In My Eyes Günter Wallraff

By Wilfried Kriese

Günter Wallraff. He was the hero of the 70s and 80s. Using controversial methods he wrote against the powers that be in Germany. In the Industrie Reportagen, in his role as the Turk Ali or as Hans Esser, editor at the Bild newspaper Günter Wallraff has repeatedly touched a raw nerve of society, his methods have polarized opinions to this day.

This is the way Günter Wallraff is introduced most of the time. It is clear, however, that if many people among the young and old know about the arguably most controversial European writer, they do so just superficially.

For the first time, a book comprehensively presents Günter Wallraffs literary and journalistic work, thus looking at an unknown side of his. But one can learn about some aspects of Wallraffs private life, too.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mauer Verlag
• Release date: Oct 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9783868124224

Wilfried Kriese

Der Autor Wilfried Kriese ist Legastheniker und hatte Schwierigkeiten beim Sprechen und Lernen. Heute ist er Holzfachwerker, Medienbetriebswirt und psychologischer Berater. Er hat mehr als 40 Bücher und eine 10-bändige Ratgeberreihe veröffentlicht. 2003 erhielt Wilfried Kriese den Ehrendoktortitel Dr. h. c. verliehen. Es ist im deutschsprachigen Raum und wahrscheinlich auch in Europa einmalig, dass jemand mit einer Biografie, wie sie Wilfried Kriese vorweist, solch eine Ehrung erhält.

Book preview

In My Eyes Günter Wallraff

Titelseite

Foreword

CAUTION!

Who actually is Günter Wallraff? – A short biography

Become a Man – Become A Soldier

Undesired reports – Undesired Wallraff

Under Torture For Human Rights And Against Fascism

With Bild came the baiting

Highs and lows with Ali

Good old justice

Wallraff and the media

The evil agent or: Wallraff and the Stasi

Wallraff’s multifarious projects

Appendix For those who want to know more about Günter Wallraff

Heinrich Böll Günter Wallraff’s undesired reports*

Günter Wallraff (Greece) Defense speech 1974

The film Ganz unten

Sales drop at McDonald’s

Zusammen-Leben

An interview with Abdullah Öcalan

Works by Günter Wallraff

Sources

Impressum

Wilfried Kriese

In My Eyes Günter Wallraff

A Report

Mauer Verlag

Wilfried Kriese

72108 Rottenburg a/N, Germany

Layout: Wilfried Kriese

Photography: Pan Foto/Günter Wallraff

Copyright Appendix: Günter Wallraff

Front cover photography: private archives

Front cover layout: Wilfried Kriese

Edition Wilfried Kriese 2018

First edition 2004

www.mauerverlag.de

Foreword

Günter Wallraff is certainly one of the most controversial personalities in public life. Most people have known him through his books or, very often, only through the media. But so much nonsense has been spread there about Wallraff that a totally distorted public image has resulted.

It is equally clear, however, that many people, young and old, in Europe and even other continents know about Wallraff, but just superficially.

I had to make that observation when, after having made up my mind to write this book, I started to make the fact public that my next book would be about Wallraff.

Wasn’t he once a Stasi1 agent, too? Did he write all his books himself anyway? Isn’t he a millionaire? These were just some questions the people around me were asking about Günter Wallraff. I just had to wonder why I wasn’t asked whether he hadn’t also devoured little children, too. Of course I also heard a great amount of words of admiration for Wallraff, but the number-one reaction was, more or less: Yeah, Wallraff’s work (I have to apply the word work now, since I’m a Suabian) is impressive, but who cares about Günter Wallraff nowadays and who cares about a book about him anyway?

With this book I want to shed more light on the revelatory journalist, the writer, who has introduced a unique writing style. Actually I had planned to write a biography. But Wallraff happens to be writing his autobiography himself right now and since he wondered whether it simply wouldn’t be all too much, I decided after many conversations with him to write about Wallraff’s journalistic work.

But how did it enter my mind to write at a biography at first and now this book about the arguably most controversial German author?

The answer is: Because of my own affectedness. For as a formerly linguistically and cognitively handicapped person and dyslexic, I was often shown what it means to be an outsider in the German society. Because of my former social environment I also had to see how many of my friends during childhood and adolescence were often laughed at, excluded and held in contempt due to the fact that they were a little different from so-called normal people. (And it is no coincidence that Wallraff’s latest book is called Ich – der Andere ["Me – the Other].)

The first time I heard about Günter Wallraff was in trade school during my year of vocational orientation in 1979.

There was a boy in my trade school class who was so enthusiastic about Wallraff that he used to constantly talk about his books, display posters and once even got our trade school teacher to show a film about Wallraff’s time at the Bild newspaper in the social studies course. So I decided to read Die Industrie Reportagen and Ihr da oben Wir da unten. I realized that a lot is going totally wrong in our society, but I also started to understand a lot that was going on in my own social surroundings...

Anyway, ever since then I have been an absolute Wallraff fan. I literally devoured every single book of his. I sucked in everything that was reported about him in the media.

The first idea to write this book came to me in 1993 when I had a professional key experience with some of my superiors in the course of the rearrangement of my working place – which went beyond anything that I had known so far.

What was it about? I began to write a book about that in order to make that public. But what did I learn from it?

CAUTION!

If you publish just one line about your work in a harmful sense, you will be dismissed without notice, and not even the labor union will be able to help you. This is about what a leading person from the staff board told me in private, and he went on: Then you probably won’t be able to find a job in the whole district of Tübingen. Because the university’s top persons all have seats in the supervisory boards of every private and public company.

For me that was a moral culture shock, which, however, also made it clear to me how important it is to defend oneself against superiors (colleagues) whose behavior is reminiscent of structures in the former GDR. But thanks to that incident I perfectly realized that Günter Wallraff’s books and his social commitment present a possibility to reveal injustices and to correct them or, even better, to avoid them.

Since, as I writer, I had had a try at all the different genres, including nonfiction, I seriously thought, why not write a biography about Wallraff?

It wasn’t until the middle of 2002 that I was finally ready with respect to my literary abilities and that I had found the time to contact Wallraff about this project. I wrote him a letter including informative material about me and stated that I would write a biography about him next and asked him to please contact me.

After everything that I had heard about him, like, for instance, that he was arrogant as well as a bit peculiar and didn’t care for anything but his own projects, I was fairly convinced that he wouldn’t call back. However, my prejudice soon proved to be unfounded. One afternoon he called me and after a 30-minute conversation he said he approved of the project. Like I said before, the biography turned into this book.

Who actually is Günter Wallraff? – A short biography

Who actually is Günter Wallraff, the man many have already heard, seen and especially read about and who has provided a mirror to society with his literary work to a greater degree than many other writers have?

Before touching upon the literary work of the revelatory journalist, I would like to take the opportunity in this chapter to introduce Günter Wallraff in a short biography. Perhaps it may help some of the readers understand Wallraff’s past and present actions.

Günter Wallraff was born in Burscheid near Cologne on October 1st 1942. He was raised there, too. The post-war chaos and the bomb sites in and around Cologne affected the single child a lot.

His father worked at an assembly line at Ford’s ruining his health. Later, after his early retirement, he was further employed with a small job (as a tester).

Günter Wallraff knew his father as an open-minded person who he looked up to.

His mother came from a Southern French Huguenot family which was conventionally middle-class.

The boy has never been capable of establishing a close relation to his mother, which is rather untypical for a single child. To this very day, his attitude towards her is rather ambivalent. The reason for this might also be due to the fact that, because of economic reasons, he had to go to a home when he was four years old. During that period the boy felt repudiated. But apart from the bad times, his childhood also had some good times in store for him. He loved to let his imagination run free. He was particularly fond of the children’s books character Till Eulenspiegel. He liked his disrespectful and self-confident stance. Later, however, he disapproved of the fact that his hero Eulenspiegel also played his tricks at the expense of weaker people.

Wallraff has always felt for victims. Cologne is one of the centers of carnival and so, during