Wolfdietrich Schnurre

Wolfdietrich Schnurre (22 August 1920, Frankfurt am Main, Germany – 9 June 1989, Kiel, Germany) was a German writer.

Schnurre was an important literary figure of post-war West Germany. Apart from numerous short stories he also wrote novels, tales, diaries, poems, radio plays and (beginning in the 1960s) children's books which he partly illustrated himself.

Life and work

Schnurre grew up in Frankfurt before his father, a librarian, moved to Berlin in 1928. Here Schnurre attended a socialist elementary school and grammar school. Between 1939 and 1945 he involuntarily became a World War II soldier. In April 1945 he fled to Westphalia and returned to Berlin after the end of war. In the beginning he lived in the Eastern part of the city, but in 1946 he moved to West Berlin. In the following years he worked as theatre and movie reviewer for Deutsche Rundschau and other Berlin newspapers.

From 1950 Schnurre was an independent writer. He was a founding member of the literary association Gruppe 47 and his short story Das Begräbnis (The Funeral) was the first piece of literature read at the group's initial meeting. He was also member of PEN in the Federal republic of Germany which he left in 1961 to protest against PEN's silence after the construction of the Berlin Wall. Since 1959 Schnurre was member of the German Academy for Language and Literature in Darmstadt. In 1964 he came down with severe polyneuritis.

Schurre received several awards for his works including the Prize Young Generation of the Fontane Award of the City of Berlin (1958), the Immermann Award (1959), the Georg Marckensen Literature Award (1962), the Federal Cross of Merit (Bundesverdienstkreuz, 1981), the Literature Award of the City of Cologne (1982), the Georg Büchner Prize (1983) and the Culture Award of the City of Kiel (1989).

Literary works