Reportage, Parteilichkeit und linke Melancholie. Maria Ostens Reportagen im Spanischen Bürgerkrieg

Abstract

Writer Maria Osten (1908–1942) travelled to Spain in 1936 to report on the Civil War. This paper argues that her reports, conceived as a direct means of intervention in the sociopolitical context of the time, show a clear partisanship and an intense political commitment to the Republican cause, fostered by the use of a wide set of literary techniques. In this, they respond to the criticisms made at the time to the genre of reportage and to the so called “left melancholy”.