At the bottom
At the bottom is an internationally successful book by the author and journalist Günter Wallraff , first published on October 21, 1985 , which depicts human rights violations and xenophobia in the Federal Republic of Germany in the early 1980s. It was number 1 on the Spiegel bestseller list for 22 weeks in 1985 and 1986 .
content
The work describes how Günter Wallraff in the role of the Turkish Levent (Ali) Sigirlioğlu ( called Sinirlioğlu in later editions ) accepts various jobs in Germany and experiences exploitation, exclusion, disregard and hatred in many places.
Wallraff writes in the foreword to his book, for which he researched for two years from March 1983:
“Sure, I wasn't really a Turk. But you have to dress up to unmask society, you have to deceive and disguise yourself to find out the truth.
I still don't know how a foreigner processes the daily humiliation, hostility and hatred. But I now know what he has to endure and how far the human contempt can go in this country.
A piece of apartheid is taking place among us - in our 'democracy'.
The experience exceeded all of my expectations. In a negative way. In the middle of the Federal Republic of Germany I experienced conditions that are usually only described in the history books about the 19th century. "
As Ali Sinirlioğlu, Wallraff had to do the heaviest work for low hourly wages at various well-known companies, harassed by German colleagues, without security precautions, sometimes without papers, social or health insurance, often several shifts in a row. Where German colleagues were given protective clothing (for example when working on sewers at temperatures below zero degrees), he received none; In this context, Wallraff also describes how Turkish workers in nuclear power plants should accept dangerously high doses of radiation during their activities. To this end, an actor engaged by Wallraff as an alleged representative of the Würgassen nuclear power plant conducted a fictitious conversation with one of Wallraff's employers. There was talk of a (fictitious) breakdown that could only be eliminated with considerable radiation exposure of the workers. Wallraff's employer nonetheless promised to provide appropriate staff.
Many Turkish workers hardly had a chance to defend themselves against such inhuman acts, as they were staying illegally in Germany or were about to be deported . The author reports from himself that for a long time after the research his health was severely affected by the activities that he had to carry out as Ali Sinirlioğlu, even if only briefly. In addition, there were the after-effects of drug trials in which he had participated for a fee, whereby the institutes carried out some of the side effects withheld from the test subjects.
Not only in his various jobs, but also in everyday life, even when he spoke fluent German and even when he only cheered on the German players at a soccer game of the German national team against Turkey, Wallraff, with his southern appearance, had to face humiliations like “ Sieg-Heil "-," Germany-the-Germans "- and" Turks out "endured hostility, cigarettes were thrown in his hair and beers poured over his head.
He also experienced exclusion as a Turk on other occasions that did not necessarily have to do with the world of work, for example by asking Catholic priests to be baptized or having his own funeral in a funeral home - because of a fatal illness due to inadequate occupational safety. wanted to organize.
Its content explains the change in the title of the book, which means “at the bottom” the gray areas of the German working world in which Wallraff researches, where (following the blurb of the first edition) “from the labor market to the slave market is only one step where work can become fatal and people cease to be fellow human beings ”, but also the lowest level in the hierarchy of a society.
construction
The report-like book consists of thirteen chapters. In these, Wallraff gives his experience report; In sub-chapters, the author repeatedly interweaves experiences and biographies of other colleagues, which appear as a narrative in the narrative or as a dialogical reproduction of a conversation. Clearly separated from the otherwise never interrupted report by Alis / Wallraff, Wallraff also collages additional factual information into the text.
expenditure
After the first edition, which was flooded with litigation (including an injunction by Thyssen ), several revised new editions appeared, in which previously unpublished research material filled in deleted passages; since 1988 appears at the bottom “With a documentation of the consequences” in the appendix. The book has been translated into 30 languages; the German publisher Kiepenheuer & Witsch published a Turkish-language edition in addition to the original edition. Right at the bottom appeared in several editions in the GDR .
effect
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At the bottom , his author brought insults, such as “ socialist agitator” and “ nest defilter ”, spying and complaints. It is indisputable that Wallraff's experience reports as Turk Ali have shaken up large parts of German society: in the first six weeks after its publication, 1.6 million copies were sold at the very bottom . The work, which can be attributed to investigative journalism, also initiated a general rethink among Germans in dealing with people of foreign origin living and working in Germany . The book had concrete political effects in relation to the subcontractors' procedures that became known about it : Legislation and safety regulations were tightened in this context. In the world of work, the permanent hiring of many temporary workers followed , at least at Thyssen.
On the other hand, with its one-sided, drastic depiction , Ganz unten also created or reinforced new prejudices against Turks in Germany by generally pushing them into the role of victims. In this context, a guilty conscience and sympathetic benevolence came to the fore in the way Germans deal with Turkish migrants. The writer Aysel Özakin criticized in a magazine article in 1986 the instrumentalizing use of the “Turk” in the bottom to convey a special concern and asked: “Are we all just suppressed and naive?” Indeed, Wallraff's work does not paint a differentiated picture Turkish migrants, but serves the already prevailing tendency on the German side to mistakenly perceive the first generation of Turkish immigrants as a monotonous, little intellectual mass. In 1997 a handbook published in Turkey about the most important entrepreneurs of Turkish origin in Germany made direct reference to Wallraff's book title: En Üsttekiler (German: 'Die very above').
Secondary literature
At the very bottom there were follow-up publications by other authors, for example Thyssen versus Wallraff or: Report on the attempt to silence an author through trials and character assassination (1988) by Frank Berger with an essay by Hans-Ulrich Jörges , Die Reise ins Souterrain (1987) by Bodo Rollka, Ali - Phenomena about a bestseller (1986) by Heinz Klaus Mertes or the constantly expanding collection In Matters Wallraff , published by Christian Linder since 1986 , which contains reports, analyzes, opinions, etc. Contains documents on other works by the author.
filming
In the year of its publication, the book was also released as a film; the 100-minute documentary Right Down (Director: Jörg Gfrörer , 1986), which assembled secretly filmed documentary recordings with subsequent interviews, was shown internationally successfully in cinemas, was shown at film festivals and has received several awards; Among other things, it received a special mention as the best documentary film at the Valladolid International Film Festival 1987. The film received the rating of "particularly valuable" from the Wiesbaden film evaluation office , but was first broadcast in Germany in 1988 after legal disputes.
According to filmportal.de , the documentary films that dealt with the problems of the first generation of migrants reached “a kind of thematic climax and end point at the bottom - because more drastic (documentary) images could hardly be used to discriminate against foreign (mainly Turkish) workers Find."
Disputes about authorship
The journalist Uwe Herzog , who was involved in the research for the book, claimed as early as 1987 that around 28 of the 256 pages in the work were "researched and written" exclusively by him. On April 22, 2012, Herzog renewed these allegations. In an interview with Die Welt am Sonntag he described himself as a “ghostwriter von Wallraff” and stated that his texts would be found on 40 pages of the book. For his work on the book he had agreed out of court with Günter Wallraff on a payment of around 100,000 marks. In addition, another Wallraff employee wrote important passages of the book, but later denied this in public.
Classification in literary studies
Before the very bottom there had already been various works by authors of Turkish origin who presented the bad treatment of Turks in Germany, initially referred to as guest workers, in literary terms - though mainly not in report form, but rather in literary form; Almanya Almanya by the Turkish poet Nevzat Üstün , written in 1965, is part of it, but more works by authors living in Germany such as Aras Ören or Yüksel Pazarkaya from the 1970s and collections of texts such as Deutsches Heim - Glück alone. How Turks see Germans . Their attempts to draw attention to grievances, however, were hardly noticed. According to Wallraff, he had been thinking about presenting the topic from the bottom up since the beginning of the 1970s and, as a prominent German author, finally received much more attention from the German reading public than one of his German-Turkish colleagues reached this point. The book of 1000 books (2002) by Harenberg-Verlag ranks Wallraff's book among the thousand most historically significant books in world literature due to its impact.
See also
Web links
- Jessica Breidbach: Media Ethics and Press Code in Investigative Journalism using the example of “Right Down” .
Individual evidence
- ↑ The role of Ali: 20 years ago Günter Wallraff presented his social report “Ganz unten” , calendar sheet by Frank Kempe, broadcast on October 21, 2010 on Deutschlandfunk, seen October 22, 2010.
- ↑ spiegel.de: Wallraff and the "murder on installments"
- ^ Peter Kleinert: Censored films in the WDR program , on NRhZ-Online , December 27, 2005.
- ↑ Cinema and migration: On patrol through life - the fate of migrants in a documentary on filmportal.de .
- ↑ This book is like a curse for me , in: Der Spiegel, 25/1987.
- ↑ Michael Behrendt and Dirk Banse: Wallraff made believe the book was from him , in: Welt am Sonntag, April 22, 2012.