Heinrich Böll

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Heinrich Theodor Böll

Heinrich Böll (1981)
Born December 21, 1917(1917-12-21)
Cologne, German Empire
Died July 16, 1985(1985-07-16) (aged 67)
Langenbroich, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Nationality German
Notable award(s)

Georg Büchner Prize
1967

Nobel Prize in Literature
1972
Signature

Heinrich Theodor Böll (December 21, 1917 – July 16, 1985) was one of Germany's foremost post-World War II writers. Böll was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize in 1967 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972.

Contents

Biography

Böll was born in Cologne, Germany, to a Catholic, pacifist family that later opposed the rise of Nazism. He refused to join the Hitler Youth during the 1930s. He was apprenticed to a bookseller before studying German at the University of Cologne. Conscripted into the Wehrmacht, he served in France, Romania, Hungary and the Soviet Union, and was wounded four times before he was captured by Americans in April 1945 and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp.

Böll became a full-time writer at the age of 30. His first novel, Der Zug war pünktlich (The Train Was on Time), was published in 1949. Many other novels, short stories, radio plays and essay collections followed, and in 1972 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was the first German-born author to receive this award since Nelly Sachs in 1966. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages, and he is one of Germany's most widely read authors. His best-known works are Billiards at Half-past Nine, The Clown, Group Portrait with Lady, The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, and The Safety Net, apart from many short stories.

Böll was deeply rooted in his hometown of Cologne, with its strong 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. He made them the heroes in his writing.

His villains are the authority figures in government, business, and in the Church, whom he castigates, sometimes humorously, sometimes acidly, for what he perceived as their conformism, lack of courage, self-satisfied attitude and abuse of power. His simple style made him a favorite for German-language textbooks.

He was deeply affected by the Nazi takeover of Cologne, as they essentially exiled him in his own town. Furthermore, the destruction of Cologne by Allied bombing raids scarred him irrevocably. Architecturally, the newly-rebuilt Cologne, prosperous once more, left him indifferent. (Böll seemed to be a pupil of William Morris - he made known that he would have preferred Cologne cathedral unfinished, with the 14th-century wooden crane on top of it, as it stood in 1848). Throughout his life he maintained many relationships with the citizens of Cologne, rich and poor. When he was in hospital, the nurses often complained about the "low-life" people who came to see their friend Heinrich Böll.

His works have been dubbed "Trümmerliteratur"—the literature of the rubble. He was a leader of the German writers who tried to come to grips with the memory of the War, the Nazis, and the Holocaust—and the guilt that came with them. He and his wife lived in Cologne and the Eifel region. However, he also spent time on Achill Island off the west coast of Ireland. His cottage there is now used as a guesthouse for international and Irish artists. He recorded some of his experiences in Ireland in his book 'Irish Journal'.

He was a president of the then West German P.E.N. and subsequently the International P.E.N. organizations. He travelled frequently as a representative of the new, democratic Germany. His appearance and attitude were in complete contrast to the boastful, aggressive type of German which had become infamous all over the world during Hitler's reign. Böll was particularly successful in Eastern Europe, as he seemed to portray the dark side of capitalism in his books. He sold millions of copies in the Soviet Union alone.[1] When Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet Union, he first took refuge in Heinrich Böll's Eifel cottage. In 1976, Böll demonstratively left the Catholic church, "without falling away from the faith".[2]

Heinrich Böll died in 1985 at the age of 67. His memory lives on, among other places, at the Heinrich Böll Foundation. A special Heinrich Böll Archive was set up in the Cologne Library to hold his personal papers, bought from his family, but large amounts of the material were damaged, possibly irreparably, when the building collapsed in March 2009.

Selected bibliography

Posthumous

Translations

See also

References

  1. ^ Peter Bruhn and Henry Glade:Heinrich Böll in der Sowjetunion, 1952-1979 Einführung in die sowjetische Böll-Rezeption und Bibliographie der in der UdSSR in russischer Sprache erschienenen Schriften von und über Heinrich Böll, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3 503 01617 1
  2. ^ „vom Glauben abgefallen“
  3. ^ Alfred Dunshirn Griechisch für das Philosophiestudium
  4. ^ Contemporary German fiction writers Wolfgang Elfe, James N. Hardin - 1988 "They also found fault with his story "Du fahrst zu oft nach Heidelberg" (You Go to Heidelberg Too Often, 1977), an indictment of the Berufsverbot (the law that keeps suspected Communists out of government jobs)."

Further reading

External links

Nobel Laureates in Literature (1951–1975)
  • Complete list
  • (1901–1925)
  • (1926–1950)
  • (1951–1975)
  • (1976–2000)
  • (2001–2025)