Gunter Grass

Günter Wilhelm Grass (Free City of Danzig, present-day Poland, October 16, 1927-Lübeck, Germany, April 13, 2015) was a German writer and artist, awarded the Prize Nobel Prize for Literature and the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, in 1999.

Trajectory

The son of Wilhelm Grass (1899-1979), a Pomeranian-German Protestant, and Helene Magdalena Grass (née Knoff, 1898-1954), a Catholic of Kashubo-Polish origin, the future writer grew up Catholic. His parents had a winery next to a small two-bedroom apartment in Danzig-Langfuhr (now Gdańsk-Wrzeszcz, Poland). He had three siblings: Ella, Friedrich and Alfred. He studied drawing and sculpture from 1948 to 1956.

In 1954 he married Anna Schwarz, with whom he had three sons and a daughter. Divorced in 1978, the following year he married Ute Grunert, until her death, he also had two daughters from other relationships.

He has been a key writer in literary and civil life after the Second War, in Germany and in Europe. And he has written in many different ways about the history of his country in the mid-century XX, already with three initial novels: The Tin Drum (1959), The Cat and the Mouse (1961) and Dog Years (1963).

He had a notable participation in the Group 47 of German writers, which met twice a year: it was a group of young authors, later very outstanding, who read unpublished fragments and faced criticism from their colleagues (the organizers sent cards cyclically to very disparate people, outside the group). These Group 47 meetings gave a voice, even eventually in Europe, to a new generation of writers.

On the other hand, Günter Grass had an active political participation throughout his life. He harshly criticized the repression of workers in East Germany (GDR) in the early 1950s ( Commoners rehearse the revolution ). In fact, he always remained very close to the Social Democratic party and helped Willy Brandt, among others, in his campaigns (as can be read in Diary of a Snail ), which was decisive for the German change. In 1990, his short essay on the camps, Writing after Auschwitz , received much comment. He also opposed, after the fall of the Wall, a hasty and invasive reunification with the former GDR ( Germany: a senseless unification ).

1986

A controversy

It is possible that for all this, before and after receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999, he was attacked in various ways, and even once decided to leave Germany (he spent almost a year in India).

The passage of his life that he recounted in his 2007 autobiography, Peeling the onion, was especially controversial, in which he recounts his childhood, his life as a soldier, his beginnings as a writer and his relationship with the Pope Benedict XVI, who was also a prisoner of war in Bad Aibling (Bavaria). And this work disseminated another alleged novelty, advanced by the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ): that at the age of 17 he belonged to the Waffen-SS, that is, that he was among the soldiers, nearly a million, who eventually recruited the SS (Schutzstaffel or "Protection Corps"). It was only known that in 1944 he spent a few months in the army as an artillery assistant and that he served in the militia, but not that the battalions organized for the war by the Nazis had recruited him as a soldier, still of school age. On May 8, 1945, he was wounded and captured in Marienbad, spending time hospitalized and another prisoner of war.

Grass pointed out that his entry into the Waffen-SS was not premeditated, since he had volunteered to serve on submarines, being assigned to Dresden, where he served in the 10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg. Grass only served in that unit for a few months, when he was 17 years old, for which he has been defended by Volker Schlöndorff, Salman Rushdie, his translator Miguel Sáenz or Mario Vargas Llosa, among many others.

What's more, Klaus Wagenbach wrote that the author had already told him this fact in 1963 to write a monograph about it, and he transcribes the corresponding notes he took there. Grass had openly declared it, says Wagenbach, but in 2007 the FAZ was interested in a headline: "Not only are there too many reactionaries in the world, but there are also too many parricides," added that Kafka specialist in this regard. According to an interview with him by Juan Cruz, this does not prevent Grass himself from critically assessing —and regretfully— what this “seduction” of power meant for the boys of his generation.

Work

His extensive novel The Tin Drum, from 1959, about the Germany of his childhood, and also Years of a Dog from 1963, attracted great attention. in one of the best-known narrative voices in his country for his acid and implacable tone on the immediate past.

In 1968 he published in Berlin a collection of short stories, Stories (Geschichten), under the pseudonym "Artur Knoff", using the surname from his mother.

He later wrote El turbot (1977), a novel that reflects his culinary knowledge; a brief and dense Meeting in Telgte (1981), about the German writers of the Baroque. Then La Ratesa (1986) and three books on the history of her country, which have had a lot of resonance: It's a long story (1996), about the fall of the Berlin Wall, My Century (1999), which goes year by year through the XX century (and was published in the year of his Nobel), and At the Crab's Step (2002), since "it is necessary to go back to advance, like crabs", according to Grass. In this novel, A Crab Step, he recalls the fate of millions of Germans who fell victim to World War II. The centerpiece of the book is the sinking of the ship KS Wilhelm Gustloff on January 30, 1945, with thousands of East Prussian refugees on board; many of them children. Since in Germany it is a subject monopolized by the powerful refugee associations of East Prussia, of a conservative nature, Grass ran the risk of being attached to an ideology that was not his own. That is why in his novel he contrasts the theme of the death of thousands of German refugees with the fatal fate of a young man from the extreme right (neo-Nazi). Starting from that tragedy, he also makes a tour of others suffered by the German population, which are hardly studied in the country's textbooks.

Günter Grass' prisoner of war, indicating his belonging to a Waffen-SS unit.

In addition, he did illustration works, such as Der Schatten (The shadow. The stories of H. C. Andersen as seen by G. Grass), for which he won the prize Hans Christian Andersen of illustration in 2005. He has also published books with his drawings. He presented an exhibition with sculptures and drawings in Görlitz in 2006. On the occasion of his death, the newspaper El País published some of his drawings and watercolors, several of which have the particularity of including explanatory texts on the subject. author. Especially noteworthy is his self-portrait.

The main translators of Grass's works into Spanish have been Carlos Gerhard Otterwälder, who died in Mexico in 1976, and Miguel Sáenz (the latter has done it in contact with the author).

In January 2014, Grass declared that he would not write any more novels, due to his advanced age making it impossible for him to plan how long it would take him to do so. The abandonment of the narrative did not mean, however, his definitive retirement, since he continued to cultivate poetry and drawing.

On April 14, 2015, the newspaper El País published Grass's last interview, carried out by journalist Juan Cruz on the previous March 21, and which was still unpublished: "Günter Grass: “Pain is the main cause that makes me work and create”.

Works

Novels

• Trilogy of Danzig — Danziger Trilogie
  • The Canopy drum1959 — Die Blechtrommel, trad.: Carlos Gerhard; Joaquín Mortiz, Mexico, 1963 (priologist of Mario Vargas Llosa, biographical semblance of Francisco J. Satué, Circle of Readers, 1987; new trad.: Miguel Sáenz, Alfaguara, Madrid, 2009)
  • The cat and the mouse1961 — Katz und Maus, trad.: Carlos Gerhard; Joaquín Mortiz, Mexico, 1964 (Alfaguara, Madrid, 1999)
  • Years of dog1963 — Hundejahre, trad.: Carlos Gerhard; Joaquín Mortiz, Mexico, 1966 (Alfaguara, Madrid, 1992)
• Local anesthesia1969 — Örtlich betäubt, trad.: Carlos Gerhard; Joaquín Mortiz, Mexico, 1972
• The rodaballo1977 — Der Butt, trad.: Miguel Sáenz; Alfaguara, Madrid, 1999
• Meeting in Telgte1979 — Das Treffen in Telgte, trad.: Genoveva Dieterich; Alfaguara, Madrid, 1992
• La ratesa1986 — Die Rättin, trad.: Miguel Sáenz; Alfaguara, Madrid, 1999
• Bad omens1992 — Unkenrufe, trad.: Miguel Sáenz; Alfaguara, Madrid, 1999
• It's a long story.1995 — Ein weites Feld, trad.: Miguel Sáenz; Alfaguara, Madrid, 1997
• My century1999 — Mein Jahrhundert, trad.: Miguel Sáenz; Alfaguara, Madrid, 1999
• Step by Crab2002 — Im Krebsgang, trad.: Miguel Sáenz; Alfaguara, Madrid, 2003
• The camera2008 — Die BoxSteidl, Göttingen 2008

Poems

• Die Vorzüge der Windhühner, poems, 1956
• Gleisdreieck, poems, 1960
• Ausgefragt, poems, 1967
• From a snail diary1972 — Aus dem Tagebuch einer Schnecke, trad.: Miguel Sáenz; Alfaguara, Madrid, 2001
• Letzte Tänze, poems, 2003
• Novemberland13 anti-racist poems accompanied by many other illustrations of his
• Dummer August, poems, 2007 — Clown of August2009

Theater

• Die bösen Köche. Ein Drama, theatre, 1956
• Hochwasser. Ein Stück in zwei Akten, theater, 1957
• Onkel, Onkel. Ein Spiel in vier Akten, theater, 1958
• Die Plebejer tryen den Aufstandtheatre, 1966 — The plebeyos rehearse the revolution, Cuadernos para el diálogo, Madrid 1969
• Davor, theater, 1970

Essays and speeches

• Über das Selbstverständliche. Reden - Aufsätze - Offene Briefe - Kommentarespeeches and essays, 1968
• Denkzettel. Politische Reden und Aufsätze 1965-1976political essays and speeches
• Der Bürger und seine Stimme. Reden Aufsätze Kommentarespeeches and essays, 1974 — The bourgeois and his voice
• Kopfgeburten oder Die Deutschen sterben aus1980 — Mental parts or the Germans extinct, trad.: Genoveva Dieterich; Alfaguara, Madrid, 1999
• Widerstand lernen. Politische Gegenreden 1980–1983political speeches, 1984
• Zunge zeigen. Ein Tagebuch in Zeichnungen, daily with drawings, 1988 — Remove the tongue

Memories

• Beim Häuten der Zwiebel, 2006, first volume of memories — Peeling the onion2007
• Die Box, second volume of memories, 2008 — The box of desires, trad.: Miguel Sáenz; Alfaguara, Madrid, 2009
• Unterwegs von Deutschland nach Deutschland. Tagebuch 19902009 — From Germany to Germany. Journal, 1990, trad.: Carlos Fortea; Alfaguara, Madrid, 2011
• Grimms Wörter, third volume of memories, 2010

Short Stories

• Geschichten, 1968 - Berlin, Literarisches Colloquium (under the pseudonym "Artur Knoff")

Spanish editions that do not match German books

• Ten minutes to Buffalo., theater, 1958
• Write after Auschwitzrehearsal, 1990
• Germany: a foolish unificationrehearsal, 1990
• Speech of loss. On the decline of culture in united Germanyrehearsal, 1993
• Watercolors, art book, 2002
• Five decades, memories with unpublished poems, photos and drawings; trad.: Miguel Sáenz; Alfaguara, Madrid, 2003
• Lirico loot, anthology, selection made by Grass of 140 poems written over 50 years, with a hundred drawings of his, Bartleby Editors, 2006

Drawings

• Hundert Zeichnungen 1955-1987. Ausstellungskatalog der Kunsthalle Kiel, ed. Jens Christian Jensen, Kiel, 1987 (in German).
• "The drawings of the Nobel" (El País 13-4-2015).
• Günter Grass - Kunstwerke in der Galerie am Dom, Frankfurt (in German).

Press articles

• "The same then as now. My response to recent decisions" (El País, 11.4.12).