Noticias
First anniversary of his death on April 13th
With the gathering Long Night for Günter Grass, the author will be remembered in Germany
April 12, 2016Writer, illustrator, graphic artist Günter Grass (Free City of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland) October 16th, 1927 - Lübeck, Germany, April 13th, 2015) never chose between visual arts and writing.
Since he was a little boy he did both, he painted and wrote his first poems without having a concrete idea. At the age of 13 he worked in arts, he began as a sculptor but also wrote and carried on, he used both disciplines and sometimes, he said, they met and enriched each other.
"Both activities are important and complementary to me, it has been developed in such a way that literature has attracted more attention, for that reason I am glad that my artistic work has remained in the shadow of literature and not attracted attention, however many manuscripts started in a drawing and turned into writing or vice versa”, Nobel Prize for Literature 1999 said in some interviews, and who will be remembered on his first death anniversary in his native Germany on April 13th.
It will be the Günter Grass-Haus, located on Glockengießerstraße No. 21, a house museum opened by the also poet in the Hanseatic city of Lübeck, where he will be remembered with the gathering Langen Nacht für Günter Grass (Long Night for Günter Grass).
At the event, Andreas Hutzel, Hanjo Kesting, Karin Kiwus, Jörg-Dieter Kogel, Martin Kölbel, Gerhard Köpf, Benjamin Lebert, Christof Siemes, Maria Sommer and other prominent connoisseurs of the novelist’s work will discuss the different facets, work and personality of the most important writer in German post-war language and a political referent in the Germanic country.
This institution has received hundreds of visitors from The Tin Drum author’s death. Also the Behlendorf local cemetery where Grass is buried, many people visit his grave and place flowers. While the demand for his books has increased considerably in Germany in the last year, and the global circulation of his titles is currently estimated in 40 million copies.
In addition to the evening of tribute to the playwright, the Günter Grass-Haus shows the exhibition Do not fence me in. Frühe Bilder von Günter Grass (Do not fence me in. Early work of Günter Grass) which presents paintings, watercolors and sculptures given up for lost.
Since the opening of the exhibition (March 31st ) until October 23rd, visitors can also see documents such as his unpublished poems, extracts from the manuscripts of his works The Tin Drum, Peeling the onion and About Finitude. That is how, the Günter Grass-Haus shows under this first death anniversary the disciplines carried out throughout his life by author’s essay, Writing after Auschwitz.
Günter Grass said that we had to thank to Goethe's German language the poetry of circumstance concept. "A certain point in life can end in a poem, I follow that concept, my lyric is pragmatic, I have not written experimental poems, what happens sometimes is that the lyric is the appropriate way."
The author stated that a writer does not know about retirement or retirement age, but there were authors who repeated at a certain age what has been said. "I wish friends gave me a pat on the back and tell me that's enough, still drawing no longer write".
The also playwright studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 1945, in addition to novels and poetry he wrote stories and plays. Among his known works are The Flounder (1977), Headbirths or the Germans are Dying Out (1982), Too Far Afield (1995) and Last Dances, novel published in 2003.
Günter Grass, achieved worldwide success with his first novel, The Tin Drum, published in 1959, and four decades later won the first Nobel Prize for Literature in 27 years for a German author -Heinrich Böll got it before- because “He has drawn the forgotten face of history with vivid black fables” according to the Swedish Academy jury. That same year, 1999, he received the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature.
His life was linked to the events that shook Germany in the twentieth century. His work The Tin Drum received much praise as criticism from those who saw in the book the rise of Nazism and war in a too real and gritty mirror.
His other outstanding works were Cat and Mouse and Dog Years, which together with The Tin Drum constituted the so-called Danzig Trilogy; My Century, a collection of his thoughts about each year of the twentieth century, including one about the Nazi bombing of Gernika in the Spanish Civil War, and political essays as Germany: a senseless unification.
His mother was Helena Grass (1898-1954), a vital figure in the author’s life and work and whose death gave rise to The Tin Drum. Also thanks to her, the writer had that attraction to the drawing, which did until the end of his days, at the age of 87.
Günter Grass not only told stories with words, he was also recognized for his paintings, some books were illustrated by himself and he made an incursion in graphic design. With his second wife, Ute Grunert, he spent a few months in India in the mid-eighties, an experience that he reflected in his work.
Parallel to his career, he participated in politics. In 1955, at age 27 he contacted for the first time with the Group 47. Along with other professionals of letters, they proposed to develop the Nazi past through literature.
With the death of the pipe smoker and bushy mustache, cooking lover, good wine and family, experts consider a cultural vacuum remained that is difficult to find parallels in Germany’s modern history after the war.
Mexico,Distrito Federal
