12 December 2022. “Invisible Walls” (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), the impressive autobiography by M100 Doyenne Hella Pick, has now also been published in German: “Unsichtbare Mauern”. “The adventurous journey of one of the greatest female political journalists to the peaks and abysses of contemporary history”, writes the publishing Czernin Verlag.
In 1939, the eleven-year-old was sent to London by her Jewish mother on the Kindertransport. She became a journalist, travelled through Africa and went to Washington as a correspondent for the Guardian and was often a guest in Werner Höfer’s legendary Sunday talk show “Internationaler Frühschoppen”.
Hella Pick is a role model for all female journalists. Pick frequently found that she was the only woman in journalists’ rounds, often inadvertently causing a “political dilemma”. After-dinner, when the men and women traditionally gathered in single sex groups, no one knew what to do with, “a female journalist invited because of her profession”. But her professional reputation prevailed. She wrote about the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy’s assassination, travelled to Moscow with Richard Nixon, reported on the disintegration of the Soviet Union on the spot and made friends with Willy Brandt. But this book is not only a political and journalistic journey, it is also a personal one, in which the long-time friend and companion of M100 co-founder Lord Weidenfeld reveals a lot about herself. Absolutely recommended reading and as a gift!
“Hella Pick lived through, and reported on, many of the most seismic moments of the past fourscore years or so. Now she turns her exceptional reporting skills on herself – and the result is fascinating, moving, truly inspiring.” Alan Rusbridger, former editor-in-chief of the Guardian.
