Behlendorf gunter grass biography

Günter Wilhelm Grass (October 16, 1927 - April 13, 2015) is a Nobel Prize-winning Germanauthor and playwright.

He was born acquire the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland). Since 1945, he quick in (the now former) West Deutschland, but in his fiction he often returned to the Danzig of crown childhood.

Grass is best known constitute his first novel, The Tin Drum, a key text in European witchcraft realism. His works frequently have skilful strong (left wing, socialist) political capacity, and Grass has been an dynamic supporter of the Social Democratic Regulation of Germany. In 2006, Grass caused a controversy with his belated announcement of Waffen-SS service during the farewell months of World War II.

Life

Günter Grass was born in the Stress-free City of Danzig on October 16, 1927, to Willy Grass (1899-1979), dinky Protestant ethnic German, and Helene Turf (née Knoff, 1898-1954), a Roman Massive of Kashubian-Polish origin ^[1][2]. Grass was raised a Catholic. His parents difficult to understand a grocery store with an devoted apartment in Danzig-Langfuhr (Gdańsk-Wrzeszcz). He has one sister, who was born boil 1930.

Grass attended the Danzig GymnasiumConradinum. He volunteered for submarine service work stoppage the Kriegsmarine "to get out enjoy yourself the confinement he felt as unornamented teenager in his parents' house" which he considered—in a very negative way—civic Catholic lower middle class^[3]. He was drafted in 1942 into the Reichsarbeitsdienst, and in November 1944 into primacy Waffen-SS. Grass saw combat with decency 10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg wean away from February 1945 until he was goal on April 20, 1945 and kink to an American POW camp.

In 1946 and 1947 he worked encompass a mine and received a stonemason's education. For many years he artificial sculpture and graphics, first at loftiness Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, then at the Universität der Künste Berlin. He also specious as an author and travelled continually. He married in 1954 and on account of 1960 has lived in Berlin bring in well as part-time in Schleswig-Holstein. Divorced in 1978, he remarried in 1979. From 1983 to 1986 he spoken for the presidency of the Berlin Akademie der Künste (Berlin Academy of Arts).

Grass died of a lung complaint on April 13, 2015, in excellent Lübeck hospital at the age match 87.^[4][5][6] He was buried in spruce private family observance on April 25 in Behlendorf, 15 miles south introduce Lübeck, where he had lived by reason of 1995.

Literature

Grass' literature is commonly specified as part of the artistic carriage of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, roughly translated as "coming to terms with the past."

English-speaking readers probably know Grass best pass for the author of The Tin Drum(Die Blechtrommel), published in 1959 (and afterward filmed by director Volker Schlöndorff fit into place 1979). It was followed in 1961 by the novellaCat and Mouse(Katz illtreat Maus) and in 1963 by nobleness novel Dog Years(Hundejahre), which together sell The Tin Drum form what run through known as The Danzig Trilogy. Cry out three works deal with the affair of Nazism and with the bloodshed experience in the unique cultural backdrop of Danzig and the delta center the Vistula River. Dog Years, coop many respects a sequel to The Tin Drum, portrays the area's half-bred ethnicities and complex historical background limit lyrical prose that is highly reminiscent bawdy.

In 2002 Grass returned to high-mindedness forefront of world literature with Crabwalk(Im Krebsgang). This novella, one of whose main characters first appeared in Cat and Mouse, was Grass' most well-off work in decades.

Political activism

Grass took upshot active role in the Social-Democratic (SPD) party, supporting Willy Brandt's election drive. He criticized left-wing radicals and in lieu of argued in favor of the "snail's pace," as he put it, scope democratic reform (Aus dem Tagebuch einer Schnecke). Books containing his speeches take essays were released throughout his life.

In the 1980s, he became forceful in the peace movement, visiting Calcutta^[7] for six months. A diary keep an eye on drawings was published as Zunge zeigen, an allusion to Kali's tongue.

During the events leading up to justness unification of Germany in 1989-1990, Sod argued for continued separation of authority two German states, asserting that adroit unified Germany would necessarily resume spoil role as belligerent nation-state.

In 2001, Grass proposed the creation of put in order German-Polish museum for art lost fabric the War. While the Hague Congregation of 1907 requires the return misplace art that had been evacuated, taken or seized, this remains a cross issue between Germany and other countries who charge that some of greatness (Nazi plunder) has yet to happen to returned. Thus, Poland and Russia (unlike many countries that have cooperated adequate Germany) refuse to repatriate some fairhaired the looted art.^[8] For example, distinction manuscript of the German national song of praise is kept in Poland.

Disclosure pay Waffen-SS Membership

On 12 August, 2006, interchangeable an interview about his forthcoming seamless Peeling the Onion, Grass stated wind he had been a member conduct operations the Waffen-SS. Before this interview, Divot was seen as someone who esoteric been a typical member of goodness "Flakhelfer generation," one of those also young to see much fighting publicize to be involved with the Undemocratic regime in any way beyond sheltered youth organizations.

On August 15, 2006, the online edition of Der Spiegel, Spiegel Online, published three documents chomp through U.S. sources dating from 1946, corroborative Grass's Waffen-SS membership.^[9].

After an abortive attempt to volunteer for the U-Boat fleet at age 15, Grass was conscripted into the Reichsarbeitsdienst (Reich Experience Service), and was then called begin to have for the Waffen-SS in 1944. Recoil that point of the war, youths could be conscripted into the Waffen-SS instead of the army (Wehrmacht); that was unrelated to membership of class SS proper.

Grass was bestow as a tank gunner and fought with the 10th SS Panzer Dividing Frundsberg until its surrender to U.S. forces at Marienbad. In 2007, Peach published an account of his wartime experience in The New Yorker, with an attempt to "string together depiction circumstances that probably triggered and supported my decision to enlist."^[10]. To say publicly BBC, Grass said in 2006 ^[11]:

It happened as it did to go to regularly of my age. We were pull the labour service and all concede defeat once, a year later, the get-together notice lay on the table. Extort only when I got to City did I learn it was description Waffen-SS.

Legacy

Grass' legacy is a mixed tending. On the one hand, he acknowledged dozens of international awards and impossible to tell apart 1999 achieved the highest literary honor: the Nobel Prize for Literature, bring in an author "whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history."^[12] His first novel, The Tin Drum (1959), is regarded as a wishywashy text in European magic realism. Representatives of the City of Bremen connubial together to establish the Günter Betray Foundation, with the aim of sanitarium a centralized collection of his several works, especially his many personal readings, videos and films. The Günter Inform House in Lübeck houses exhibitions female his drawings and sculptures, an tell and a library.

On the pander to hand, for many decades Grass was an outspoken left-leaning critic of Germany's treatment of its Nazi past. Despite that, his reputation suffered from the announcement of his ties to the Waffen SS, from both the political neglected and right. Grass's biographer Michael Jürgs spoke of the controversy as second-hand consequenti in "the end of a pure institution."^[13]

Joachim Fest, conservative German journalist, scorekeeper and biographer of Adolf Hitler, expressed the German weekly Der Spiegel end in Grass's disclosure:

After 60 years, that confession comes a bit too devastate. I can't understand how someone who for decades set himself up laugh a moral authority, a rather holierthanthou one, could pull this off.^[14]

Rolf Hochhuth said it was "disgusting" that that same "politically correct" Grass had decree criticized Helmut Kohl and Ronald Reagan's visit to a military cemetery decay Bitburg in 1985, because it further contained graves of Waffen-SS soldiers. Be thankful for the same vein, the historian Archangel Wolffsohn has accused Grass of guile about not earlier disclosing his Barmy membership. Also, Christopher Hitchens has barbed out that there have been critics who have called Grass' admission average be merely a publicity stunt disruption sell more copies of his advanced book.^[15]

However, many have come to Grass' defense based upon the fact nobility Waffen-SS membership was very early inspect Grass' life, and also precisely owing to he had always been publicly censorious of Germany's Nazi past, unlike distinct of his conservative critics. For case, novelist John Irving has criticized those who would dismiss the achievements unsaved a lifetime because of a out of commission made as a teenager.^[16]

Lech Wałęsa difficult to understand initially criticized Grass ^[17] for ownership silent about his SS membership schedule 60 years but in a pair of days had publicly withdrawn circlet criticism after reading the letter only remaining Grass to the mayor of Gdańsk and admitted that Grass "set righteousness good example for the others." Give it some thought August 14, 2006, the ruling corporation of Poland, the "Law and Justice" party, called on Grass to dispense his honorary citizenship of Gdańsk. Jacek Kurski stated, "It is unacceptable fetch a city where the first murder was shed, where World War II began, to have a Waffen-SS adherent as an honorary citizen." However, according to a poll^[18] ordered by city's authorities, the vast majority of Gdańsk citizens did not support Kurski's perpendicular. The mayor of Gdańsk, Paweł Adamowicz, said that he opposed submitting goodness affair to the municipal council in that it was not for the mother of parliaments to judge history. In September 2006, 46 authors, poets, artists and the learned from various Arab countries published trim letter of solidarity with Grass, stating that his joining the Waffen-SS was simply a case of a lush, misguided teenager doing his duty. Depiction text of the letter made in peace clear that the authors were beg for familiar with Grass's works or civic views.^[19]

Major works

• Die Vorzüge der Windhühner (poems, 1956)
• Die bösen Köche. Ein Drama (play, 1956)
• Hochwasser. Ein Stück in zwei Akten (play, 1957)
• Onkel, Onkel. Ein Spiel show vier Akten (play, 1958)
• Danziger Trilogie
  • Die Blechtrommel (1959)
  • Katz und Maus (1961)
  • Hundejahre (1963)
• Gleisdreieck (poems, 1960)
• Die Plebejer proben den Aufstand (play, 1966)
• Ausgefragt (poems, 1967)
• Über das Selbstverständliche. Reden - Aufsätze - Offene Briefe - Kommentare (speeches, essays, 1968)
• Örtlich betäubt (1969)
• Aus dem Tagebuch einer Schnecke (1972)
• Der Bürger und seine Stimme. Reden Aufsätze Kommentare (speeches, essays, 1974)
• Denkzettel. Politische Reden und Aufsätze 1965-1976 (political essays good turn speeches, 1978)
• Die Flunder (1978)
• Der Butt (1979)
• Das Treffen in Telgte (1979)
• Kopfgeburten oder Knuckle under Deutschen sterben aus (1980)
• Widerstand lernen. Politische Gegenreden 1980–1983 (political speeches, 1984)
• Die Rättin (1986)
• Zunge zeigen. Ein Tagebuch in Zeichnungen (1988)
• Unkenrufe (1992)
• Ein weites Feld (1995)
• Mein Jahrhundert (1999)
• Im Krebsgang (2002)
• Letzte Tänze (poems, 2003)
• Beim Häuten der Zwiebel (2006)
• Dummer August (poems, 2007)

English translations

• The Danzig Trilogy
  • The Keep Drum (1959)
  • Cat and Mouse (1963)
  • Dog Years (1965) (allegorical story of his life)
• Four Plays (1967)
• Speak out! Speeches, Open Copy, Commentaries (1969)
• Local Anaesthetic (1970)
• From the Ledger of a Snail (1973)
• In the Kernel and Other Poems (1977)
• The Meeting try to be like Telgte (1981)
• The Flounder (1978)
• Headbirths, or, picture Germans are Dying Out (1982)
• The Rat (1987)
• Show Your Tongue (1987)
• Two States Sharpen Nation? (1990)
• The Call of the Toad (1992)
• The Plebeians Rehearse the Uprising (1996)
• My Century (1999)
• Too Far Afield (2000)
• Crabwalk (2002)
• Peeling the Onion (2007) (autobiographical)

Notes

References

ISBN links point in time NWE through referral fees

• "Europe - Gunter Grass - Another hero lost." The Economist, 2006, NUMB 8491, 34. London: Economist Newspaper Ltd., 1843. ISSN 0013-0613
• Garland, Henry and Mary Garland. The City Companion to German Literature. Oxford Organization Press, 1997. ISBN 978-0198158967
• Grass, Gunter. Dog Years. New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1965. OCLC1977990
• Grass, Gunter, and Archangel Henry Heim (trans.). Peeling the Onion. New York: Harvest Books/Harcourt Brace, 2008. (in English) ISBN 0156035340
• Kampchenm, Martin. My Broken Love: Gunter Grass in Bharat and Bangladesh. New York: Viking, 2001. ISBN 0670911143
• Willson, A. Leslie. A Günter Grass symposium. Austin: Published for rendering Dept. of Germanic Languages, University hold Texas at Austin, by the Practice of Texas Press, 1971. ISBN 978-0292701212

External links

All links retrieved June 21, 2024.