Heinrich Böll. A nimble, fine-styled German writer . Böll’s writing is marked by his experience as a soldier and, later, by the reconstruction of Germany framed in the East-West confrontation and the conservative dominance. Critic of xenophobia and right-wing extremism in Germany . He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972 .
Summary
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- 1 Biographical synthesis
- 1 Studies carried out
- 2 Departure for war
- 3 Literary career
- 4 Death
- 2 Works
- 3 Acknowledgments
- 4 See also
- 5 Sources
Biographical synthesis
He was born on 21 as December as 1917 , in Cologne , Germany . Coming from a middle class, from the Catholic family. His father was a sculptor and carpenter specializing in church benches and boxes, whose first wife had died.
Applied studies
He attended a Catholic high school (Gymnasium), successfully resisting joining the Hitler Youth during the 1930s . He enrolled at the University of Cologne. His first literary attempts were in 1936 . After school, he began his apprenticeship as a bookseller. In 1938 – 1939 he had to render the labor service. It has its first contact with literature when working in a store books , which will leave later to devote himself to writing.
Heading to war
During Nazi Germany, he went to a labor camp in order to enter the University. When he was about to enroll to study German Philology , he was drafted into the German army.
He served in France , Romania , Hungary, and the Soviet Union, and was wounded four times before being captured by the Americans in April 1945. He was in prisoner-of-war camps until September . He fights in World War II in various countries and during a leave of absence in 1942 , he gets married.
In 1945 he returned to Cologne with his wife; and while repairing his house destroyed by the bombings of the war, he writes “The train arrived on time” (“Der Zug war pünktlich”), where the horror of the war is reflected , and the feeling of guilt of the German people.
Literary career
In 1947 he began publishing in the press and writing radio dramas . From 1951 he dedicated himself to writing and translating and spent long periods in Ireland .
He befriends writers from Group 47 and joins the group in 1949 . In 1975 he also wrote, “The lost honor of Katharina Blum”, a novel based on a real event that shows the consequences that the tabloid press can have on private life .
In a first creative stage, in which he made a “literature of war, ruins and return to the homeland”, according to his own statements, a series of short stories and novels are assigned that evoke the atrocious experience of the war conflict and the hardships of the immediate postwar period.
The train arrived on time (1949), his first story , he is already faced with the absurdity of war: a soldier on leave believes, when he returns to the front, that he will soon die, and yet he is the only survivor of his group . In the story, the wide-shot technique and elision, typical of the North American narrative, are used to portray the warlike atmosphere.
The novel “Frauen vor Flusslandschaft” (women in a river landscape) appears after her death. In his works he advocates solidarity between human beings, for the authenticity of relationships beyond all positive norms. In 1951 he published a story entitled “The Black Sheep.” The protagonist of this story lives against the already restored social narrowness, the hypocrisy of “good consciences”, and he does it very seriously, with an unbreakable sense of humor and a very peculiar morality.
Death
At the beginning of July, Böll enters the hospital for an operation. On July 15 , he is discharged to prepare for a new operation. On the morning of July 16 , however, he died peacefully at his home in Langenbroich, with his wife by his side. He is buried on July 19, in the Bornheim-Merten cemetery at the age of 68.
Plays
His most representative work is ” Opinions of a clown “, in which the main character, Hans Schnier, is a clown who has committed the worst action that a comedian can carry out: provoke compassion, when his wife leaves him and this provokes him the end of his career and financial ruin. During an afternoon, Schnier will review his life through telephone conversations with his acquaintances. The novel is a critique of a Germany marked by war and of the Christian Democrats taking positions to possess political power. Among his most outstanding works are:
- The train arrived on time ( 1949 )
- And didn’t say a single word ( 1953 )
- Masterless House ( 1954 )
- Opinions of a clown ( 1963 )
- Group Portrait with Lady ( 1971 )
- Katharina Blum’s Lost Honor ( 1974 )
