Heinrich Böll

**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 Block, 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