“During his long literary career, Günter Grass has been many things. Author, playwright, sculptor and, unquestionably, Germany’s most famous living writer. There is the 1999 Nobel prize and Grass’s broader postwar role as the country’s moral conscience – albeit a claim badly undermined in 2006 when it emerged that the teenage Grass had served in the Waffen SS. But at the ripe old age of 84, Grass has triggered a furious row with a poem criticising Israel.”
Article and English translation of the poem (c) THE GUARDIAN, 2012
Photo: Graeme Robertson
Original version of the poem (in German) (c) SZ, 2012
delirium clemens 