Gellkhorn Marta

Martha Gellhorn was born on November 8, 1908, in St. Louis, USA. Her father, George Gellhorn, was a gynecologist of German descent, and her mother, Edna Fischell, was an active advocate of women’s rights. Both parents were half Jewish. From childhood, she wrote poems and short stories. She graduated from high school in 1926. She studied at Bryn Mawr College, but dropped out in 1927. After college, she began working for The New Republic and later moved to Europe.

In France, she worked for United Press International and Vogue. In Paris, she began an affair with the philosopher and economist Bertrand de Jouvenel. She would have married de Jouvenel if his wife had agreed to a divorce. While in Europe, she became an admirer of pacifist movements, which she later described in her book What Mad Pursuit (1934).

After returning to the United States, Martha Gellhorn became friends with Eleanor Roosevelt, the president’s wife. In addition to their shared interests, they found that the First Lady had known Martha’s mother, Edna Fischell, from college. Through Eleanor Roosevelt, Gellhorn met Harry Hopkins, who hired her as a columnist for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). At the president’s administration’s request, Martha Gellhorn traveled to cities across the United States and wrote a series of essays on the effects of the Great Depression on different social groups. The results of her observations were presented not only in articles, but also in the book The Trouble I’ve Seen (1936). This collection of stories became the first literary work written by Martha Gellhorn.

During a trip to Key West, Florida, in 1936, Martha met Ernest Hemingway. They decided to go together to Spain to follow the course of the Civil War. In 1937, they spent Christmas together in Barcelona.[10] After four years of a relationship, Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn were married in December 1940.[10] However, because of her constant travels, Hemingway issued an ultimatum: “Either you are a correspondent in this war, or a woman in my bed.” In