14 August 2006
The famous German author and Literature Nobel Prize winner Günter Grass has come under attack from fellow writers, literary critics and historians for his belated confession that he was once a member of the notorious Nazi Waffen SS. The admission by Grass, 78, most famous for his 1957 novel "The Tin Drum", came in a newspaper interview on Saturday. In his autobiography "Peeling Onions", which is to appear in September, Grass explains how he came to join the Waffen SS, a Nazi elite force, at the age of 17. Grass says that he volunteered for submarine duty at 15 but was rejected. He was later called up to the Wafffen SS at 17. Previously, Grass had said he was drafted in 1944 to work on anti-aircraft crews and was held as a prisoner of war until 1946. After the war, he become an outspoken pacifist and icon of the left. "If I were cynical, I would say he did not reveal it sooner at the risk of not winning a Nobel Prize," Hellmuth Karasek, a leading literary critic, told German radio. "Don't misunderstand me: Grass deserved the Nobel prize more than any other German writer. But everything now has to be seen in a new light." Grass was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999. He had for decades demanded that Germans come to terms with their Nazi past by acknowledging history.
Grass told "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" on Saturday that the secret had been weighing on his mind and was one of the reasons he had written the book, which details his war service. "It had to come out finally," he said. "After 60 years, this confession comes a bit too late," Joachim Fest, a prominent historian, was quoted as saying in the magazine "Der Spiegel". "I can't understand how someone who for decades set himself up as a moral authority, a rather smug one, could pull this off." Ralph Giordano, a leading German writer who is of Jewish descent, said he would not condemn Grass. "It's good what Günter Grass has now done," Giordano said. "What's worse than making a mistake is not coming to terms with it. His example also shows how seducible young people can be." The Polish Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former president Lech Walesa wants Grass to give up his honorary citizenship of the Polish city of Gdansk. Grass was born in 1927 in Gdansk, then Danzig. He and Walesa are both honorary citizens. "I don't feel good in this company," Walesa told the German daily "Bild", adding, "If it had been known that he was in the SS, he would not have got the honor. The best thing would be if he would give it up himself."
