Günter Grass

Lore & Background

Grass was born in the Free City of Danzig to Wilhelm Grass, a Lutheran Protestant of German origin, and Helene Grass, a Roman Catholic of Kashubian-Polish origin. He identified as Kashubian and was raised Catholic, serving as an altar boy. At age 17, he was drafted into the military and served from late 1944 in the Waffen-SS; he was taken as a prisoner of war by US forces in May 1945 and released in April 1946. Trained as a stonemason and sculptor, he began writing in the 1950s and was a cofounder of Group 47.

His best-known work, The Tin Drum, was published in 1959 and adapted as a film that won both the 1979 Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The Danzig Trilogy focuses on the rise of Nazism and its effects on Danzig. Grass later published The Flounder (1977), My Century (1999), and Crabwalk (2002). In 2006, he revealed in his memoir Peeling the Onion that he had been a member of the Waffen-SS, a fact he had long concealed.

Reader's Guide

Günter Grass holds a significant place in 20th-century literature, primarily for his debut novel The Tin Drum, which the Nobel Committee described as granting German literature 'a new beginning after decades of linguistic and moral destruction.' His works consistently engage with World War II and its aftermath, using the ambiguous historical status of Danzig/Gdańsk to explore ethnic and ideological complexities. Grass's literary style combines magic realism with a questioning of authorship and memory, as seen in his memoir trilogy where he deliberately casts doubt on his own recollections. His political engagement as an active supporter of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and his presidency of the Academy of Arts, Berlin from 1983 to 1986 underscore his role as a public intellectual. The controversy surrounding his late revelation of Waffen-SS service sparked debates about hypocrisy and the ethics of silence, yet his work remains central to understanding Germany's confrontation with its Nazi past. His exploration of marginalized subjects—such as the dwarf Oskar Matzerath and the Roma and Sinti—further cements his legacy as a writer who portrayed 'the forgotten face of history.'

Did You Know?

• Grass served as an altar boy when he was a child.
• He was a cofounder of Group 47, organized by Hans Werner Richter.
• The Tin Drum was adapted as a film that won both the Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
• Grass did not reveal until 2006 that he was drafted into the Waffen-SS.