Wallraff: The Undesirable Journalist

“Gunter Wallraff is continental Europe’s most celebrated investigative reporter and a new item in his own right.

He reports on life at the bottom of the social pile, by working anonymously as a messenger, as a labourer, as a journeyman reporter – and then telling what it’s like in hilarious, anarchic detail.  In this selection from his vast output he becomes a secretary of a phantom fascist group; he gets the police to describe to him the conditions of employment as a political spy; he gets factory managements to reveal the presence of private armed forces preparing for civil war; he gets unregenerated Nazis to celebrate uninhibitedly their service to Jewry.

He has, naturally, become the object of almost fanatical hatred and persecution by those in authority in Germany and equally an object of acclaim by the people whose voice he is.”

Translated by Steve Gooch and Paul Knight.