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5 unusual facts about Günter Grass


Alexander Marinesko

He is one of the more prominent characters in the Günter Grass' novel Crabwalk (2002), which describes in detail the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff.

Hagen Rether

Important targets for his satires and biting ironies are, among many others, the Catholic Church, George W. Bush and well known German artists like Günter Grass, whom he criticizes for not admitting that he had actually been member of the Waffen-SS until August 2006, during which time he received a Nobel Prize for (as Rether implies) bad writing.

Norman Manea

Important contemporary writers expressed admiration of the author’s literary work and his moral stand before and after the collapse of communism: the Nobel laureates Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, Octavio Paz, Orhan Pamuk, as well as Philip Roth, Claudio Magris, Antonio Tabucchi, E. M. Cioran, Antonio Munoz Molina, Cynthia Ozick, Louis Begley and others.

Richard G. Mitchell

In 2005, Mitchell composed the music for The Call of the Toad, written by Günter Grass and directed by Robert Glinskî.

Samson Option

In 2012, in response to Günter Grass's poem "Was gesagt werden muss" ("What Must Be Said") which criticized Israel's nuclear weapons program, Israeli poet and Holocaust survivor Itamar Yaoz-Kest published a poem entitled "The Right to Exist: a Poem-Letter to the German Author" which addresses Grass by name.


10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg

German writer and Nobel laureate Günter Grass was an assistant tank gunner with the division after having been conscripted into the Waffen-SS at the age of 17 in November 1944.

Bremer Marktplatz

Langenstraße 13: Stadtwaage (Weigh House), with two cultural institutions, the Günter-Grass-Stiftung and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen

Bryan Malessa

In reviewing The Flight (Harper Perennial), set on the Eastern Front (World War II), The Irish Times stated "With this story...Bryan Malessa joins the ranks of Nobel Laureate Günter Grass, Rachel Seiffert and others in taking on the major preoccupations of post-war German literature...and the role of literature in history and memory."

Heidrun Mohr-Mayer

She also co-founded the Günter Grass Foundation, which raises awareness of his cultural heritage in the former German city of Dantzig.

Inge Feltrinelli

Among her most celebrated photos are those of writers Ernest Hemingway, Edoardo Sanguineti, Allen Ginsberg, Günter Grass, Nadine Gordimer and artists Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall.

Javad Shamaqdari

In April 2012, he responded to "What Must Be Said" with a letter to Günter Grass: "I have read your literary work, highly responsible both from a human and historical point of view, and I found it extremely timely. Telling the truth in such a way may truly awaken the west's silent and dormant conscience".

Klaus Staeck

He worked together with other political artists and writers, most notably Joseph Beuys, Panamarenko, Dieter Roth, Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, Daniel Spoerri, Günter Grass, Walter Jens, and Heinrich Böll who publicly spoke out in his favour.

Luise Rinser

She supported Willy Brandt in his 1971/72 campaign, and demonstrated with the writers Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass and many others against the retrofitting of Pershing rockets in Germany.

Mark Terrill

For over ten years he was a regular contributor to Rain Taxi Review of Books, and in 2009 he was invited to guest-edit a special German Poetry issue of the Atlanta Review, which also featured his own translations of Peter Handke, Günter Grass, Nicolas Born, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann and many others.

Nafeh

In this magazine has been published interviews with many writers, poetss, film directors, composers and singers such as Victor Erofeyev, Ahmad Shamlou, Orhan Pamuk, Günter Grass, Mahmoud Dolatabadi, Abbas Kiarostami, Asghar Farhadi, Kamran Shirdel, Bahman Farmanara, Shahrdad Rohani, Alireza Assar and Mohammad-Reza Lotfi.

SS Heimwehr Danzig

The Heimwehr Danzig fought on the German side, in the process capturing the Polish post office, an event which Günter Grass dedicated a chapter of his novel The Tin Drum to.

Tänapäev

The most prominent series is called "The Red Book", which features authors like Oscar Wilde, Kurt Vonnegut, Albert Camus, Franz Kafka, Italo Calvino, Günter Grass, Ian McEwan, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, John Irving, Mikhail Bulgakov and many others, there are currently over 80 books in the series.

The Echo Chamber

Kirkus Reviews has reservations though, "This ambitious, rambling synthesis of individual and world history, stylistically akin to work by Salman Rushdie and Günter Grass, nevertheless lacks their vigor and originality.

Throw out the baby with the bath water

It is a common catchphrase in German, with examples of its use in work by Martin Luther, Johannes Kepler, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Otto von Bismarck, Thomas Mann and Günter Grass.

Vergangenheitsbewältigung

In the cultural sphere, the term Vergangenheitsbewältigung most frequently arises as the name of a movement in German literature, characterised by such authors as Günter Grass and Siegfried Lenz.


see also

Irène Heidelberger-Leonard

A Member of the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung (Darmstadt), she has written extensively on post-war German literature, including on such authors as Alfred Andersch, Ingeborg Bachmann, Jurek Becker, Thomas Bernhard, Günter Grass, Ruth Klüger, W. G. Sebald, and Peter Weiss.

Siegfried Lenz

Together with Günter Grass, he became engaged with the Social Democratic Party and aided the Ostpolitik of Willy Brandt.

Tin drum

The Tin Drum (German: Die Blechtrommel), a 1959 novel by Günter Grass.

Werner Zillig

Karsten Kruschel: “Wird die Science Fiction geplündert? oder Wie man Science Fiction benutzen und trotzdem ein ‘anständiger’ Author bleiben kann. Einige Anmerkungen zu den Romanen ‘Der neue Duft’ von Werner Zillig, ‘Die Rättin’ von Günter Grass und ‘Sein und Bleiben’ von Gottfried Meinhold.”