Conscripted into theWehrmacht, he served inPoland,France,Romania,Hungary and theSoviet 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 contractedtyphoid. He was captured byUS Army soldiers in April 1945 and sent to aprisoner-of-war camp.[3]
After the war, he returned to Cologne and began working in his family's cabinet shop and, for one year, worked in a municipal statistical bureau, a job he did not enjoy and which he left in order to take the risk of becoming a writer instead.[4]
Böll became a full-time writer at the age of 30. Hisfirst novel,Der Zug war pünktlich (The Train Was on Time), was published in 1949. He was invited to the 1949 meeting of theGroup 47 circle of German authors and his work was deemed to be the best presented in 1951.[5] Many other novels, short stories,radio plays, and essay collections followed.
Böll was extremely successful and was lauded on a number of occasions. In 1953 he was awarded the Culture Prize of German Industry, the Southern German Radio Prize and the German Critics' Prize. In 1954 he received the prize of the Tribune de Paris. In 1955 he was given the French prize for the best foreign novel. In 1958 he won theEduard von der Heydt prize of the city of Wuppertal and the prize of theBayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste (Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts). In 1959 he was given the Great Art Prize of the State of North-Rhine-Westphalia and the Literature Prize of the city of Cologne, and was elected to the Academy of Science and the Arts in Mainz.
In 1960 he became a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts and gained the Charles Veillon Prize.
In 1972 he received theNobel Prize for Literature "for his writing which through its combination of a broad perspective on his time and a sensitive skill in characterization has contributed to a renewal of German literature".[7]
He was given a number of honorary awards up to his death, such as the membership of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters in 1974, and theOssietzky Medal of 1974 (the latter for his defence of and contribution to global human rights).
Böll was President ofPEN International, the worldwide association of writers, from 1971 to 1973.[8]
Despite his work's variety of themes and content, certain patterns recur: much of his work describes intimate and personal life struggling to sustain itself against the wider background of war, terrorism, political divisions, and profound economic and social transition. Many of his books have stubborn and eccentrically individualistic protagonists who oppose the mechanisms of the state or of public institutions.[11]
Böll was a devoted pacifist because of his war experiences. All of his writing and novels during the postwar years had to do with the war and making sure it never happened again. He encapsulated it in the phrase "never war again".[12]
In his autobiography, Böll wrote that at the high school he attended when growing up under Nazi rule, an anti-Nazi teacher paid special attention to the Roman satirist Juvenal: "Mr. Bauer realized how topical Juvenal was, how he dealt at length with such phenomena as arbitrary government, tyranny, corruption, the degradation of public morals, the decline of the Republican ideal and the terrorizing acts of the Praetorian Guards. [...] In a secondhand bookshop I found an 1838 translation of Juvenal with an extensive commentary, twice the length of the translated text itself, written at the height of the Romantic period. Though its price was more than I could really afford, I bought it. I read all of it very intensely, as if it was a detective novel. It was one of the few books to which I persistently held on throughout the war [WWII] and beyond, even when most of my other books were lost or sold on the black market".[13]
The 1963 publication ofThe Clown was met with polemics in the press for its negative portrayal of the Catholic Church and theCDU party.[14] Böll was devoted to Catholicism but also deeply critical of aspects of it, especially in its most conservative incarnations. In particular, he was unable to forget theConcordat of July 1933 between the Vatican and the Nazis, signed by the futurePope Pius XII, which helped confer international legitimacy on the regime early in its development.[15]
Böll's liberal views on religion and social issues elicited German conservatives' wrath.[14][16] When constitutional reforms were passed in 1968 that cracked down on freedom, Böll spoke out against them. His 1972 articleSoviel Liebe auf einmal (So much love at once), which accused the tabloidBild of falsified journalism, was in turn retitled,[clarification needed] at the time of publishing and against Böll's wishes, byDer Spiegel, and the new title was used as a pretext to accuse Böll of sympathy with terrorism.[17] This particular criticism was driven in large part by his repeated insistence on the importance of due process and the correct and fair application of the law in the case of theBaader-Meinhof Group.[18] In his article forDer Spiegel titledSixty Million against Six, he asked for a safeguard forUlrike Meinhof in order to open a dialogue and prevent a major press campaign and police campaign. Böll was heavily criticized for this and dubbed "the spiritual father of the violence" by one journalist in theSpringer press.[12]
The conservative press even attacked Böll's 1972 Nobel Prize, arguing that it was awarded only to "liberals and left-wing radicals".[14]
On 7 February 1974, theBZ, Berlin's most widely read newspaper at the time, reported that Böll's home had been searched. In fact, his home was searched only later that day, after the newspaper had already been circulated.[19]
In 1977, after the abduction ofHanns Martin Schleyer, 40 police searched Böll's house based on an anonymous tip they received that named Böll's son as an accomplice to the kidnappers. This claim turned out to be unfounded. The Christian Democrats placed Böll on a blacklist after this incident.[19]
Böll was deeply rooted in his hometown of Cologne, with its strongRoman Catholicism and rather rough and drastic sense of humour. In the immediate postwar period, he was preoccupied with memories of the war and its effect—materially and psychologically—on ordinary people's lives. They are the heroes of his writing. His Catholicism was important to his work in ways that can be compared to writers such asGraham Greene andGeorges Bernanos, though, as noted earlier, his perspective on Catholicism was critical and challenging, not passive.[20]
Böll was deeply affected by theNazi takeover of Cologne, as the Nazis essentially exiled him in his own town. Additionally, Cologne's destruction in theAllied bombing during World War II scarred him for life; he described the bombing's aftermath inThe Silent Angel. Architecturally, the rebuilt Cologne, prosperous once more, left him indifferent. (Böll seems to have been an admirer ofWilliam Morris; he let it be known that he would have preferred thatCologne Cathedral be left unfinished, with the 14th-century wooden crane at the top, as it had stood in 1848). Throughout his life, he remained in close contact with Cologne's citizens, rich and poor. When he was in hospital, the nurses often complained about the "low-life" people who came to see their friend Böll.[citation needed]
Böll had a great fondness for Ireland, holidaying with his wife at their second home there, on the west coast.[21] Their home in Ireland later became an artist's retreat.[22]
Böll's work has been dubbedTrümmerliteratur (the literature of the rubble). He was a leader of the German writers who tried to come to grips with the memory ofWorld War II, theNazis, theHolocaust, and the guilt that came with them. Because of his refusal to avoid writing about the complexities and problems of the past, some called him theGewissen der Nation ("conscience of the nation"), a catalyst and conduit for memorialization and discussion in opposition to the tendency toward silence and taboo. This was a label Böll was keen to jettison, because he felt that it occluded a fair audit of the institutions truly responsible for what had happened.[23]
Böll lived with his wife in Cologne and in theEifel region. He also spent time onAchill Island, off Ireland's west coast. His cottage there is now used as a guesthouse for international and Irish artists. He recorded some of his experiences in Ireland in his bookIrish Journal; later, the people of Achill curated a festival in his honour. The Irish connection also influenced the translations into German by his wife Annemarie, which included works byBrendan Behan,J. M. Synge,G. B. Shaw,Flann O'Brien, andTomás Ó Criomhthain.[24]
Böll was president of the then West GermanP.E.N. and subsequently of theInternational P.E.N. organizations. He often traveled as a representative of the new, democratic Germany. His appearance and attitude completely contrasted with the boastful, aggressive type of German who had become infamous duringAdolf Hitler's rule. Böll was particularly successful inEastern Europe, as he seemed to portray the dark side ofcapitalism in his books, which sold by the millions in theSoviet Union alone.[25]
WhenAleksandr Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet Union, he first took refuge in Böll's Eifel cottage. This was in part the result of Böll's visit to the Soviet Union in 1962 with a cultural delegation, the first of several trips he made there, during which he made friendships with writers and connections with producers of dissident literature. With Solzhenitsyn's meeting, Böll responded to the criticism from both sides that branded him an instrument of anti-socialist propaganda or a stooge for the East Germans with the following statement: "perhaps many Germans do not readThe Gulag Archipelago to experience the suffering of those to whom this monument is dedicated, but rather to forget the horror of their own history."[19] As president of the West German P.E.N., Böll had recommended Solzhenitsyn for the Nobel Prize for Literature. When Solzhenitsyn received the prize in 1970, he quoted Böll's works to the reception committee.[26]
In 1976, Böll publicly left theCatholic Church, "without falling away from the faith".[27] He died in 1985 at the age of 67.
Böll's memory lives on, among other places, at theHeinrich Böll Foundation. TheCologne Library set up the Heinrich Böll Archive to house his personal papers, bought from his family, but much of the material was damaged, possibly irreparably, when the building collapsed in 2009.[28]
His cottage in Ireland has been used as a residency for writers since 1992.[29]
Eric Anderson wrote a set of musical compositions based on Böll's books:Silent Angel: Fire and Ashes of Heinrich Böll (2017, Meyer Records).
Balzer, Bernd (1997).Das literarische Werk Heinrich Bölls. Kommentare und Interpretationen. Munich.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Hanno Beth (Ed.):Heinrich Böll. Eine Einführung in das Gesamtwerk in Einzelinterpretationen. 2., überarbeitete und erweiterte Auflage. Königstein i.Ts. 1980.
Alfred Böll:Bilder einer deutschen Familie. Die Bölls. Gustav Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1981.
Viktor Böll, Markus Schäfer and Jochen Schubert:Heinrich Böll. dtv, Munich, 2002 (dtv portrait).
Lucia Borghese:Invito alla lettura di Heinrich Böll. Mursia, Milan 1980.
Michael Butler (Ed.):The Narrative Fiction of Heinrich Böll. Social Conscience and Literary Achievement. Cambridge 1994.
Frank Finlay:On the Rationality of Poetry: Heinrich Böll's Aesthetic Thinking. Rodopi, Amsterdam/Atlanta 1996.
Erhard Friedrichsmeyer:Die satirische Kurzprosa Heinrich Bölls. Chapel Hill 1981.
Lawrence F. Glatz:Heinrich Böll als Moralist. Peter Lang, New York 1999.
Christine Hummel:Intertextualität im Werk Heinrich Bölls. Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, Trier 2002.
Manfred Jurgensen (Ed.):Böll. Untersuchungen zum Werk. Francke, Bern/Munich 1975.
Christian Linder: Heinrich Böll. Leben & Schreiben 1917–1985. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1986.
Reich-Ranicki, Marcel (1986).Mehr als ein Dichter: über Heinrich Böll (in German). Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch.
James H. Reid:Heinrich Böll. A German for His Time. Berg Publishers, Oxford/New York/Hamburg 1988. – German:Heinrich Böll. Ein Zeuge seiner Zeit. dtv, Munich 1991.
Klaus Schröter:Heinrich Böll. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1987 (Rowohlts Monographien).
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