Günter Grass (1927 - 2015) was a German novelist, poet, playwright, sculptor and graphic artist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999. [1] His debut novel The Tin Drum (1959) became a landmark of postwar European fiction and, with Cat and Mouse and Dog Years, formed the Danzig Trilogy set in his native city. [2] A prominent public intellectual and Social Democratic campaigner, he disclosed in 2006 that he had served in the Waffen-SS as a teenager, prompting extensive debate in Germany.
Early life and the war
Günter Wilhelm Grass was born on 16 October 1927 in the Free City of Danzig, now Gdańsk in Poland, to a German father and a mother of Kashubian origin who kept a grocery shop. [1] The city, its mixed population and its destruction became the central subject of his fiction.
He was conscripted as a teenager during the Second World War. He served as an assistant in an anti-aircraft battery and, at the age of seventeen, in the Waffen-SS armoured division Frundsberg in the final months of the war. He was wounded and taken prisoner by American forces in 1945. [3]
After the war he worked as a farm labourer and in a potash mine, trained as a stonemason, and then studied sculpture and graphic art at the Düsseldorf Art Academy and at the Berlin University of the Arts. He continued to draw, etch and sculpt throughout his life, and designed the covers of his own books.
The Danzig Trilogy and major fiction
The Tin Drum, published in 1959, is narrated by Oskar Matzerath, who decides on his third birthday to stop growing and observes the rise of Nazism, the war and the postwar German economic recovery from the height of a child. [2] Its combination of grotesque comedy, dense symbolism and unsparing historical detail made it an international success, and Volker Schlöndorff's 1979 film adaptation won the Academy Award for Best International Feature.
It was followed by the novella Cat and Mouse (1961) and the novel Dog Years (1963), completing the Danzig Trilogy. [1] Later works include The Flounder (1977), The Rat (1986), Too Far Afield (1995), a critical treatment of German reunification, and Crabwalk (2002), on the sinking of the refugee ship Wilhelm Gustloff.
Public engagement
Grass was among the most politically active German writers of his era. He campaigned for the Social Democratic Party and for Willy Brandt, argued for a gradual approach to reunification rather than rapid absorption of East Germany, and spoke frequently on immigration, nuclear weapons and environmental questions. [3]
He belonged to Group 47, the association of postwar German writers, and was made an honorary citizen of Gdańsk. His poem What Must Be Said, published in 2012 and critical of Israeli policy toward Iran, drew strong international controversy.
The 2006 disclosure
In his memoir Peeling the Onion (2006), Grass revealed for the first time that he had been conscripted into the Waffen-SS, having previously described his wartime service only in terms of anti-aircraft duty. [1] The disclosure was widely debated in Germany: critics argued that his decades as a moral commentator on the Nazi past had rested on an omission, while defenders pointed to his age at the time.
Death and legacy
Grass died in Lübeck on 13 April 2015 at the age of 87. [1] Beyond the Nobel Prize, his honours included the Georg Büchner Prize, the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature, the Thomas Mann Prize and the Sonning Prize, together with honorary doctorates from Harvard University and the University of Gdańsk. [4]
His work is generally credited with forcing postwar German literature to confront the Nazi period directly.
