalism in 1969 when he published 13 unerwünschte Reportagen ("13 undesired reports") in which he described what he experienced when acting the parts of an alcoholic, a homeless person, and a worker in a chemicals factory.

He travelled to Greece in May 1974 at the time of the Ioannides military dictatorship. While in Syntagma Square, he protested against human right violations. He was arrested and tortured by the police as he purposely did not carry on him any papers that could identify him as a foreigner. After his identity was revealed, Wallraff was convicted and sentenced to 14 months in jail. He was released in August, after the end of the dictatorship.

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 (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.