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)

 References 

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

Category:1927 births
Category:2015 deaths
Category:German essayists
Category:German Nobel Prize winners
Category:German novelists
Category:German writers
Category:People from former German territories
Category:Writers from Gdańsk
Category:German playwrights
Category:Waffen-SS people
Category:Nobel Prize in Literature winners