Heinrich Böll
One of Germany's foremost post-war authors, Heinrich Böll was born in Cologne on December 21st, 1917. He successfully resisted joining the Hitler Youth. He was apprenticed to a bookshop, then studied German at University of Cologne. Drafted into the Wehrmacht, he served in France, Rumania, Hungary and the Soviet Union, and he was wounded four times before being captured by the Americans in April 1945. Two years later, aged 30, he became a full-time writer.
His first published work was "Der Zug war pünktlich" (The Train Was on Time), a stort story (1949).
Many other novels, short stories, radio plays and essay collections followed, and in 1972 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first German since Thomas Mann received it in 1929
His work has been translated into more than 30 languages, and he is Germany's most read author.
He died on July 16th, 1985.
Böll was deeply rooted in his home town of Cologne, with its almost compulsory and oppressive Roman Catholicism and its rather rough and drastic sense of humour.
In the immediate post-war period, he was preoccupied with memories of the War and the effect it had - materially and psychologically - on the lives of ordinary people. They are the heroes and heroines of his literary works.
At the opposite end, there are the people with power - in government, business and the Church - whom he castigates, sometimes humourously, sometimes acerbically, for their conformism, their lack of courage, their self-satisfied attitude, their abuse of power.
He was deeply affected by the way the Nazis took over Cologne and practically exiled him in his own home town, and the destruction of Cologne by Allied bombings affected him even more deeply and irrevocably. The newly rebuilt Cologne, prosperous yet again, provoked only indifference in him. His works have been dubbed "Trümmerliteratur" - rubble literature.
His memory lives on in, amongst other things, the Heinrich-Böll-Foundation and a special Heinrich Böll Archive in Cologne Library.
Published works
Der Zug war pünktlich (The Train Was on Time) 1947
Das Vermächtnis (A Soldier's Legacy) 1948
Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa (Stranger, Bear Word to the Spartans) 1950
Die schwarzen Schafe 1951
Wo warst du, Adam? (And Where Were You, Adam?) 1951
Der Engel schwieg (The Silent Angel) 1952
Nicht zur Weihnachtszeit 1952
Und sagte kein einziges Wort (And Never Said a Word) 1953
Haus ohne Hüter (House without Guardians) 1954
Das Brot der frühen Jahre (The Bread of Those Early Years) 1955
Irisches Tagebuch (Irish Journal) 1957
Die Spurlosen (Missing Persons) 1957
Dr. Murke's gesammeltes Schweigen (Dr. Murke's Collected Silence) 1958
Billard um halb zehn (Billiards at Half Past Nine) 1959
Ein Schluck Erde 1962
Ansichten eines Clowns (The Clown) 1963
Entfernung von der Truppe (Absent Without Leave) 1964
Ende einer Dienstfahrt (End of a Mission) 1966
Gruppenbild mit Dame (Group Portrait with Lady) 1971
Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum (The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum) 1974
Fürsorgliche Belagerung 1979
Was soll aus dem Jungen bloss werden? (What's to Become of the Boy?) 1981
Vermintes Gelände 1982
Die Verwundung (The Casualty) 1983
Frauen vor Flusslandschaft (Women in a River Landscape) 1985 (publ. posthumously)