Fatty Günter

Biography

Fat was born in the autonomous Dantzig, in commercial parents (they were owners of a grocer in colonial produce). His/her father was German and his mother Kachoube. The invasion by the Wehrmacht of the Poland and Gdańsk is approved by its family even if one of the Polish uncles of the Günter young person is shot after having taken part in the seat of the Post office Polonaise (episode reported in the Drum ). Enlisted in the Youths hitlériennes, the boy asks, at fifteen years, to engage in the submarines, but is enlisted at the 17 years age in the 10 {{E}} Panzerdivision S Frundsberg of the Waffen-SS in October 1944. At the end of the war, it is made prisoner by the Americans and is released in 1946. During its captivity, it perhaps met Josef Ratzinger, the future pope Benoît XVI. He says to have carried out the horrors perpetrated by the Nazisme only after his release by hearing the consents of Baldur von Schirach to the Lawsuit of Nuremberg. Broken down, horrified by these discoveries, Grass leaves Dantzig for the West Germany where it carries out a bohemian life and after a fashion tries to be rebuilt after family dramas (his/her mother and certainly its sister were violated by soldiers of the Red Army ). After a crossing of the Europe and studies of Visual arts with Düsseldorf near the sculptor Karl Hartung, it is established with West Berlin where it earns his living thanks to his sculptures and its engravings. Also Graphic designer, Illustrator and painter, it is tested with the writing, composes of the poems and begins the drafting of a Romance which is inspired in a remote way by its youth. In 1955, he becomes a close relation of the Groupe 47, movement of rebuilding and literary reflection in the Germany of post-war period. It begins a career from poet in 1956 with its collection the Newspaper of the coquecigrues ( Die Vorzüge der Windhühner ) and from playwright in 1957 with the parts Tonton ( Onkel, Onkel ) and the Rising ( Hochwasser ). The same year, it still obtains the price of the Group 47 after the reading of the first two chapters of its novel in building site: the Drum . The money of the reward enables him to remain, between 1956 and 1960, with Paris where it completes the drafting of the work in a small room of the Place of Italy. It attends there the circles literary and intellectual Saint-Germain-of-Meadows, discovers the Nouveau novel, binds friendship with Paul Celan which encourages it to read Rabelais and takes to position for Albert Camus in the quarrel the opponent with Jean-Paul Sartre. It is in 1959 that it becomes famous with the publication of the Tambour ( Die Blechtrommel ) which obtains a planetary success. The book will be adapted to the Cinéma twenty years later by Volker Schlöndorff.

In the Years 1960, it engages in Politique and takes part in the electoral campaigns of the social democrat German. Besides it organizes several meetings in favor of the future chancellor Willy Brandt whom it informs about the Eastern-European businesses and with which it lavishes councils, in particular on the bringing together of the two German republics. It adheres to SPD in 1982 but gives its resignation in 1993 to protest against the restrictions of the right of asylum.

Of 1983 with 1986, it chairs the Academy of Arts of Berlin. At the end of the Years 1980, it leaves in India to Calcutta where it notes the misery of the Indian people. He will report this experiment in Tirer the language ( Zunge zeugen , 1989).

In 1995, the publication of A whole history ( Ein weites Feld ) causes an outcry Outre-Rhin after the author affirmed there that the West Germany had taken as an hostage and victimized, by the means of a unrestrained Libéralisme, the former inhabitants of GDR after the Réunification. The critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki accepts that Spiegel publishes in a photomontage where one sees it tearing the book of Fat with the title: “The failure of a great writer. ”. The popular press also rose against the author: the Bild Zeitung titrated: “Fatty does not like its country”, denouncing a novel with the “hollow style” and being a true “insult with the fatherland”.

The author receives in 1999, at the 72 years age, the Nobel Prize of literature “to have depicts the forgotten face of the history in fables of a black cheerfulness”. Fréquemmement quoted on the lists of the Swedish Academy where it had made figure for several years of big favorite, Grass, “the eternal nobélisable” as the press called it, had anticipated its victory although late. It had in this direction suggested with the Comité Nobel since the Années 1970 to jointly precede a writer German of the East and West like symbol of a cultural reunification, thus referring, in a subjacent way, with the idea to honor it him and its large friend Christa Wolf. But this proposal never was taken into account by sworn price.

In 2001, it proposes to build a museum germano-Polish which would shelter the works of art flights by the Nazis. In 2002, Günter Fatty, sometimes shown to be itself rested on its bay-trees after its first literary successes, returns in the foreground of the world literature by publishing Out of crab ( Im Krebsgang ), work of old age and maturity, quite far away from excesses baroques, the linguistic provocations and liveliness rabelaisienne of the writings of formerly. The novel milked, through the catastrophe of the Wilhelm Gustloff , of the problem of responsibilisation of the Collective memory. In 2005, Grass founds a circle of authors and the literary meetings of Lübeck.

In 1954, it had married the Swiss woman Anna Schwarz, apprentie ballet dancer, of which it had had four children and which it had divorced in 1978. In 1979, it had been then remarié with the organist Ute Grunert. Günter Grass lives today close to Lübeck with his second wife. The " Grass" house; there the major part of its manuscripts and its original artistic works contains. the author conceives itself the cover and the illustration of his works. He continues in parallel to exert, with a great preoccupation with an eclecticism, his various artistic activities. He is one of the only writers to invite, at the time of the publication in German of each new work, the whole of his translators to share work of translation and to allow the cosmopolitan and métissé exchange of the cultures and the languages.

In August 2006, it revealed its enrôlement in October 1944 in Waffen-SS after having claimed before to have been useful in the Flak . This late disclosure, made a few days before the launching of its last autobiographical book: Onion skins , caused Malayan and incomprehension in Europe (it had however already made share in 1999 for the literary Magazine n°381 of its “passage to Youth hitlérienne”). It was at the origin of a controversy between European intellectuals, some of them considering that this consent removed its statute of moral guarantee to him, others on the contrary thinking that this sincerity, even late, did nothing but reinforce its legitimacy. Lech Walesa, after having required that one withdraw to him his title of citizen of honor of the town of Gdansk, finally forgave him its mistakes of youth. The German right wing, which held its sworn enemy there, was, it, on the other hand much less lenient: she indeed denounced her hyprocrysy and her sermonts galvaudés on the past Nazi of the nation. She requested it besides a time to return her Nobel Prize and the money being correlated him. But the president of the Fondation Nobel supported the writer, state on this subject which “the attribution of the prices was irreversible because no price had been withdrawn with whoever in the past”.

Among his most famous works, one counts inter alia: the Cat and the mouse ( Katz und Maus , 1961) and the Years of dog ( Hundjahre , 1963) which clorent a trilogy on Dantzig (" Die Danziger Trilogie"), open with the Drum . Its other famous works are: the Newspaper of a snail ( Aus dem Tagebuch einer Schnecke , 1972), the Turbot ( Der Butt , 1977), a Meeting in Westphalia ( Das Treffen in Telgte , 1979) and Ratte ( Die Rättin , 1985).

Political opinions

Positioning politically on the left, Grass always wanted to forge a figure of Moraliste. He regularly criticized the past Nazi of the Germany and became a tenor of the Antilibéralisme and Antiaméricanisme, fustigating for example Helmut Kohl and Ronald Reagan, come together to visit the cemetery of Bitburg, with the reason that S were buried there with allied soldiers and German lasting the 2nd world war.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, when came the hour from the German reunification, it was opposed to it “to preserve the socialist heritage” of the German Democratic republic.

The author always criticized the " liberal and small drifts bourgeoises" SPD. It always nevertheless posted a indéfectible support for the ex-chancellor Gerhard Schröder.

In an exchange televised with Pierre Bourdieu for the chain Arte in November 1999, the author, like the Sociologist, deplored the misdeeds of the Néolibéralisme, affirmed that “only the State could guarantee social justice and economic between the citizens” and wanted to reopen “universalism and the cultural dialog inherited the Lumières”.

Fat always wanted to defend the " voice of the opprimés": it supported Salman Rushdie, victim of the Islamic Fatwa in 1989, the writers Arabic-speaking people expatriates and the Palestinian people. He often denounced the policy of the Israeli government which he judges " agressive" and " belliqueuse".

The shortly after the Attacks of September 11th, 2001, Günter Grass declared, that the " réaction" American much din “for three thousand killed White orchestrated”.

In 2006, at the time of the business of the caricatures of Mahomet, Grass denounced “the arrogance of the Occident” and its “contempt of the Moslem culture”.

Works published in French

the Newspaper of the coquecigrus ( Die Vorzüge der Windhühner ), 1956
Uncle ( Onkel, Onkel ), 1957
the Rising ( Hochwasser ), 1957
the Drum ( Die Blechtrommel ). Transl. by Jean Amsler. Paris, Threshold, 1961.
the Cat and the mouse ( Katz und Maus ). Transl. by Jean Amsler. Paris, Threshold, 1962.
Years of dog ( Hundejahre ). Transl. by Jean Amsler. Paris, Threshold, 1965.
the Plebeian ones repeat the insurrection ( Die Plebejer proben den Audfstand ). Theater. Preceded by a speech of the author. Transl. by Jean Amsler. Paris, Threshold, 1968.
Local anesthesia ( Örtlich betäubt ). Transl. by Jean Amsler. Paris, Threshold, 1971.
Newspaper of a snail (Aus dem Tagebuch einer Schnecke ). Transl. by Jean Amsler. Paris, Threshold, 1974.

the Turbot ( Der Butt ). Transl. by Jean Amsler. Paris, Threshold, 1979.

a meeting in Westphalia ( Das Treffen in Telgte ). Novel. Transl. by Jean Amsler. Paris, Threshold, 1981.

the children by the head or the Germans die . Transl. by Jean Amsler. Paris, Threshold, 1983.

Test of critic 1957-1985 . Transl. by Jean Amsler. Paris, Threshold, 1986.

Ratte ( Die Rättin ). Transl. by Jean Amsler. Paris, Threshold, 1987.

To draw the language ( Zunge zeugen ). Transl. by Jean Amsler. Paris, Threshold, 1989.

Matter of a stateless person . Transl. by Jean Amsler. Paris, Threshold, 1990.

the Call of the clamping plate ( Unkenrufe ). Transl. by Jean Amsler. Paris, Threshold, 1992.

A whole history ( Ein weites Feld ). Transl. by Claude Porcell and Bernard Lortholary. Paris, Threshold, 1997.

My century ( Mein Jahrhundert ). Transl. by Claude Porcell. Paris, Threshold, 1999.

Out of crab ( Im Krebsgang ). Transl. by Claude Porcell. Paris, Threshold, 2002, novel treating of the Catastrophe Wilhelm Gustloff .

Onion skins ( Beim Häuten der Zwiebel ), autobiography, 2006.

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