Great Impostor

Fourth estate fifth columnist

In his search for dramatic stories, German Freelance Reporter Guenter Wallraff has masqueraded as a derelict, a mental patient, a napalm-factory worker and a Portuguese terrorist. He once chained himself to an Athens lamppost so that he could investigate justice under the Greek junta. His masquerade worked all too well: he was tortured and then imprisoned for three months. Wallraff s latest and most outrageous pose: a reporter.

He spent four months on the staff of Bild Zeitung (circ. 4.8 million), West Germany's largest and most lurid daily. His just-published book, arguing that the paper distorts the news, faces a court action by Bild's owner, the firm of right-wing Publisher Axel Springer. But the book seems destined for the bestseller lists.

The son of a Cologne auto-plant worker, Wallraff was drafted into the army in 1963, denied release as a conscientious objector, declared to possess an "abnormal personality" and then discharged. Wallraff recounted that Catch-22 experience for a small leftist magazine, and the wide public notice he received persuaded him to seek new roles for his "abnormal personality." He spent three years working at various blue-collar jobs for a 1966 expose of the squalor and drudgery that can afflict industrial workers in affluent West Germany. He posed as a drunkard and later a mental patient to uncover prejudice and hypocrisy among government social agencies.

Though Wallraff's lean, ascetic face has appeared on each of his six books and many magazine pieces, he undertakes no mysterious disguises. All he usually does is get a haircut, suitable clothes and new frames for his glasses. For the Bild Zeitung caper, he also shaved off his mustache, adopted the name of Hans Esser and passed a pre-employment writing test at the paper. Once hired, he had to turn out credibly trashy articles. He also had to socialize heavily with fellow reporters and pretend to share their views to prevent detection. His account of the experience, Der Aufmacher (The Banner Headline), accuses Bild of fabricating interviews, publishing phony photographs, aiding government intelligence agencies and slandering public figures who do not embrace the paper's editorial policy.

Springer Verlag, which owns twelve other German publications, attacked Wallraff in a sulfurous rebuttal: "He is a man who lies and falsifies stories in order to obtain material for his books." Springer went to court charging 14 specific instances of factual error. It is hardly Wallraff's first encounter with the law. He has been prosecuted twice for impersonating government and corporate employees, but the charges were dismissed. On ten other occasions, Wallraff's victims have won injunctions requiring that unsubstantiated allegations be deleted from his writings. Of the Springer petition for injunction, which may be decided this week, Wallraff says: "If the 14 facts are stricken, I can substitute others." Wallraff, who lives with his wife and two daughters in a working-class section of Cologne, admits to leftist sympathies. But he insists that politics do not color his reporting. "I rely on indignation, anger and my own sensitivity," he says. "My tool as a journalist is not secondhand information but what I have experienced."

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