With him, Grass created an unforgettable literary figure. Having decided at the age of three to stop growing, he is a short-stature person who can shatter glass with a mere scream, and who can pull an entire orchestra out of time by banging on his tin drum. It revisited the history of the century and of World War II from the perspective of Oskar Matzerath. The book struck like a bomb: It was bawdy, cross, and written in a ribald, baroque style. The perpetrators and followers of the regime were given quiet absolution and even placed in high positions in politics and the administration.Īnd then came The Tin Drum, the debut novel of Günter Grass, who had previously published only one volume of poetry and was actually a trained stonemason and sculptor. One really has to recall what the political mood in the Federal Republic of Germany was like during the 1950s in order to understand the impact this novel had on readers and critics.Īt the time of its publication, in 1959, Adenauer's West Germany was still struggling with its Nazi past.
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