Günter Grass

**Günter Wilhelm Grass** (16 October 1927 in Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) – 13 April 2015 in Lübeck) was a German writer and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was known for writing the controversial, but yet classic novel _The Tin Drum_.

## Life

Grass was born in Danzig in 1927 and went to school there. In the World War II he had to serve in the military, afterwards he was a prisoner of war of the U.S. army. In 1945 and 1946 he worked as a stonemason. During the rise of Nazi Germany, Grass drafted into the Waffen-SS, the elite armed wing of the Nazi Party. He revealed this in 2006. He said if he had joined the armed wing when he was older, he would have faced war crimes.

From 1946 he studied arts at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and the Berlin University of the Arts (Universität der Künste) in West Berlin. He was a member of the German group of writers known as group 47.

He has lived in North Rhine-Westphalia, Berlin and Schleswig-Holstein. He lived in Lübeck. In 1959 he published The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel), his most famous work. Grass was always interested in politics and helped in the election campaigns of the SPD. He was a friend of Willy Brandt. Grass was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1999.

Grass died from a lung infection at his home in Lübeck, aged 87.

## Bibliography

- Danziger Trilogie
    - _Die Blechtrommel_ (Tin Drum) (1959)
    - _Katz und Maus_ (Cat and Mouse)(1961)
    - _Hundejahre_ (Dog Years)(1963)
- _Örtlich betäubt_ (Local Anaesthetic) (1969)
- _Aus dem Tagebuch einer Schnecke_ (From the Diary of a Snail) (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)
- _Too Far Afield_ (2000)
- _Crabwalk_ (2002)

## Other websites

- Nobel prize biographical notes  (in English, also available in French, German, and Swedish)
- Nobel Laureate Flays Bush, June 1, 2006

## Infobox (writer)

- **name**: Günter Grass
- **image**: Günter Grass auf dem Blauen Sofa.jpg
- **caption**: Günter Grass in 2006
- **birth place**: Wrzeszcz, Danzig-Langfuhr,
Free City of Danzig
- **death place**: Lübeck, Germany
- **occupation**: Novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, sculptor, graphic designer
- **nationality**: Germans, German
- **period**: 1956–2015
- **movement**: Vergangenheitsbewältigung
- **notableworks**: _The Tin Drum, Die Blechtrommel_
_Cat and Mouse (novella), Katz und Maus_
_Dog Years (novel), Hundejahre_
_Crabwalk, Im Krebsgang_
"What Must Be Said, Was gesagt werden muss"
- **signature**: Günter Grass signature new.svg