Martha Gellhorn-Who was she?
Introduction
Martha Gellhorn was a noted writer who also worked as a war
correspondent. An adventurist and a free-spirited woman at heart, she had a 60 year-long career from 1934 to 1989 and reported on every conflict which took
place during this time. She was married to the famous American writer ‘Ernest
Hemingway’. The award ‘Martha Gellhorn Prize for journalism has been
constituted in her memory. Gellhorn traveled to Europe and the US as a war
correspondent. She initially moved to Europe in 1930 for a period of 1 year as a journalist. Later she
moved to the US also and after approaching ‘Harry Hopkins’ who was close to
President USA Franklin D. Roosevelt, landed a job
with the magazine ‘New Deal’. Then she began writing on how ‘the Great Depression”
was affecting people’ s lives.
She began her career as a journalist from the age of 19. Her
work was printed for the first time in the magazine ‘The New Republic’ of New York. Martha Gellhorn was known for her open voice
in journalism. Apart from being a war correspondent, Gellhorn was also a
fictional writer. She wrote 5 novels and short story collections also.
Gellhorn
Childhood & Early Life
She was born to ‘Edna
Fischel Gellhorn’ and ‘George Gellhorn’ on November 8, 1998. She also
participated in a suffragist movement as a child at the age of 8 in ‘St. Louis’
called the ‘The Golden Lane’. She received her early education from John
Burroughs School in 1926 and after that moved to pursue her graduation from the
‘Bryn Mawr College’ where she dropped after 1 year to start her career in
journalism.
Career
At the age of 19, Martha worked for the ‘New
Republic’ in 1927 where she worked for 3 years.
However, later Martha moved to Europe in 1930. She
created a brochure for the magazine Holland American Line.
Later she returned US in 1931. After landing in
St.Louis she started working for the magazine St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Based on her own life until that time, she
wrote the novel What Mad Pursuit(1934).
She was appointed in the position of a field
investigator. This appointment was for the organization FERA founded by the
American president FDR. Based on her travels to various US states because of
her role, she wrote a collection of short stories titled ‘The Trouble I've Seen ‘ in 1936.
Gellhorn then worked as a Spanish Civil War
correspondent for ‘Collier's Weekly’. She had moved to Spain in 1937
to pursue this job.
She wrote the novel ‘A Stricken Field’ after covering the World War 2.
She moved to different countries Hong Kong, Finland, Singapore, England and
Burma to report on the war. She was the only woman reporter who witnessed the
end of the 2nd World War in Normandy in France.
She is also reported on the trials of
German Adolf
Eichmann for the magazine Atlantic Monthly.
After the end of the 2nd world war, she reported on the Vietnam War for
the magazine Guardian. She was
completely against the war. She also did reporting of the conflicts
between Arab and Israelis and moved to Israel for the same purpose in 1967.
She also covered the war
involving when US occupied Panama in 1989.
Since her eyesight got
affected by old age, she could not work as a war correspondent any more in the
1990’s. So, her last piece of work was a report on the penury in the country of
‘Brazil’. This report was published in the magazine ‘Granta’.
Major
works
She worked quite devotedly
towards discovering how ‘Depression’ had affected the lives of the American
people. She travelled to places like
North Carolina to find out about the impact of Depression. Her work formed the
US official documentation and history on Great Depression.
Personal
Life and Legacy
She dated Bertrand de Jouvenel, a French writer whom she met on her
trip to Paris. She returned back with him to the US in 1931. However, de Jouvenel
didn’t divorce his wife.
She was
married to Hemingway for 4 years from
1940 to 1945. They had met in Florida, the US in December 1936. She had
accompanied him to Spain to report the Spanish Civil War. Hemingway also worked
for Collier’s Weekly as a war correspondent. She also
In 1953
she got married to T.S Mathews who was a managaing editor of Time Magazine.
She had a son George Alexander Gellhorn, however the marriage ended
in divorce in 1963. She also adopted a boy named Sandy Matthews. She committed
suicide on February 15, 1998
Comments
Post a Comment