Born: Danzig, Germany (now Gdansk, Poland), 16 October 1927. Education: Educated at Volksschule and Gymnasium, Danzig; trained as stone mason and sculptor; attended Academy of Art, Dusseldorf, 1948-52, and State Academy of Fine Arts, Berlin, 1953-55. Military Service: Served in World War II: prisoner of war, Marienbad,Czechoslovakia, 1945-46. Family: Married 1) Anna Margareta Schwarz in 1954, three sons and one daughter; 2) Ute Grunert in 1979. Career: Worked as farm labourer, miner, apprentice stonecutter, jazz musician; speech writer for Willy Brandt when Mayor of West Berlin; writer-in-residence, Columbia University, New York, 1966; also artist and illustrator; co-editor, L, since 1976, and Verlages L’80, publishing house, since 1980. Member, Gruppe 47. Lives in Berlin, Germany. Awards: Suddeutscher Rundfunk Lyrikpreis, 1955; Gruppe 47 prize, 1958; Berlin Critics prize, 1960; City of Bremen prize, 1960 (withdrawn); Foreign Book prize (France), 1962; Buchner prize, 1965; Fontane prize, 1968; Theodor Heuss prize, 1969; Mondello prize (Palermo), 1977; Carl von Ossietsky medal, 1977; International literature prize, 1978; Alexander Majkowski medal, 1978; Vienna literature prize, 1980; Feltrinelli prize, 1982; Leonhard Frank ring, 1988. Honorary doctorate: Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, 1965; Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1976; Adam Mieckiewicz University, Poznan; Nobel prize for literature, 1999. Member: Member, 1963, and president, 1983-86 (resigned), Academy of Art, Berlin; American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Publications
Fiction
Danziger Trilogie. 1980; as The Danzig Trilogy, translated by Ralph Manheim, 1987.
Die Blechtrommel. 1959; as The Tin Drum, translated by Ralph Manheim, 1962.
Katz und Maus. 1961; as Cat and Mouse, translated by Ralph Manheim, 1963; as Cat and Mouse and Other Writings, edited by A. Leslie Willson, 1994.
Hundejahre. 1963; as Dog Years, translated by Ralph Manheim, 1965.
Geschichten (as Artur Knoff). 1968.
Ortlich betaubt. 1969; as Local
Anaesthetic, translated by Ralph Manheim, 1969.
Aus dem Tagebuch einer Schnecke. 1972; as From the Diary of a Snail, translated by Ralph Manheim, 1973.
Der Butt. 1977; as The Flounder, translated by Ralph Manheim, 1978.
Das Treffen in Telgte. 1979; as The Meeting at Telgte, translated by Ralph Manheim, 1981.
Kopfgeburten; oder, Die Deutschen sterben aus. 1980; as Headbirths; or, The Germans Are Dying Out, translated by Ralph Manheim, 1982.
Die Rattin. 1986; as The Rat, translated by Ralph Manheim, 1988.
Unkenrufe. 1992; as The Call of the Toad, translated by Ralph
Manheim, 1992.
Ein weites Feld: Roman. 1995.
Auf einem anderen Blatt: Zeichnungen. 1999.
Plays
Hochwasser (produced 1957). 1963; as Flood, translated by Ralph Manheim, in Four Plays, 1967.
Onkel, Onkel (produced 1958). 1965; as Onkel, Onkel, translated by Ralph Manheim, in Four Plays, 1967.
Noch zehn Minuten his Buffalo (produced 1959). In Theaterspiele, 1970; as Only Ten Minutes to Buffalo, translated by Ralph Manheim, in Four Plays, 1967.
Beritten hin und zuruck (produced 1959).
Die bosen Koche (produced 1961). In Theaterspiele, 1970; as The Wicked Cooks, translated by A. Leslie Willson, in Four Plays,1967.
Goldmauschen (produced 1964).
Die Plebejer proben den Aufstand (produced 1966). 1966; as The Plebeians Rehearse the Uprising, translated by Ralph Manheim, 1966.
Four Plays (includes Flood; Onkeh Onkel; Only Ten Minutes to Buffalo; The Wicked Cooks). 1967.
Davor (produced 1969). In Theaterspiele, 1970; as Max, translated by A. Leslie Willson and Ralph Manheim, 1972.
Theaterspiele (includes Noch zehn Minuten bis Buffalo; Hochwasser;Onkel, Onkel; Die Plebejer proben den Aufstand; Davor). 1970. Die Blechtrommel als Film (screenplay), with Volker Schlondorff. 1979.
Screenplays: Katz und Maus, 1967; Die Blechtrommel, with Volker Schlondorff, 1979.
Ballet Scenarios: Funf Koche, 1957; Stoffreste, 1959; Die Vogelscheuchen, 1970.
Radio Plays: Zweiunddreissig Zahne, 1959; Noch zehn Minuten bis Buffalo, 1962; Eine offentliche Diskussion, 1963; Die Plebejer proben den Aufstand, 1966; Hochwasser, 1977.
Verse
Die Vorzuge der Windhuhner. 1956.
Gleisdreieck. 1960.
Selected Poems, translated by Michael Hamburger and Christopher Middleton. 1966; as Poems of Gunter Grass, 1969. Marz. 1966.
Ausgefragt. 1967; as New Poems, translated by Michael Hamburger,1968.
Danach. 1968.
Die Schweinekopfsulze. 1969.
Gesammelte Gedichte. 1971.
Mariazuehren/Hommageamarie/Inmarypraise. 1973; as Inmarypraise,translated by Christopher Middleton, 1974.
Liebe gepruft. 1974.
Mit Sophie in die Pilze gegangen. 1976; revised edition, 1987. In the Egg and Other Poems (bilingual edition), translated by Michael Hamburger and Christopher Middleton. 1977.
Als vom Butt nur die Grate geblieben war. 1977.
Kinderlied: Verse and Etchings. 1982.
Nachruf auf einen Handschuh: Sieben Radierungen und ein Gedicht. 1982.
Ach, Butt, dein Marchen geht bose aus. 1983.
Gedichte. 1985.
Die Rattin: 3 Radierungen und 1 Gedicht. 1985.
Die Gedichte 1955-1986. 1988.
Tiersehutz. 1990.
Novemberland: 13 Sonnette. 1993.
Other
O Susanna: Ein Jazzbilderbuch: Blues, Balladen, Spirituals, Jazz,with H. Geldmacher and H. Wilson. 1959.
Die Ballerina. 1963.
Dich singe ich Demokratie (pamphlets). 5 vols., 1965.
Der Fall Axel C. Springer am Beispiel Arnold Zweig. 1967.
Briefe Uber die Grenze; Versuch eines Ost-West-Dialogs, with Pavel Kohout. 1968.
Uber meinen Lehrer Doblin und andere Vortrage. 1968.
Ausgewahlte Texte, Abbildungen, Faksimiles, Bio-Bibliographie, edited by Theodor Wieser. 1968; as Portrat und Poesie, 1968.
Uber das Selbstverstandliche: Reden, Aufsatze, Offene Briefe, Kommentare. 1968; revised and enlarged edition as Uber das Selbstverstandliche: Politische Schriften, 1969; translated in part by Ralph Manheim, as Speak Out! Speeches, Open Letters, Commentaries, 1969.
Die SchweinekopfsUlze. 1969.
Originalgraphik. 1970.
Dokumente zurpotitischen Wirkung, edited by Heinz Ludwig Arnold and Franz Josef Gortz. 1971.
Der Schriftsteller als BUrger—eine Siebenjahresbilanz. 1973.
Der BUrger und seine Stimme. 1974.
Denkzettel: Potitische Reden und Aufsatze 1965-76. 1978.
Aufsatze zur Literatur. 1980.
Werkverzeichnis der Radierungen (exhibition catalogue). 1980.
Bin ich nun Schreiber; oder, Zeichner? (exhibition catalogue). 1982.
Vatertag (lithographs). 1982.
Zeichnen und Schreiben: das bildnerisehe Werk des Schriftstellers GUnter Grass:Zeichnungen und Texte 1954-1977. 1982; as Drawings and Words 1954-1977, translated by Michael Hamburger and Walter Arndt, 1983.
Radierungen und Texte 1972-1982. 1984; as Etchings and Words 1972-1982, translated by Michael Hamburger and others, 1985.
GUnter Grass: Lithographien: 19.
Juni bis 24.
Juli 1983 (exhibition catalogue). 1983.
Die Vernichtung der Menschheit hat begonnen. 1983.
Widerstand lernen: Politische Gegenreden 1980-1983. 1984.
Geschenkte Freiheit: Rede zum 8. Mai 1945. 1985.
On Writing and Politics, 1967-1983 (selection), translated by Ralph Manheim. 1985.
Erfolgreiche Musterreden fUr den BUrgermeister. 1986.
In Kupfer, auf Stein. 1986.
Werkausgabe, edited by Volker Neuhaus. 10 vols., 1987.
Radierungen, Lithographien, Zeichnungen, Plastiken, Gedichte (exhibition catalogue). 1987.
Es war einmal ein Land: Lyrik und Prosa, Schlagzeug und Perkussion, with Gunter ”Baby” Sommer. 1987.
Zunge Zeigen (travel). 1988; as Show Your Tongue, translated by John E. Woods, 1989.
Skizzenbuch. 1989.
Meine grUne Wiese: Kurzprosa. 1989.
Wenn wir von Europa sprechen: ein Dialog, with Frangoise Giroud. 1989.
Alptraum und Hoffnung: zwei Reden vor dem Club of Rome, with T. Aitmatow. 1989.
Deutscher Lastenausgleich: wider das dumpfe Einheitsgebot: Reden und Gesprache. 1990; as Two States—One Nation? The Case Against Reunification, translated by Krishna Winston and A.S. Wensinger, 1990.
Totes Holz: Ein Nachruf. 1990.
Ausstellung GUinter Grass, Kahlschlag in unseren Kopfen (1990-1991 Berlin) (exhibition catalogue). 1990.
Deutschland, einig Vaterland? Ein Streitgesprach, with Rudolph Augstein. 1990.
Erfolgreiche Mustergrussworte und Musterbriefe fUr BUrgermeister und Kommunalpolitiker. 1990.
Droht der deutsche Einheitsstaat?. 1990.
Ein Schnappchen namens DDR: Letzte Reden vorm Glockengelaut.1990.
Schreiben nach Auschwitz: Frankfurter Poetik-Vorlesung. 1990.
Gegen die verstreichende Zeit: Reden, Aufsaitze und Gesprache 1989-1991. 1991.
Vier Jahrzehnte: Ein Werkstattbericht, edited by G. Fritze Margull.1991.
Editor, with Elisabeth Borchers and Klaus Roehler, Luchterhands Loseblatt Lyrik: eine Auswahl. 2 vols., 1983.
Critical Studies:
GUnter Grass: A Critical Essay by Norris W. Yates, 1967; GUnter Grass by W. Gordon Cunliffe, 1969; Grass by Kurt Lothar Tank, 1969; A Grass Symposium edited by A. Leslie Willson, 1971; GUnter Grass by Irene Leonard, 1974; A Mythic Journey: GUnter Grass’s Tin Drum by Edward Diller, 1974; GUnter Grass by Keith Miles, 1975; The ”Danzig Trilogy" of GUnter Grass by John Reddick, 1975; The Writer and Society: Studies in the Fiction of GUnter Grass and Heinrich Boll by Charlotte W. Ghurye, 1976; GUnter Grass: The Writer in a Pluralist Society by Michael Hollington, 1980; Adventures of a Flounder: Critical Essays on GUnter Grass’ ”Der Butt” edited by Gertrude Bauer Pickar, 1982; The Narrative Works of GUnter Grass: A Critical Interpretation, 1982, and Grass: Die Blechtrommel, 1985, both by Noel L. Thomas; The Fisherman and His Wife: GUnter Grass’s ”The Flounder" in Critical Perspective edited by Siegfried Mews, 1983; GUnter Grass by Ronald Hayman, 1985; GUnter Grass by Richard H. Lawson, 1985; Grass and Grimmelshausen: GUnter Grass’s ”Das Treffen in Telgte” and Rezeptionstheorie by Susan C. Anderson, 1986; Critical Essays on GUnter Grass edited by Patrick O’Neill, 1987; Understanding GUnter Grass by Alan Frank Keele, 1988; GUnter Grass’s ”Der Butt”: Sexual Politics and the Male Myth of History edited by Philip Brady, Timothy McFarland, and John J. White, 1990; GUnter Grass’s Use of Baroque Literature by Alexander Weber, 1995; Distorted Reflections: The Public and Private Uses of the Author in the Work of Uwe Johnson, GUnter Grass and Martin Walser, 1965-1975 by Stuart Tabener, 1998; GUnter Grass Revisited by Patrick O’Neill, 1999; The Life and Work of GUnter Grass: Literature, History, Politics by Julian Preece, 2001.
Gunter Grass has shown in his novels that he is one of the most acute observers and critics of West Germany. After beginning in the 1950s with short prose pieces, poems, and plays in the then dominant ”absurd” style, he made a dramatic impact on the literary scene with Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum), Katz und Maus (Cat and Mouse), and Hundejahre (Dog Years). These were later named the Danziger Trilogie (The Danzig Trilogy) after Grass’s native city which, detached and distant like Joyce’s Dublin, became the prism through which he conveyed his vision of the world about him. In Danzig, with its mixed German and Polish population, World War II began. The city was a paradigmatic setting for the gradual growth of Nazism amid the banality of the petty bourgeoisie, and symbolized the lost homelands from which millions of Germans would be forever exiled after 1945. In this picaresque trilogy Grass, with great zest and wide-ranging scope, imaginatively investigated both recent German history— the monstrous crimes of the Nazis, the acquiescence and cowardice of the ordinary citizen, and contemporary post-war reality—the suppression of guilt, economic reconstruction and the return to affluence and complacency, the loss of moral values. Inevitably Grass became identified with the new generation of critical realists, which included Heinrich Boll and Martin Walser, who implacably satirized the faults and errors of their fellow-countrymen and untiringly reminded them of the guilty involvement in Nazi Germany they were eager to forget.
Grass’s sense of social justice and his contentious nature took him into the political arena where he threw his authority and weight behind the Social Democratic Party in the general elections of the 1960s. His personal friend Willy Brandt became Chancellor in 1969 and Grass’s fiery, hard-hitting campaign speeches, open letters, and commentaries were variously published in Uber das Selbstverstandliche (Speak Out!) and Der Burger und seine Stimme [The Citizen and His Voice]. The creative work accompanying this intense activity was also coloured by Grass’s political commitment; the play Davor (Max) and the novel Ortlich betaubt (Local Anaesthetic) thematize the dominant preoccupations of intellectual and public life, namely the war in Vietnam and radical student protest in German universities. Though imbued with socialist ideas Grass stopped short of violence and destruction, advocating reform rather than revolution, practical measures for eradicating injustice rather than ideological posturings.
The anti-ideological scepticism of Grass’s political stance is articulated in the novel Aus dem Tagebuch einer Schnecke (From the Diary of a Snail), which charts the author’s reflections on his active participation in the election campaign of 1969 as well as telling the fictional story of the teacher Ott, ”nicknamed Doubt,” who resisted the Nazis and clandestinely helped the persecuted Jews to the best of his ability. During the mid-1970s Grass seemed to be out of tune with the more extreme progressive forces in Germany and his literary talents appeared to lie dormant and inactive. In fact this proved to be the period of gestation of another epic masterpiece. Der Butt (The Flounder) incorporates so many autobiographical details that the blurring of the distinction between author and narrator already initiated in From the Diary of a Snail is here completed. The Flounder is a complementary piece to The Danzig Trilogy; where the latter focuses on the enormities of contemporary events, The Flounder embraces in its narrative structure the whole sweep of German social and political history. The perennial human endeavour to ascribe progress and meaning to historical process as well as the more topical question of feminism and the secular domination of women by men are central themes given expression by Grass.
In the ”fictional” work, Kopfgeburten; oder, Die Deutschen sterben aus (Headbirths; or, The Germans Are Dying Out), Grass displayed his political persona once more, thematizing the massive and urgent problems facing the industrialized nations: energy crisis, the threat of nuclear war, a declining birth-rate, the Third World. Yet, despite all his concern as a citizen with the struggles of the real world, Grass’s faith in the significance of literature and the aesthetic dimension still shines through; he maintains that even in the most catastrophic destruction of civilization ”a hand holding a pen would reach up out of the rubble.”
Political concerns of national and global proportions have continued as fictional and polemical themes in Grass’s subsequent work.
Die Rattin (The Rat) envisaged a dystopian world following a nuclear catastrophe where the human race, in its self-destructive hubris, has appropriately been superseded by pullulating rodents. His most recent novel, Unkenrufe (The Call of the Toad), also revels in near-cloacal and lugubriously funereal imagery, returning to Grass’s beloved Danzig to re-enact the historically fraught and bitter relations between Germany and Poland. Grass encapsulated his nostalgia in the love-affair of an older couple (Alexander, the German, and his Polish mistress, Alexandra) who found a Cemetery Society to enable the German dead to at least rest in graves in the city from where they had been driven. But the story ends in tragedy.
Grass spent some time in Calcutta during 1986 and 1987, and expressed in Zunge Zeigen (Show Your Tongue) his deep horror and shame at the chaotic world of filth, violence, and death he encountered there. The inexorable process of merging the two Germanies that got under way in 1989 provoked violent opposition from Grass, who protested vehemently in Deutscher Lastenausgleich: wider das dumpfe Einheitsgebot (Two States—One Nation?) and Ein Schnappchen namens DDR [The GDR, a Real Snip] at the juggernaut of reunification, its nationalistic repercussions and the cynically arrogant takeover of Eastern Lander by the Federal Republic. Going against the tide of public opinion Grass prophesied that nothing but ill would result from the euphoria and complacency of an inflated Germany situated at the heart of a Europe in flux.
