Günter Grass, author of The Tin Drum has died aged 87

Guenter Grass, German Nobel literature prize winner and author of The Tin Drum, has died aged 87.

His publisher said he passed away at a clinic in Luebeck on Monday morning.
Born in what was then Danzig, Grass served in the German military in World War Two and published his breakthrough anti-Nazi novel, The Tin Drum, in 1959.
Later in life he became a vocal opponent of German reunification in 1990, and argued afterwards that it had been carried out too hastily.
Grass's work was "a formidable reflection of our country and a permanent part of its literary and cultural heritage," German President Joachim Gauck said in a statement (in German).
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was "deeply dismayed" to hear of the author's death, the German foreign ministry tweeted.
Writer Salman Rushdie described Grass as "a true giant, inspiration, and friend".

Guenter Grass

Grass was not afraid to engage in the world of politics and debate

• 1927: Born in Danzig (now Polish city of Gdansk)
• 1944: Joins Waffen-SS
• 1945-6: Prisoner of war
• 1948-56: Studies sculpture in Duesseldorf and Berlin
• 1959: Achieves worldwide fame with the publication of The Tin Drum
• 1999: Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature
• 2006: Reveals his SS past in memoir
• 2015: Dies in Luebeck

Obituary: Guenter Grass

Grass's home town became the Polish city of Gdansk after the war; he spent much of his later life living near Luebeck.Many of his writings focused on the Nazi era, the horrors of the war, and the destruction and guilt that remained after Germany's defeat.
Germans were shocked when he revealed in his 2006 memoir, Skinning the Onion, that as a teenager he had volunteered to join the army and had served in the Waffen-SS - the combat arm of Hitler's dreaded SS paramilitary force, which was responsible for atrocities throughout Nazi-occupied Europe.
Previous accounts of his life had suggested he had been an anti-aircraft gunner and had been conscripted into the military.
After the war he spent months in an American prisoner of war camp.

Aggression and guilt

Guenter Grass was very committed politically, impulsive, emotional, and could be quite aggressive, said Annemarie Stoltenberg from German radio station NDR Kultur.
"For the first generation of post-war intellectuals the priority was to build a new justice system and democracy," she explained.
"Grass then came in the second wave, and said we must also tackle the issue of guilt and what had happened in the war."
The Tin Drum - part fairy tale, part survival story in a brutal world - had a biblical energy, according to Stoltenberg.
For Grass - who had attacked so many people before for not being open about their wartime past - the criticism when he admitted joining the Waffen-SS in his youth was a big blow, she said.
"But he had documents showing he had spoken about it earlier, and I don't think the attack on him was justified," she added.

Grass revealed in his 2006 memoir that he had served in the Waffen-SS during the war

Grass went on to train as a stonemason and then studied sculpture, and he remained active in the visual arts. His first book of poetry was published in 1956.The author was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999, for portraying "the forgotten face of history".
Praising The Tin Drum, the Nobel committee said that it was "as if German literature had been granted a new beginning after decades of linguistic and moral destruction".

'Strange and beautiful'

The magical realist novel's narrator decides to stop growing at the age of three, and watches the adult world around him as events overtake his family and Danzig. He communicates through his tin drum and is able to "drum up the past", reporting on events he has not witnessed.
Grass was politically engaged - campaigning for the Social Democratic Party - and was a major figure in German public life and discourse.
A poem published in 2012, What Must Be Said, sparked controversy for its strong criticism of Israel, which barred the writer from the country.
Grass was a deeply thoughtful and intelligent man who struggled, like many of his peers, to make sense of his and Germany's troubled past, according to the BBC's Arts Editor Will Gompertz.
For him, The Tin Drum is "a strange and brilliant book" that captured the nature of the 20th Century in a way few others have equalled.

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Günter Grass, Nobel-winning novelist dies aged 87

 

  

Günter Grass, Nobel-winning novelist dies aged 87

Author of The Tin Drum passes away in hospital in Lübeck

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Günter Grass, who received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1999, has died aged 87. Video: Reuters

Derek Scally

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Mon, Apr 13, 2015, 13:15

First published: Mon, Apr 13, 2015, 11:16

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Germany’s celebrated and controversial Nobel Prize-winning author Günter Grass has died aged 87.

His 1959 debut novel ‘The Tin Drum’ established Mr Grass’s reputation as one of West Germany’s leading public intellectuals and pacifist voices. 

But his reputation as a writer - and as a moral authority - suffered in later years after he admitted volunteering for the Waffen-SS.

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Grass was born in 1927 in what was then the free city of Danzig, today Gdansk, in Poland, where his parents ran a shop.

A biographer later described his Catholic upbringing in Danzig, a hotbed of Nazi agitation, as trapped “between the Holy Spirit and Hitler”.

As a 17 year-old in 1944 he served first as a flak helper then in the Waffen-SS. He was injured and held as a prisoner-of-war until 1946 in Bavaria. He moved to Düsseldorf to study art and played in a jazz band until 1952.

He remained an active painter throughout his life but, after moving to Paris in 1956, his visual art was eclipsed three years later with ‘The Tin Drum’.

Filmed in 1980 by Volker Schlöndorff, it was the first part of his ‘Danzig Trilogy’, which attracted a huge following - and no share of controversy - for his energetic language and provocative anti-war message.

As well as political novels, he wrote poetry and plays and published collections of essays. From 1965 on became a regular voice in West Germany’s political scene as a staunch electoral supporter of Willy Brandt and his Social Democratic Party (SPD).

After decades of success, his latter years were an unhappy professional time for Grass.

Novels in the 1990s were given vicious reviews and many never understood, nor forgave, his warning against a “rushed” German unification.

His final controversial novel, 1999’s ‘Crabwalk’, looked at the 1945 sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff liner with 10,000 passengers - mostly German civilians - onboard.

Many welcomed his breaking of the taboo of discussing German victims of the second World War but his reputation took a serious blow in his 2006 autobiography, ‘Peeling the Onion’.

Here he admitted for the first time that he had covered up part of his war record: his service in the 10th tank division of the Waffen SS in Dresden. He said he had seen no atrocities and had signed simply up to get away from home.

“My silence over the years is the reason I wrote this book, it had to come out, finally,” he wrote.

While he attracted some praise, his critics pounced on the belated revelation as proof that the man who devoted his life to “writing against forgetting” was a hypocrite.

He divided German opinion one last time in the April 2012 poem ‘What Needs To Be Said’.

Published simultaneously in three European newspapers, Grass accused Israel of endangering world peace with its threat of a nuclear attack “that could erase the Iranian people”.

Israel’s ambassador to Germany accused him of having a “disturbed relationship” to the country.

His final book, published in 2010, was ‘Grimm’s Words: A Love Letter’ and in January 2014 he announced he would write no more novels.

In 1954 he married the Swiss dancer Anna Margareta Schwarz with whom he had three sons and a daughter.

They divorced in 1978 and Grass had two daughters with two different women. In 1979 he married organist Ute Grunert and they lived near the northern city of Lübeck, where Grass died on Monday morning from an infection.

Announcing his death, his publisher Steidl published his last wishes on their website: “I want to be buried with a sack of nuts and my newest teeth. If there’s a tumult where I lie then one can gather: it’s him, still him.”

Mon, Apr 13, 2015, 13:15

First published: Mon, Apr 13, 2015, 11:16

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