Heinrich BÐ"¶Ll

BÐ"¶ll was born in Cologne, Germany to a liberal, Catholic, pacifistic family. He successfully resisted joining the Hitler Youth during the 1930s. He was apprenticed in a bookseller, then studied German at the University of Cologne. Drafted into the Wehrmacht, he served in France, Romania, Hungary and the Soviet Union, and was wounded four times before he was captured by Americans in April 1945 and sent to a POW camp. His wounds (he had lost all his toes to frostbite) made him a regular in hospitals until the end of his life.

BÐ"¶ll became a full-time writer at the age of 30. His first novel, Der Zug war pÐ"јnktlich (The Train Was on Time), was published in 1949. Many other novels, short stories, radio plays and essay collections followed, and in 1972 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was the first German to receive this award since Hermann Hesse in 1946. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages, and he is one of Germany's most widely read authors. His best-known works are Billiards at Half-past Nine, The Clown, Group Portrait with Lady, The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, and The Safety Net.

BÐ"¶ll was deeply rooted in his home town of Cologne, with its strong Roman Catholicism and its rather rough and drastic sense of humour. In the immediate post-war period, he was preoccupied with memories of the War and the effect it hadÐ'--materially and psychologicallyÐ'--on the lives of ordinary people. He has made them the heroes in his writing.

His villains are the authority figures in government, business, and in the Church, whom he castigates, sometimes humorously, sometimes acidly, for what he perceived as their conformism, lack of courage, self-satisfied attitude and abuse of power. His simple style made him a favourite for German-language textbooks.

He was deeply affected by the Nazi takeover of Cologne, as they essentially exiled him in his own town. Furthermore, the destruction of Cologne by Allied bombing raids scarred him irrevocably. Architecturally, the newly-rebuilt Cologne, prosperous once more, left him indifferent. (BÐ"¶ll seemed to be a pupil of William Morris: He made known that he'd have preferred Cologne cathedral