Martha Gellhorn

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Martha Gellhorn with Ernest Hemingway, surrounded by Chinese soldiers (1941)

Martha Ellis Gellhorn (born November 8, 1908 in St. Louis , Missouri , † February 15, 1998 in London ) was an American journalist and writer . She was best known for her war reports, which were written over the course of more than 50 years .

Life

Martha Gellhorn was born in 1908 as the daughter of suffragette Edna Fischel Gellhorn and gynecologist Washington E. Fischel. Her father fled German anti-Semitism to the USA. Martha Gellhorn and her parents visited the White House privately from a young age, while Eleanor Roosevelt was a school friend of her mother's. Gellhorn got to know Europe as a schoolgirl on several trips. In 1929 she broke off her studies and went to Paris . There she began writing for United Press and Vogue . In the 1930s she toured the United States with the photographer Dorothea Lange on behalf of the government. The two documented how the Great Depression affected the rural population. In 1931 she reported a lynching in the US state of Mississippi . She subsequently published the book The Trouble I've Seen (1936).

In 1936 Gellhorn visited Germany during the Nazi era without being dazzled by the Olympic Games . She worked as a war correspondent for Collier’s in the Spanish Civil War and reported on the fall of Czechoslovakia in 1938 . Here, too, a book was later written, the autobiographical novel A Stricken Field (1940). In 1941 she toured China and met Chiang Kai-shek and Zhou Enlai . In 1943 she worked in Europe with the rank of US captain ; she wrote about war orphans in Italy and the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp .

On June 6, 1944, Gellhorn smuggled himself aboard a hospital ship that was part of the Allied landing fleet and witnessed D-Day .

Gellhorn later reported on Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist “ghost hunt” in the United States and the State of Israel , the Eichmann Trial , the Vietnam War , the death of Francisco Franco in 1976 and the civil war in El Salvador in 1984 Offered war in the crumbling Yugoslavia , she declined due to reasons of age.

Martha Gellhorn was married to Ernest Hemingway from 1940 to 1945 . From 1954 to 1963 she was married to the then editor-in-chief of Time magazine, TS Matthews . In the 1930s Gellhorn had an affair with the married journalist Bertrand de Jouvenel . He became pregnant and had the child aborted. In her mid-forties she adopted an Italian boy, Sandy, who found it difficult to raise.

In the last years of her life, Gellhorn was almost blind and suffered from ovarian and liver cancer. On February 15, 1998, at the age of 89, she committed suicide in London.

Gellhorn worked as a foreign correspondent , reporter and writer for a total of 58 years . In addition to a large number of reports, she wrote and published five novels , fourteen short stories and two volumes of short stories .

Journalist award

The Martha Gellhorn Foundation, funded from her estate, has awarded the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism to investigative journalists every year since 1999 . In June 2011 Julian Assange received the prize for the " WikiLeaks " project .

The award is given annually to a journalist who publishes in English and who “has penetrated the established version of events and tells an uncomfortable truth. The propaganda of the establishment , the 'official chatter', is exposed in this way. ”(Orig .: “ penetrated the established version of events and told an unpalatable truth that exposes establishment propaganda, or 'official drivel' ” ), as Martha Gellhorn put it .

Books (selection)

  • Selected letters. Translated by Miriam Mandelkow. Edited by Caroline Moorehead . Nachw. Sigrid Löffler . Dörlemann, Zurich 2009, ISBN 978-3-908777-50-2 .
  • The weather in Africa. Novellas. Translated by Miriam Mandelkow. Dörlemann, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-908777-46-5 .
  • Cheerful stories for tired people. Three novels. Transl. Miriam Mandelkow, Nachw. Hans Jürgen Balmes. Dörlemann, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-908777-44-1 .
  • Couples - A dance in four short stories. Transl. Miriam Mandelkow, Nachw. Hans Jürgen Balmes. Dörlemann, Zurich 2007, ISBN 978-3-908777-26-7 .
  • Liana. Novel. Translator Regina Winter. Fischer 1992, ISBN 3-596-11183-8 .
  • Travel with me and with him. Reports. Translated by Herwart Rosemann. rororo, Reinbek 1990.
  • The weather in Africa. Novel in short stories. Translated by Wolfgang Eisermann, Ilse Henckel. rororo (No. 12354), Reinbek 1988.
  • The Face of War. Atlantic Monthly Press, New York 1988.
  • The view from below. Reports from six decades , trans. N. Hofmann, Berlin: Ed. Tiamat, 2019

literature

  • Amanda Vaill: Hotel Florida. Truth, Love and Treason in the Spanish Civil War. Translated by Susanne Held. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart, 2015 ISBN 978-3-608-94915-5 .
  • Caroline Moorehead: Gellhorn. A twentieth-century life. H. Holt, New York 2003 ISBN 0-8050-6553-9 .
  • Elisabeth Bronfen, Daniel Kampa (ed.): The American in Hitler's bathtub. Three women report on the war: Margaret Bourke-White, Lee Miller and Martha Gellhorn. Nachw. Elisabeth Bronfen. Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg 2015 ISBN 3-455-50365-9 .

Web links

Commons : Martha Gellhorn  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Edna Gellhorn (1878-1970). In: historicmissourians.shsmo.org. The State Historical Society of Missouri, accessed September 22, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Mary Blume: Obituary for Martha Gellhorn , nytimes.com of February 19, 1998 (English), accessed on May 29, 2012.
  3. ↑ Gabriele Killert: "I only ever loved the world of men". In: deutschlandfunk.de. Deutschlandradio, November 2, 2008, accessed on September 22, 2019 .
  4. ↑ The face of war. Reports 1937–1987. Short biography, p. 366.
  5. ^ Nava Atlas: Martha Gellhorn. In: literaryladiesguide.com. Amberwood Press, August 18, 2017, accessed September 22, 2019 .
  6. ↑ The face of war. Reportages 1937–1987. Short biography, p. 367.
  7. ↑ Joachim Käppner: When the "sighs of the violins" announced D-Day. In: SZ Online. Süddeutsche Zeitung GmbH, June 6, 2019, accessed on September 22, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Malin Schulz: Work and Show. In: Zeit Online. Zeit Online GmbH, January 23, 2014, accessed on September 22, 2019 .
  9. ^ Sam Knight: A Memorial for the Remarkable Martha Gellhorn. In: newyorker.com. Condé Nast, accessed September 22, 2019 .
  10. ↑ a b The Guardian on June 2, 2011: Julian Assange wins Martha Gellhorn journalism prize. Retrieved August 22, 2012 .
personal data
SURNAME Gellhorn, Martha
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gellhorn, Martha Ellis (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer and foreign correspondent
DATE OF BIRTH November 8, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Louis
DATE OF DEATH February 15, 1998
Place of death London