Günter Grass as a writer: novels, short stories, poems – SPIEGEL ONLINE

The story writer and novelist Grass emerged hesitantly stood at the beginning but the visual artist with academic studies in Dusseldorf and West Berlin. “The benefits of wind chicken” was his first book in 1956, there was gathered poems and graphics.

Three years later, the artistic self-confrontation was decided in 1959 appeared “The Tin Drum” and made from the outset sensation.

This outrageous story of the little Oskar, whose cry brings panes tinkle, the memory of Gdansk, the city of German-Polish interests, the imagery, which succeeded the 32-year-old writer, emergence and impact of German fascism in everyday scenes to describe nachempfindbar, up to the beginning of the West German economic miracle, this novel Grass had set standards.

It was in addition to appearing in these years titles of Böll, Koeppen, Lenz and Walser especially the “Tin Drum” Grass, not only in their own country, but quickly gave the international post-war German literature interest and reputation.

With the cheeky bold novel “Cat and Mouse” and the novel “Dog Years” Grass was the topography of his birth city of Gdansk faithful. To date, tell the people of this town how much these texts and the heated debate surrounding it were part of the identity of the former Hanseatic city

And Grass made a him formative experience. “With the publication of my first (.. .) novels I learned early on that books offense, anger, hatred can release. What was expected of love from their own country, was read as a nest-fouling. Since then I am considered to be controversial. ”

The Sprawling, the obsessive Sexual

But not only this experience, he told the audience his Nobel speech to the Swedish Academy in December 1999, but he betrayed his read examples: “I come as you learn reading, from the Moorish-Spanish school of the picaresque novel in her fight against windmills has remained a transferable through the centuries Model So the Pikaro lives of the comedy of failure.. . His wit pees on the pillars of power saws in their stalls, but also knows that he will bring neither the temple to collapse even the throne for tilting. ” Thus, it is primarily Rabelais’ “larger than life guys Gargantua and Pantagruel” on the Grass refers again and again.

“From the Diary of a Snail” (1972) reflects the political experiences of the author and his early acquired prominence of the SPD made available. “Ilsebill salted for” led the 1977 major human history novel “The Flounder” field. This grandiose story paraphrased Grimm’s fairy tale of the fisherman and his wife, and dares picaresque elements by the author does not do well before the invention of the triple-breasted woman holding.

Grass has never happened to the experience of a unanimous judgment of literary criticism, he remained controversial. But the number of his readers grew, “The Butt” quickly reached a circulation of more than 300,000 copies and was translated into 24 languages.

Some has just the sprawl, the little fallen obsessively Sexual grass’s imagination but it was not disputed that Grass decreed in his verbal acrobatics all the means of linguistic virtuosity.

Progress skeptics in Fabulierlaune

Until his death Grass wrote with a pen in a notebook, the manuscript typed by hand into a mechanical typewriter, only this of him then once corrected typescript was then given by the Secretariat and publisher in the electronic word processing. And, true, the rhythm of Grass’schen prose, the author read his text but keep telling yourself before

Anyone who could ever be witness to a public reading at Grass raves about the rhetoric read this author, the origin of the literature from the oral tradition was mandatory.

Nine years later ventured Grass once again summon a grand world theater, this time from the perspective of the eponymous rodent “The Rat”. Also this doomsday scenario is owed to the Fabulierlaune the Luddite author, who poetically against the misery of the world braces itself and the “She-rat” Finally, even the Nobel Prize conferred.

1979 dedicated to the author’s story “The Meeting at Telgte” the founder of the group 47 Hans Werner Richter. Grass was this group which had given him in 1958 for the first chapter of the emerging “Tin Drum” at a price, always appreciated. It was important for the exchange among colleagues. Long after the end of this legendary group Grass was invited to a similar model to Lübeck author meetings, most recently at the beginning of this year.

collegiality and competition are because the controlling motives of masterful narrative that describes a meeting in 1647 and invites to decipher in the characterization of the Baroque writers like Gryphius or Simon roof or Opitz colleagues that assembly 300 years later. This text offers play on the historical confusion, its protagonists and whose works Grass had worked out in months long search in the Wolfenbüttel library.

century and a new millennium Grass contributed an opulent self-illustrated volume, consisting of each year of the 20th century compresses a historical event into a story: “My Century” brings together scenes depicting the fictional meeting of Remarque and disciples, reminiscent of historic boxing matches or shout after her own mother.

The process of German unification felt Grass highly committed. Was he there yet, who had taken early on with colleagues at some conspiratorial conditions in the GDR and had repeatedly called a German National Foundation.

Literary result of his employment with the European epochal change from 1989 was “A broad field”. A novel dual design that takes the period 1848-1990 in the eye and is a veritable Fontane biography writes like the story of his revenant in the 20th century, Fonty.

horror at page 127 in the onion book

First of all this double structure revealed that Grass wanted too much here. With “Peeling the Onion” Grass began the series of three autobiographical books in 2006, it was followed by “The Box” and “Grimm’s words – a declaration of love” (2010). Previously Grass had many interviews an autobiography decided a rejection granted.

The astonishment gave way to horror, as the reader learned on page 127 of the onion book that Grass had been a member of a unit of the Waffen SS in the last months of the war. This biographical detail won by unusual, due to the prominence scandal undue weight, Grass at the time was still just 17 years old. Only that he had beschwiegen this detail that had probably been one of the driving forces of his writing as long took his own evil weighted readers of his work.

About this scandal was lost, that is “Peeling the Onion” with its reminder of the conditions and motives for writing “The Tin Drum” the real keystone in the Literary Work of Grass.

Some unconvincing successful poem from the last years of life can not diminish the importance of the author Günter Grass as an outstanding representative of German-language literature in the second half of the 20th century.

On the death of Günter Grass