Guenter Grass, German novelist and social critic, dies at age 87
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Guenter Grass, the German novelist, social critic and Nobel Prize winner whom many called his country’s moral conscience but who stunned Europe when he revealed in 2006 that he had been a member of the Waffen-SS during World War II, died Monday in the northern German city of Lübeck, which had been his home for decades. He was 87.
His longtime publisher, Gerhard Steidl, told reporters he learned late Sunday Grass had been hospitalized after falling seriously ill very quickly. The cause of death was not announced.
Steidl said he drank his final schnapps with Grass eight days ago while they were working together on his most recent book, which he described as a “literary experiment” fusing poetry with prose.
It is scheduled to be published in the summer.
But because he was a pre-eminent public intellectual who had pushed Germans to confront the ugly aspects of their history, Grass’ confession that he had falsified his own biography shocked readers and led some to view his life’s work in a different light.
Grass was a playwright, essayist, short-story writer, poet, sculptor and printmaker as well as a novelist, but it was as a social critic that he gained the most notoriety, campaigning for disarmament and broad social change.
Grass had long said he had been a “flakhelfer” during the war, one of many German youths pressed to serve in relatively innocent jobs like guarding anti-aircraft batteries.
But in an interview with the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine, he admitted that he had in fact been a member of the elite Waffen-SS, which perpetrated some of the Nazi regime’s most horrific crimes.
“It was a weight on me,” said Grass, then 78.
Guenter Wilhelm Grass was born in Danzig Oct. 16, 1927.
His marriage in 1954 to Anna Margareta Schwarz, a Swiss dancer, ended in divorce in 1978.
He is survived by his second wife, Ute Grunert, an organist; four children from his first marriage, Laura, Bruno, Franz and Raoul; two stepsons from his second marriage, Malte and Hans; two other children, Helene and Nele; and 18 grandchildren.