Heinrich böll ireland
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Heinrich Böll
German writer (1917–1985)
Heinrich Theodor Böll (; German:[ˈhaɪnʁɪçˈteːodoːɐ̯ˈbœl]ⓘ; 21 December 1917 – 16 July 1985) was a German writer. Considered one of Germany's foremost post-World War II writers, Böll received the Georg Büchner Prize (1967) and the Nobel Prize for Literature (1972).
Biography
Böll was born in Cologne, Germany, to a Roman Catholic and pacifist family that later opposed the rise of Nazism. Böll refused to join the Hitler Youth during the 1930s.[2] He was apprenticed to a bookseller before studying German studies and classics at the University of Cologne.
Conscripted into the Wehrmacht, he served in Poland, France, Romania, Hungary and the Soviet Union. In 1942, Böll married Annemarie Cech, with whom he had three sons; she later collaborated with him on a number of different translations into German of English-language literature. During his war service, Böll was wounded four times and contracted typhoid. He was captured by US Army soldiers in April 1945 and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp.
After the war, he
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A great author with a big heart for the not-so-great
In addition, there were speeches, interviews, articles. “I will always remember this agreeable lack of a demonic nature. This voice, the opposite of a harsh, clanging organ, softly yet audibly insisting on humanity, and cutting petty bourgeoisie off in mid-sentence,” is how Willy Brandt described him.
For example, in the 1950s Böll was one of the first authors to write about the suppression of the Holocaust. In the post-war era, the Holocaust got absolutely no mention in school curriculum. When Böll visited schoolchildren in Cologne in 1954 none of the 40 pupils had heard of it.
Unloved by literature critics
Afterwards he wrote in a newspaper article: “We pray for those killed in the war, for those who have gone missing and for the victims of war, but our numb conscience is unable to produce a public, clear and unambiguously formulated prayer for the murdered Jews.”
While nobody disputes Böll’s socio-political importance, doubt has repeatedly been cast on his literary standing. Literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki, whom
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Heinrich Böll: A Brief Biography
"Meddling is the only way to stay relevant." - Heinrich Böll
Heinrich Böll is one of the most important and best-known writers of the Federal Republic of Germany. "Bound by the times and my contemporaries, to what my generation has lived through, experienced, seen, and heard," as he himself wrote, he was the critical chronicler of Germany’s history at mid-century.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for his novels and short stories in 1972.
His courageous and unerring intervention significantly enriched and influenced political culture in Germany. Throughout his life, Heinrich Böll transcended all ideological boundaries in his committed support of persecuted colleagues, civil rights activists, and political prisoners; this once earned him the mocking title of "Warden of the Dissident Wayfarers" in an East German magazine.
His global commitment to human rights greatly enhanced the image of the Federal Republic of Germany and fostered international understanding. His books and essays vividly portray the first 40 years of Ger
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