D s term “national poet” Günter Grass life rejected. Nevertheless, reflected in the life and work of Nobel laureate, who died in a hospital Lübeck Monday morning 87-year-old with his family, the younger German history – with all its fractures, controversies and injuries failure and moments. Few have so polarized and provoked him, even in the older age “with the last ink” in his Israel-critical poem “What must be said” (2012). But few have as much need to plug in as the mustachioed Kashub from Danzig, “show tongue” which – as one of his book titles – should be the hallmark
Germany it has grass made it difficult and Grass. Germany again not easy. The shame to have gone as a young Nazi on the glue has, the Nobel Prize winner tormented to the last. The literature expert Hanjo Kesting said at a reading with grass, one must consider the literary-artistic-political work of art as a “lifelong penance.”
And so far is with grass, which eloquently than any Another writer interfere in the politics of the post-war era, an era gone over. Some see grass in his artistic-political complexity in a row with Goethe, Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht. Grass himself has in his works – most recently in “Grimm’s words.” – Always performed with the thinkers of literary history dialogue
Great Storyteller
“Günter Grass was a world of letters. His literary legacy will stand next to the von Goethe “, honored Culture Minister Monika Grütters (CDU), the major author. “Günter Grass was a unique speaker, essayist, and especially a great storyteller of recent German history -. Which was also his story with all its ruptures And he has rubbed on this story, processed and found some interpretation for its readers difficult to sustain as for his critics was “
Long had Grass – after the release of his debut novel.” The Tin Drum “in 1959 become the most internationally renowned contemporary German author – have to wait for the Nobel Prize. As far as it was in 1999, the secretary of the Nobel Committee Horace Engdahl said in his speech: “The appearance of” The Tin Drum “meant the rebirth of the German novel of the 20th century.” And the Oscar-winning film adaptation by Volker Schlöndorff made film history
In more than 60 years, Grass has created an enormous artistic work. Poetry, plays and ballets belong, aphorisms, plays, essays and short stories, great novels and is one literary genre deprivation of autobiographical books.
childhood between the Holy Spirit and Hitler
These have grass to old age as a sculptor , graphic artist, painter and draftsman worked – the envelope designed for each of his books himself and himself presented his works as a gifted reader and played on recordings. . The art students Grass major breakthrough had been denied in the 1950s because he remained faithful to the figurative expressionism and not the then modern abstract art worshiped
Flashback: comes on October 16, 1927 “Ginterchen” in Gdańsk Wrzeszcz to the world. The parents, a German Protestant and a Catholic Kashubian, own a grocery store, many customers can be written down. The apartment is small, Günter and his sister Waltraud have under the window sill own corner. No bathroom, the toilet on the corridor. Grass grows on Catholic, is an altar boy. “A childhood between the Holy Spirit and Hitler,” Michael Jürgs Grass writes in his biography. Wounded survived Grass with 17 war, after horrific experiences.
The fact that he was the last months in the Waffen-SS, Grass reported for the first time in 2006 the autobiographical masterpiece “Peeling the Onion” – after more than 60 years. Shame, never one to tilgender blemish, a mark of Cain, as Grass. Hardly anyone holds the Nazi seduction of young people for a problem, but rather the long silence will be held against him about it.
The elites of the country he had previously read the riot act for decades. Uncountable the Kiesingers and Filbinger, which he held up an insufficient processing of the Nazi period. He even brought his late admission of an accused to have lost its credibility. Grass in turn spoke of annihilation experiments, they wanted to make him gag.
A short time in India
zest for life, Grass lives intensively after the war, as so many of his generation. 1947 Steinmetz teaching in Dusseldorf, then studied at the Düsseldorf and Berlin Art Academy. Grass hitchhiked to Italy, France, Switzerland. And he plays washboard in a jazz band.
In 1954, he married the Swiss ballet student Anna, four children come from the marriage. With Anna he moves to Paris in 1956. There arises at the standing desk in the moist heating chamber of a backyard cultivation “The Tin Drum”. Their small protagonist Oskar Matzerath enthusiastic, 1958, the legendary author group 47. Grass carries out the manuscript, wins the prize of yesteryear massive 4500 marks.
1960 return to Berlin, then Wewelsfleth and later move after Behlendorf in Lübeck – both in Schleswig-Holstein. The hilly landscape reminded him of his native Danzig, he says. In between lies a short time in India, where Grass was also pulled out of annoyance over hostility in the Federal Republic. His second wife Ute was in Calcutta health problems.
As a historical lesson of the Weimar Republic, which was due to lack of militant Democrats failed Grass sees the duty of political commitment. The Adenauer era he denounces as musty-stuffy, his “Tin Drum” is devalued as pornographic; Bremen Senate refused in 1959 already awarded by a jury Literature Prize of the City. Grass looks in the Federal Republic of too many former Nazis back in high office. No word duel, the Grass escapes. Franz Josef Strauss (CSU) attacked the intellectuals in the country and thinks primarily Grass.
Supporters Willy Brandt
In the Grass SPD finds his political home. Reforms in small steps, not the supposedly great union of an ideology that was Grass’s political conviction. It supports the later German Chancellor Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik and its; reconciliation with Poland is it matter of the heart, Gdansk later appointed him an honorary citizen. Grass accompanied Brandt 1970 on the signing of the Warsaw Treaty as well as to Israel and New York. For decades makes Grass for the SPD election campaign, but occurs in 1992 from the party because of the tightening of asylum from -. And continues to support the SPD
Again and again he spoke – even against the Catholic Church, from which emerges the former altar boy. In writers’ associations or in the Free Academy of the Arts Berlin Grass committed to the social needs of authors as well as human rights. The German Federal Cultural Foundation, initiated by him again and again is 2002 finally reality
Grass want more democracy, demolition and more global justice between the rich North and the poor South -. That attracts like a red thread through his commitment. Against the invasion of the US and its allies in Iraq in 2003 Grass published on the German Press Agency a call, which is based on Matthias Claudius poem “‘s is war!’ S war!”
Rep Germany
The German reunification, it comes too fast. He sees the East Germans ripped off, writes that a new Constitution was drafted – as provided in the Constitution. In the novel “A wide field” (1995), it has also critical of the THA apart, whose task was to convert the GDR planned economy to a market economy. Throughout the novel abroad is well received, it hails in Germany slating, including the then influential literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki.
How Thomas Mann was grass for representatives of German literature, culture, yes become in a sense, Germany, said the then Federal President Horst Köhler 2007 at the ceremony in Lübeck for the 80th birthday of the author. Grass’ve always made it difficult for his country, had quarreled, was disappointed. Especially in the struggle for Germany sees Köhler Grass’ patriotism. Abroad, he had often experienced “the importance and the value of” Grass ‘artistic work’ for Germany’s image in the world “is. “They have collaborated and co-written and co-signed the cultural face of our country, which bears many scars and injuries, which can also be kind and laugh though.”
Behind the often thunderous rumbling roles of the public Politics and literature theater man Grass is hardly noticed. He who said of himself, to have a mother complex. It has not made women always easy. Three female dancers Grass has six children. His wife Ute gave himself two children in the blended family with 1979 was married.
Family pet with a blended family
Passionate like boiled grass, his preferred hearty food were not for everyone taste, love of red wine will be memorable. Grass was a family pet, grandchildren crowd of patchwork family grew over the years, many summers as a guest in a cottage in the woods on the Danish island of Møn.
The annual Ute had fixed cycles In the winter he lived in a cottage in Portugal, in the summer of Møn with bathing in the Baltic Sea. Headquarters was an old house with studio work in Behlendorf in Lübeck, located on a canal. There Grass wrote by hand and then typed his manuscripts on an old Olivetti typewriter. Often Grass also came to Berlin or Hamburg. Grass, the refugee child, found no real new home.
“Despite everything,” Grass Germany has loved, as he writes in the same band “ephemera” published poem. Despite arms exports, despite social drifting apart, and despite the fact itself deeply in debt to force other countries to save. The last two stanzas reflect the mutual relatedness between the author and his country very much, “After Love thirsting country / whose inhabitants never tire / lick unhealed wound / My love some country / I am arrested, / if necessary as. splinter in the eye. “
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