Heinrich Boll Biography and List of Works

German writer, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972. Böll's work portrays Germany after World War II with a deep moral vision and attacks the materialist values of post-war society. Like Graham Greene and Georges Bernanos, Böll combines an unorthodox Catholic belief with a sense of the absurd in human actions.

"Art is always a good hiding-place, not for dynamite, but for intellectual explosives and social time bombs. Why would there otherwise have been the various Indices? And precisely in their despised and often even despicable beauty and lack of transparency lies the best hiding-place for the barb that brings about the sudden jerk or the sudden recognition."
(from Nobel Lecture, 1973)

Böll was born in Cologne. His father was a cabinetmaker and sculptor, whose ancestors had fled from England to escape the persecution of Roman Catholics. Böll started to write poetry and short stories in his youth. He was one of the few boys in his school who did not join the Hitler Youth movement. After graduating from high school in 1937, he was drafted into the compulsory work program. Böll served six years as a private and a corporal in the army on both the Soviet and Western fronts. He was wounded four times, and at the end of the war he was interned in a prisoner-of-war camp in France.

After returning to Cologne, Böll studied at the university and worked for a short time in the family workshop, and later at the city's Bureau of Vital Statistics. Böll's first stories were published in 1947. His first novel, THE TRAIN WAS ON TIME, appeared in 1949. From 1951 he was a full-time writer.

"Pedanterie", sagte Bur-Malottke, "wird ja nur von unsauberen Geistern als des Genies unwürdig bezeichnet, wir wissen ja" - und der Intendant fühlte sich geschmeichelt, durch das Wir unter die sauberen Geister eingereiht zu sein - "dass die wahren, die grossen Genies Pedanten waren. Himmelsheim liess einmal eine ganze, ausgedruckte Auflage seines Seelon auf eigene Kosten neu binden, weil drei oder vier Sätze in der Mitte dieses Werkes ihm mehr entsprechend erschienen."
(from Doktor Murkes gesammeltes Schweigen, 1958)

In his early novels Böll depicts the despair of soldiers' lives, the oppressive cruelties he witnessed in his youth and in military service. From the "worm's-eye" view of World War II his scope widened gradually to encompass the reality of modern German society. Works such as DER ZUG WAR PÜNKTLICH, 1947, The Train Was on Time), WANDERER KOMMST DU NACH SPA (1950, Traveller, If You Come to Spa), and WO WARST DU, ADAM? (1951, Adam, Where Art Thou?) are written in an understated style and focuses on the brutalities of the Nazi era and army life. In a 1952 essay, Böll accepts the label "rubble literatur" as a designation of a literary trend which focuses on the war, coming home, and reconstruction. Böll's first commercially and critically successful novel, UND SAGTE KEIN EINZIGES WORT (1953) alternates between the first-person narratives of a man and a woman, whose marriage is in crisis because of their poverty, and the husband's loss of faith.

'"Nein" sagte er, "du hast recht. Es wäre schön, dich wiederzusehen in einem Leben, in dem ich dich lieben könnte, so lieben wie jetzt, dich zu heiraten."
"Ich dachte ebendaran", sagte ich leise, und ich konnte die Tränen nicht mehr zurückhalten.'
(from Und sagte kein einziges Wort, 1953)

Billiards at Half Past Nine (1959) takes place in a single day (September 6, 1958). It depicts a prominent family of Cologne architects, who have been successively involved with the building of an abbey at the beginning of the 20th-century, its destruction during World War II, and its rebuilding after 1945. In the course of the day Böll reveals the crucial incidents in the past of the family, from the Wilhelminian empire through Weimar and Hitler to the prosperous West Germany of 1958. The Clown (1963) is written as a series of telephone calls and tells, in a first person narrative,the tale of a young man who would rather play the fool than take his place in post-war society.

1971saw the publication of, Group Portrait With a Lady, which was again formally innovative: it is composed from interviews and documents with, and about Leni Pfeiffer, through whom the lives of some sixty other characters are depicted. Boll parodies fashionable documentary novels, but also uses the dead language of real documents of Nazi bureacracy. The narrator tries to reconstruct the life of Leni, the simultaneously saintly and sensuous heroine. "The female protagonist in the first section is a woman of forty-eight, German: she is five foot six inches tall, wights 133 pounds (in indoor clothing), i.e., only twelve to fourteen ounces below standard weight; her eyes are iridescent dark blue and black, her slightly greying hair, very thick and blonde, hangs loosely to her shoulders, sheathing her head like a helmet." Leni has survived a difficult childhood, a bad marriage, a forbidden love affair with a Soviet prisoner-of-war, the bombing of Cologne, and post-war series of losses. Ultimately her friends,(social 'discards'), organize a 'Help Leni Committee,' in order to bail her out of bankruptcy and prevent her eviction.

"Aunt Leni, on the other hand, he regarded as being reactionary in the truest sense of the word: it was inhuman, one might even say monstrous, the way she instinctively, stubbornly, inarticulately, but consistently, refused - not only rejected, that presupposed articulation - every manifestation of the profit motive, simply refused to have anything to do with it... She was the inhuman one, not he, for a wholesome striving after profit and property - as had been demonstrated by theology and was being increasingly acknowledged even by Marxist philosophers - was part of human nature."
(from Group Portrait of With a Lady)

In 1968 Böll worked as a teacher at the University of Frankfurt and later at other universities (in Prag 1969 and in Israel 1970). Böll was politically active and in 1972 he participated in SPD's election campaign.

Among his later works are The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (1974), which attacks yellow journalism. The protagonist, Katharina Blum, is falsely accused by the sensation-seeking press. Finally she is driven to murdering the journalist responsible for ruining her reputation. Safety Net (1979) is inspired by the press coverage of the Baader-Meinhof terrorist group. Right-wing critics, particularly in the popular press, suspected Böll of sympathising with social dissidents and even condoning the aims of terrorist.

In his essays Böll saw his role as a writer to act as the social conscience of his age. He ridicules contemporary jargon, defends individual freedom and self-determination, warns about the dangers of escalating nuclear armamentation and the creeping powers of the state security system. Linked to his Catholic faith, Böll takes a critical attitude towards social institutions, including the church itself.

Böll's earliest story, A Soldier's Legacy (1947), not previously published, appeared nearly forty years later in 1985. Böll died in Bonn on July 16, 1985. After his death, critics lamented the lack of a successor capable of carrying on his public missions as moral authority and literary spokesperson for the disadvantaged.The posthumously published FRAUEN VOR FLUSSLANDSCHAFT (1985) is laden with a pervasive atmosphere of suspicion, intrigue, and hidden guilt among the power elite.

For further reading: The Narrative Fiction of Heinrich Böll by M.Butler (1994); Heinrich Böll: Forty Years of Criticism by R.K. Zachau (1994); Understanding Heinrich Böll by R.C. Conrad (1992); Heinrich Böll: A German for His Time by J.H. Reid (1988); Heinrich Böll by R.C. Conrad (1981); The Imagery in Heinrich Böll's Novel's by I. Prodaniuk (1979); Heinrich Böll in America by R.L. White (1978); The Writer and Society by C.W. Ghurye (1976);; Heinrich Böll: Withdrawal and Re-Emergence by J.H. Reid (1973); Heinrich Böll: A Student's Guide by E. Macpherson (1972); Heinrich Böll, Teller of Tales by W. Schwartz (1968) - See also: Brendan Behan's Stücke fürs Theater. Böll translated works from several other authors, among them Shaw, Salingen, Synge, Malamud - Note: After Alexander Solzhenitsyn was exiled from the Soviet Union in February 1974, his first hosts in the West was Heinrich Böll. Böll's works were popular in the Soviet Union, but he was also active in PEN, through which he supported the rights of authors working under Communist repression.

DER ZUG WAR PÜNKTLICH, (1947)
WANDERER KOMMST DU NACH SPA, (1950)
WO WARST DU, ADAM?, (1951)
DIE SCHWARZEN SCHAFE, (1951)
HAUS OHNE HÜTER, (1954)
DAS BROT DER FRÜHEN JAHRE, (1955)
SO WARD ABEND UND MORGEN, (1955)
UNBERECHENBARE GÄSTE, (1956)
IM TAL DER DONNERNDEN HUFE, (1957)
IRISCHES TAGEBUCH, (1957)
DIE SPURLOSEN, (1957)
ERZÄHLUNGEN, (1958)
DOCTOR MURKES GESAMMELTES SCHWEIGEN UND ANDERE SATIREN, (1958)
BILLIARD UM HALB ZEHN, (1959)
BRIEF AN EINEN JUNGEN KATHOLIKEN, (1961)
EIN SCHLUCK ERDE, (1962)
ALS DER KRIEG AUSBRACH. ALD DER KRIEG ZU ENDE WAR, (1962)
HIERZULANDE, (1963)
, (1947)
ANSICHTEN EINES CLOWNES, (1963)
ENTFERNUNG VON DER TRUPPE, (1964)
ENDE EINE DIENSTFAHRT, (1966)
FRANKFURTER VORLESUNGEN, (1966)
Eighteen Stories, (1966)
DIE FREIHEIT DER KUNST, (1966)
AUFSÄTZE, KRITIK, REDEN, (1967)
WO WARST DU, ADAM? UND ERZÄHLUNGEN, (1967)
BÜCHNERS GEGENWÄRTIGKEIT, (1967)
HAUSFRIEDENSBRUCH, (1969)
GESCHICHTEN AUS ZWÖLF JAHREN, (1969)
LEBEN IM ZUSTAND DES FREVELS, (1969)
Children Arew Civilians Too, (1970)
GRUPPENBILD MIT DAME, (1971)
ERZÄHLUNGEB, (1950)
Nobel Prize for Literature, (1972)
GEDICHTE, (1972)
NEUE POLITISCHE UND LITERARISCHE SCHRIFTEN, (1973)
POLITISCHE MEDITATIONEN ZU GLÜCK UND VERGEBLICHKEIT, (1973)
DIE VERLORENE EHRE DER KATHARINA BLUM, (1974)
BERICHTE ZUR GESINNUNGSLAGE DER NATION, (1975)
GEDICHTE, (1975)
DREI TAGE IM MÄRZ, (1975)
EINMISCHUNG ERWÜNSCHT, (1977)
Missing Persons and Other Essays, (1977)
FÜRSORGLICHE BELAGERUNG, (1979)
EINER DEUTSCHE ERINNERUNG, (1979)
DU FÄHRST ZU OFT NACH HEIDELBERG, (1970)
FÜRSORGLICHE BELAGERUNG, (1979)
WAS SOLL AUS BEM JUNGEN BLOSS WERDEN?, (1981)
WARUM HABEN WIR AUFEINANDER GESCHOSSEN?, (1981)
VERMINTES GELÄNDE, (1982)
DAS VERMÄCHTNIS, (1982)
DIE VERWUNDLUNG, (1983)
EIN- UND ZUSPRÜCHE, (1984)
FRAUEN VOR FLUSSLANDSCHAFT, (1985)
DAS VERMÄCHTNIS, (1985)
The Stories of Heinrich Böll, (1986)
WIR KOMMEN WEIT HER, (1987)
ROM AUF DEN ERSTEN BLICK, (1987)
DER ENGEL SCHWEIG, (1992)
The Mad Dog. Stories, (1997)