A short life of the author
Günter Grass (1927–2015) was born on 16 October 1927 in the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland). He served in the Waffen-SS as a teenager — a fact he did not publicly acknowledge until 2006, in his memoir Peeling the Onion, which caused a major scandal. He studied sculpture and graphic art in Düsseldorf and Berlin.
Life and Career
Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum, 1959) — narrated by Oskar Matzerath, who decides at the age of three to stop growing and instead observes the rise of Nazism, the destruction of Danzig, and the post-war German “economic miracle” while drumming on a tin drum and screaming until glass shatters — is the foundational novel of post-war German literature. It was the first novel of the Danzig Trilogy, followed by Cat and Mouse (Katz und Maus, 1961) and Dog Years (Hundejahre, 1963).
Grass was a towering figure in post-war German public life: a political activist, a campaigner for the Social Democrats, and a relentless moral voice on German guilt, reunification, and the responsibilities of history.
Major Works and Themes
Grass wrote about Germany: its Nazi past, its post-war amnesia, its division and reunification. His fiction is exuberant, grotesque, politically engaged, and formally ambitious. He won the Nobel Prize in 1999.
Key Works
- The Tin Drum (1959)
- Nobel Prize in Literature (1999)
Collecting Grass
German originals (Luchterhand) are the primary collected form. Die Blechtrommel first edition (1959) is a major collectible, bringing $500–$2,000. English translations (Pantheon, Harcourt) bring $30–$100 for first editions. Grass’s drawings and prints are also collected.