G眉nter Grass, who was one of Germany鈥檚 most important post-war novelists, died on April 13 at the age of 87 in the town of L眉beck, in northern Germany.
Grass was perhaps most famous for his 1959 book The Tin Drum, a novel that embodied fantastical elements in its critique of Weimar and Nazi Germany. As such, his style bore resemblances to Latin America鈥檚 genre of magical realism. In 1979, the book was turned into an Academy Award winning film by Volker Schl枚ndorff, which won the Oscar for best foreign film.
Grass won the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature, partly for this book, but also for the other books in what became known as the Danzig Trilogy. The Swedish Nobel Prize committee said Grass was a writer 鈥渨hose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history鈥, which include 鈥渢he victims, losers and lies that people wanted to forget because they had once believed in them鈥.
Within Germany, Grass was known for his leftist activism and his support for the Social Democratic Party (SPD) before it moved rightwards to become a centrist party, where he was particularly involved in disarmament campaigns.
During the process of German reunification after the fall of East Germany, Grass argued in favour of the continued division of Germany because he believed that Germany had lost its right to have a unified country because of the Holocaust.
In 2006, Grass admitted that he had kept secret his membership in the Waffen SS during World War II, when he was about 17. The admission caused an uproar, and many argued that his novels needed to be reinterpreted in light of this new information.
He revealed this part of his biography shortly before publishing it in a short book, saying: 鈥淢y silence over all these years is one of the reasons I wrote the book. It had to come out in the end.鈥
Despite this revelation, the influence that Grass had on post-war Germany should not be underestimated. Both his novels and his social activism acted as a call to conscience to recall Germany鈥檚 dark history and its moral responsibility to work for a world without war.
He actively campaigned for Willy Brandt, who became Germany鈥檚 first Social Democratic chancellor from 1969 to 1974. Brandt was instrumental in recognising Germany鈥檚 guilt for World War II and began the policy of 鈥淥stpolitik,鈥 or opening of Germany up toward Eastern Europe.
However, when Germany began its rearmament campaign by stationing nuclear missiles in the country for the first time in the early 1980s, under SPD chancellor Helmut Schmidt, Grass left the party under protest. He later defended Fidel Castro鈥檚 Cuba and the left-wing Sandinistas in Nicaragua, becoming ever more critical of German capitalism.
Referring to Germany鈥檚 complicity in helping Saddam Hussein build poison gas factories, Grass said: 鈥淭his is where you really see the German danger. It isn鈥檛 nationalism, and it isn鈥檛 reawakened neo-Nazis. It is simply the unchecked lust for profit.鈥
[Reprinted from .]
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