Günter Grass, Nobel Prize-winning German author, was born in Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) on October 16, 1927. His parents had a grocery store in Danzig Langfuhr.

Grass attended the Danzig Gymnasium Conradinum. Drafted into the Arbeitsdienst, he was wounded in 1945 and sent to an American prison-camp . In 1946 and 1947 he worked in a mine and received a stonemason's education. For many years he studied sculpture and graphics, first in Düsseldorf, then in Berlin. He also worked as an author and travelled frequently. He married in 1954 and since 1960 has lived in Berlin as well as part-time in Schleswig-Holstein. He took an active role in the Social-Democratic (SPD) party and supported Willy Brandt. Divorced in 1978, he remarried in 1979.

Grass became active in the peace movement and visited Calcutta for six months.

From 1983 to 1986 he held the presidency of the Berlin Akademie der Künste (Academy of Arts).

During the revolution of 1989-90, Grass argued for continued separation of the two Germanies, asserting that a unified Germany would necessarily resume its role as belligerent nation-state. He abandoned his mission of gradual socialist reform through the existing West German political institutions. Grass instead adopted a philosophy of direct action, similar to that advocated by the younger generation of 1968.

English-speaking readers probably know Grass best as the author of The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel) (film version by director Volker Schlöndorff). He received dozens of international awards and in 1999 achieved the highest literary honor: the Nobel Prize for Literature. His literature is commonly categorized as part of the artistic movement of Geschichtsaufarbeitung.

Representatives of the City of Bremen joined together to establish the Günter Grass Foundation, with the aim of establishing a centralized collection of his numerous works, especially his many personal readings, videos and films. The Günter Grass House in Lübeck houses exhibitions, an archive and a library.

Comments on World War II

My literary and political work was mostly involved with this German guilt. But in all these years I have had the feeling that we should also speak about our own victims. (Gunter Grass talks to Tom Rosenthal about being in Dresden after the bombing)

We did begin this, we Germans, with Coventry and Liverpool and London, but Dresden was also a crime. There was no military reason to bomb the city. (ibid.)

Bibliography

• Danziger Trilogie
  • Die Blechtrommel (1959)
  • Katz und Maus (1961)
  • Hundejahre (1963)
• Örtlich betäubt (1969)
• Aus dem Tagebuch einer Schnecke (1972)
• Der Butt (1979)
• Das Treffen in Telgte (1979)
• Kopfgeburten oder Die Deutschen sterben aus (1980)
• Die Rättin (1986)
• Zunge zeigen. Ein Tagebuch in Zeichnungen (1988)
• Unkenrufe (1992)
• Ein weites Feld (1995)
• Mein Jahrhundert (1999)
• Im Krebsgang (2002)
• Letzte Tänze (2003)

English translations

• The Danzig Trilogy
  • The Tin Drum (1959)
  • Cat and Mouse (1963)
  • Dog Years (1965)
• Four Plays (1967)
• Speak out! Speeches, Open Letters, Commentaries (1969)
• Local Anaesthetic (1970)
• From the Diary of a Snail (1973)
• In the Egg and Other Poems (1977)
• The Meeting at Telgte (1981)
• The Flounder (1978)
• Headbirths, or, the Germans are Dying Out (1982)
• The Rat (1987)
• Show Your Tongue (1987)
• Two States One Nation? (1990)
• The Call of the Toad (1992)
• The Plebeians Rehearse the Uprising (1996)
• My Century (1999)
• Crabwalk (2002)

External links

• http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/biografien/GrassGuenter/
• http://www.nobel.se/literature/laureates/1999/biobib-ty.html
• http://www.rasscass.com/templ/te_bio.php?PID=552&RID=1
• http://www.lyrikwelt.de/autoren/grass.htm
• http://www.virtuelleallgemeinbibliothek.de/EXTRA1.HTM
• Gunter Grass talks to Tom Rosenthal about being in Dresden after the bombing