Günter Grass

Günter Wilhelm Grass was born on October 16, 1927, in the Free City of Danzig, now known as Gdańsk, Poland. He was the son of Helene Grass, a Roman Catholic of Kashubian-Polish origin, and Wilhelm Grass, a Lutheran Protestant of German origin. Grass was raised as a Catholic and lived with his family in an apartment attached to their grocery store in Danzig-Langfuhr. He had one sister, who was born in 1930.

Grass attended the Danzig gymnasium Conradinum and volunteered for submarine service with the Kriegsmarine during World War II to escape what he considered the confinement of his parents' house. He later served in the Reichsarbeitsdienst and the Waffen-Schutzstaffel. Grass saw combat with the 10th Schutzstaffel panzer division Frundsberg and was wounded in April 1945. He was sent to an American prisoner of war camp and, after his release, worked in a mine and studied sculpture and graphics at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and the Universität der Künste Berlin.

Grass is best known for his first novel, "The Tin Drum" (1959), which is a key text in European magic realism. He referred to this style as "broadened reality." His other notable works include "Cat and Mouse" (1961) and "Dog Years" (1963), which, together with "The Tin Drum," make up his "Danzig trilogy." Grass was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999. He was a vocal critic of the German unification process in 1989 and moved to Lübeck in 1995. In 2006, Grass disclosed his Waffen-Schutzstaffel service during the final months of World War II, causing controversy. He passed away on April 13, 2015, at the age of 87, due to complications from a lung infection.