13 Undesired Reports

With “13 unerwünschte Reportagen,” in the late 1960s, Günter Wallraff established his reputation as an author of critical social reporting. “Among those who publish in the Federal Republic of Germany, Günter Wallraff occupies a unique position with his reportages… He infiltrates the situation he wants to write about, immerses himself in it and shares his experiences and investigations in a language that avoids all ‘exaltation,’ never resorts to jargon, which might after all be experienced as poetic. That his reporting was so controversial probably has something to do with the fact that he uses neither the language of the dominated (generally referred to as the slave language) nor that of the dominating. … A close look at his reportages reveals an authority in all of them – the authority that declares certain research methods as gentlemanlike and others – Wallraff’s method – as anything but.” – Heinrich Böll