Heinrich Böll (December 21, 1917 in Cologne – July 16, 1985 in Langenbroich the Eifel, south of Bonn) was a German writer. He was the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972.

Life 
Böll was born in Cologne. His family were strong Catholics and pacifists.
He went to school from 1922 to 1937. After his abitur, he started a training to become a bookseller. He did not go to the Hitler Youth, but he had to join the German army in the World War II. In 1939, he started to study German literature in Cologne, but he had to break for his army service.

In 1945 he became prisoner of war by the Americans. The Americans wanted to educate the German people to became a democracy. So they encouraged prisoners with talent to write. Böll and some other young writers founded the group 47.

Böll wrote a lot of social critical literature. His main themes were the repression in the way of life by conservative catholic forces and the unsolved problem of old Nazis in the society.

In the 1970s, he criticized the losing of civil laws by the fight against terrorism (of the RAF, Red Army Faction, a left-winged political terror group in the 1970s in West Germany). For that reason, the Bild-Zeitung, an very conservative yellow press newspaper, started a campaign against him.

In the late 1970s, he started to look for Human Rights in the Eastern Blok, where some friends of his lived, too. He helped the Soviet dissidents Alexander Solshenizyn and Lev Kopelev.

In the 1980s, he worked for the peace movement. He protested against the nuclear armament in West Germany.

He went back to the Roman Catholic Church, which he left 1976 by protests, before he died.

Heinrich Böll Foundation 
The Green Party of Germany gave its foundation the name of Böll, Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung. The goals of the foundation are for countries to work together, civil laws and democratic and ecological thinking.

Selected bibliography 
 Der Zug war pünktlich (The Train Was on Time), 1949
 Das Vermächtnis (A Soldier's Legacy), written 1948-1949; publ. 1981
 Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa (Stranger, Bear Word to the Spartans), 1950
 Die schwarzen Schafe (Black Sheep), 1951
 Nicht nur zur Weihnachtszeit (Christmas Not Just Once a Year), 1951
 Wo warst du, Adam? (And Where Were You, Adam?), 1951
 Der Engel schwieg (The Silent Angel), written 1949-1951; publ. 1992
 Und sagte kein einziges Wort (And Never Said a Word), 1953
 Haus ohne Hüter (House without Guardians), 1954
 Das Brot der frühen Jahre (The Bread of Those Early Years), 1955
 Irisches Tagebuch (Irish Journal), 1957
 Die Spurlosen (Missing Persons), 1957
 Doktor Murkes gesammeltes Schweigen (Dr. Murke's Collected Silence), 1958
 Billard um halb zehn (Billiards at Half-Past Nine), 1959
 Ein Schluck Erde, 1962
 Ansichten eines Clowns (The Clown), 1963
 Entfernung von der Truppe (Absent Without Leave), 1964
 Ende einer Dienstfahrt (End of a Mission), 1966
 Gruppenbild mit Dame (Group Portrait with Lady), 1971
 Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum (The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum), 1974
 Fürsorgliche Belagerung (The Safety Net), 1979
 Was soll aus dem Jungen bloss werden? (What's to Become of the Boy?), 1981
 Vermintes Gelände, 1982
 Die Verwundung (The Casualty), early tales, publ. 1983
 Frauen vor Flusslandschaft (Women in a River Landscape), 1985 (publ. posthumously)

Translations 
More than seventy translations of Annemarie and Heinrich Böll are listed in the bibliography published in 1995 by Werner Bellmann: poetical works of Brendan Behan, Eilis Dillon, O. Henry, Paul Horgan, Bernard Malamud, J. D. Salinger, George Bernard Shaw et al.

Secondary literature 
 Bernd Balzer: Das literarische Werk Heinrich Bölls. Kommentare und Interpretationen. dtv, München 1997. 
 Werner Bellmann (Ed.): Das Werk Heinrich Bölls. Bibliographie mit Studien zum Frühwerk. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1995. 
 Werner Bellmann (Ed.): Heinrich Böll, Romane und Erzählungen. Interpretationen. Reclam, Stuttgart 2000. 
 Michael Butler (Ed.): The Narrative Fiction of Heinrich Böll. Social conscience and literary achievement. Cambridge 1994.
 J.H. Reid: Heinrich Böll. A German for His Time. Berg Publishers Ltd., Oxford 1988.
 Klaus Schröter: Heinrich Böll. Rowohlt-Verlag, Reinbek 1987. 
 Jochen Vogt: Heinrich Böll. 2. Aufl. Beck, München 1987. 
 Heinrich Vormweg: Der andere Deutsche. Heinrich Böll. Eine Biographie. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 2002.

Other websites 
 Heinrich-Böll-Foundation
 Cologne Library Heinrich Böll Archive 
 The Heinrich Böll Page 
 Nobel Archive: Böll, 1972 
 http://www.heinrich-boell.de/ - German homepage

1917 births
1985 deaths
German military personnel of World War II
German Roman Catholics
People from Cologne
German writers
German Nobel Prize winners