Günter Grass

Günter Grass

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Günter_Grass

Günter Wilhelm Grass (German: [ˈɡʏntɐ ˈɡʀas]; 16 October 1927 – 13 April 2015) was a German novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature.Grass was of Kashubian ethnicity and was born in the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland). In May 1945, while serving as a teenaged soldier in the Waffen SS since 1944, he was taken prisoner by U.S. forces and released in April 1946. Trained as a stonemason and sculptor, he began writing in the 1950s. In his fiction, he frequently returned to the Danzig of his childhood.Grass is best known for his first novel, The Tin Drum (1959), a key text in European magic realism. It was the first book of his Danzig Trilogy, which includes Cat and Mouse and Dog Years. His works are frequently considered to have a left-wing political dimension, and Grass was an active supporter of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). The Tin Drum was adapted as a film of the same name, which won both the 1979 Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The Swedish Academy awarded him the Nobel Prize in Literature, praising him as a writer "whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history".

Günter Grass Dies at 87; Writer Pried Open Germany’s Past but Hid His Own

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/world/europe/gunter-grass-german-novelist-dies-at-87.html?_r=0

Günter Grass, the German novelist, social critic and Nobel Prize winner whom many called his country’s moral conscience but who stunned Europe when he revealed in 2006 that he had been a member of the Waffen-SS during World War II, died on Monday in the northern German city of Lübeck, which had been his home for decades. He was 87.

His longtime publisher, Gerhard Steidl, said that he had learned late Sunday that Mr. Grass had been hospitalized after falling seriously ill very quickly. The cause of death was not announced.

Mr. Steidl said he drank his final schnapps with Mr. Grass eight days ago while they were working together on his most recent book, which he described as a “literary experiment” fusing poetry with prose. It is scheduled to be published in the summer.

“He was fully concentrated on his work until the last moment,” Mr. Steidl said.

Gunter  Grass

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http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/242123/Gunter-Grass

Günter Grass: Facebook is shit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p4aWJ3c__8

Günter Grass: Writing against the wall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV1HDE5DqM0

"I realized it was through language, that I could define myself as a German." Meet Nobel Prize laureate Günter Grass in this interview where he reflects on his life, literary work and political engagement.

At the end of World War II, Günter Grass' world also collapsed. Born in 1927, he grew up in the Third Reich, enrolling in the army towards the end of the war - as he describes in his autobiography "Peeling the onion" (2006) - in the SS elite. "Our youth was marked by National Socialism with all its mistakes and madness and blindness" Grass states in this profound interview, where he looks back on his life.

With Germany shattered and his hometown Gdansk occupied, Grass - to the frustration of his father - turned to art and literature. Very soon he realized, that the deroute of his early years influenced his writing. "So I wasn't able to voluntarily choose the content of my work, it was already dictated. And justifiably so. You are forced to admit, that if you want to prevent something like that from happening again, you need to open your mouth."

The instant success of Grass' first novel "The Tin Drum" published in 1959 made Grass one of the most influential German and European intellectuals after the Second World War. Here Grass talks about his love for art and language - and how those two fecundate each other. About some drawings by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya in his study he says: "They don't hang there just because I think they're pretty, but they're also a benchmark. Challenging myself to reach this level in my writing too. Or at least to approach it." Grass also tells about another of his paragons or "Saints" - the French writer Albert Camus, author of the novel "The Myth of Sisyphus": "The recognition that the rock never stays up on the hill. And to accept the rock, not lament it. To not believe in final destinations. And that's the best way to become immune to ideologies, which, as a rule, swear to a final, happy condition."

Looking back on his life and writing, Grass also admits mistakes. Thus he states, that he has underestimated the role of the banks in our societies: "These banks are out of control and are hollowing out the capitalist system from the inside and destroying it. You could say that the downfall of capitalism is not a very big loss. My question is 'What comes afterwards?' I'm afraid it will turn out as it did in the former Soviet Union. An oligarchic system. With absolute, totalitarian measures. An... incomparable atrocity." Also Grass reflects on the fact, whether or not it was a mistake, that he acknowledged being part of the SS very late in life: "Okay, people can accuse me of that. I could have made a kind of confession earlier on, but that's not how I am. I had to reach a certain age before I was able to write autobiographically."

In the end Grass admits that it was through language, that he came to terms with contemporary Germany: "I discovered how rich this language is. What can be expressed with it. In opposition to many of the writers, I for example met in the Gruppe 47, I believed, and still do, that a language should not be punished because it was abused." At the same time, Grass argues, that language and society belong together, that literature will always have a political dimension: "In my understanding, literature acknowledges the times and its faults. And even when it tries to omit politics, even in a love story, if you look closely, politics plays a part."

Günter Grass was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner. Camera: Klaus Elmer Editing: Martin Kogi

Gdansk,photos

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Lubeck, photos