Gnter Grass

Passions

Vocation

Notable

German writer, a novelist, essayist, poet and playwright who designed and illustrated his own books. A member of the Hitler youth, he joined the military at 16 and was wounded, captured and entered in an American camp to 4/1945. He tried various jobs, went to art school and turned to poetry and writing. His first novel, "The Tin Drum," 1962 created a furor. His explorations of his country's tortuous century established him as one of the most esteemed voices of the postwar era. In October 1999, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. In advance of his memoir’s release, the noted German novelist confessed in an August 2006 interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper that he had never until now told the truth about his military service under the Nazi regime. He said that his autobiography, “Peeling the Onion,” reveals that he volunteered for service and was not unwillingly conscripted as a youth. His secret...”was a weight on me. My silence over all these years is one of the reasons I wrote the book. It had to come out finally." He died on April 13, 2015 in the morning in Lübeck. Link to Wikipedia biography