Günter Grass Biography

German Novelist, Playwright and Poet Famous for Danzig Trilogy

Oct 19, 2008 Tel Asiado

Brief biography and works of Günter Grass, considered an important contemporary German writer, famous for The Tin Drum, a part of Danzig Trilogy.

Writer Günter Grass is one of Germany's most important highly cultured writers. Extremely critical of his country, he wrote his famous Danzig Trilogy, with the first book, The Tin Drum, his best-known. The second and third books are Cat and Mouse and Dog Years, respectively. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999.

Early Life of Günter Grass

Günter Wilhelm Grass was born on October 16, 1927 in Danzig, (now the Polish city of Gdansk), the son of a grocery store owner. At the age of 16 he was drafted into the German army to fight in the Second World War. He was wounded and taken prisoner. After the war he tried various occupations, including jazz drumming, farm laboring, potash mining, black-market trading painting and eventually writing.

Writer and Conscience of Germany

Aged 32, Grass published his first novel, The Tin Drum, which recounts the wartime experiences of the people of Danzig. It also tells at the way the German society was damaged by the extremist Nazi Party. The main character in the story is three-year-old Oskar, who plays a tin drum given to him on his birthday. He refuses to grow up in protest against the adult world.

While many recognized the novel as a work of great literary importance, others found it complex. Grass quickly became known by many as 'the conscience of Germany.' He writes about things in German history that many of his countrymen find difficult to confront. His work is known to contain mockeries of what he sees to be faults or weaknesses of the German people and Germany.

Günter Grass has written many books, poems and plays. In them, he has ruthlessly savaged many aspects of German culture. His recent novel, Wide Field, was the first major literary work to deal with the reunification of East and West Germany after the Berlin Wall was removed. His reputation and the significance of the subject cause enormous interest in the book.

Works by Günter Grass

• The Tin Drum, 1959
• Cat and Mouse, 1961
• Dog Years, 1963
• The Plebeians Rehearse the Uprising, 1966 (play)
• Local Anesthetic, 1969
• From the Diary of a Snail, 1972
• The Flounder, 1977
• Danzig Trilogy, 1980
• The Rat, 1986
• The Call of the Toad, 1992
• Wide Field, 1995

Sources:

Chambers Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una Mcgovern, Chambers Harrap, Edinburgh, 2002

Larousse Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring, Larousse, 1994

The A-Z of Great Writers, by Tom Payne, Carlton, 1997

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Günter Grass, German Novelist, Playwright, Poet