„I’m writing for a newspaper”. Writer as a Journalist in the German Language Area

The beginnings of German journalism go back to XIV century but it was not until the times of Enlightenment when writers started to publish in the press. Two periods of journalistic boom during which new press genres emerged are, among others, the time before the 1848 Revolution and the years after WWII. These were the periods of active work of such columnists, reporters, theatre and film critics as Walter Benjamin, Kurt Tucholsky, Joseph Roth, Siegfried Kracauer and Egon Erwin Kisch. After 1945 this tradition was continued by Günter Grass, Heinrich Böll, Martin Walser, Hans Magnus Enzensberger and other authors of politically and socially engaged texts. The article discusses relations between journalism and literature on the example of two texts, a report Our Auschwitz of a German author Martina Walsera and column of an Austrian writer Ilse Aichinger.