Heinrich Böll

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Heinrich Böll. (credit: Sahm Doherty — Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)

(born Dec. 21, 1917, Cologne, Ger. — died July 16, 1985, Bornheim-Merten, near Cologne, W.Ger.) German writer. As a soldier in World War II he fought on several fronts, a central experience in the development of his antiwar, nonconformist views. His ironic novels on the travails of German life during and after the war captured the changing psychology of the German nation. He became a leading voice of the German left. Among his works are Acquainted with the Night (1953), Billiards at Half-Past Nine (1959), The Clown (1963), Group Portrait with Lady (1971), and The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (1974). He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972.

For more information on Heinrich Theodor Böll, visit Britannica.com.

One of Germany's most popular and prolific authors, Heinrich Böll (1917-1985) gained international fame - winning the Nobel Prize in 1972 - as a chronicler of the Federal German Republic (1949-1990). Critics have generally emphasized his strong ethical stance, which stemmed from his personal philosophy of Christian humanism and sympathy for the downtrodden.

Born in Cologne and raised by devout but liberal Roman Catholic parents, Böll embraced humanistic ideals early in life. As a schoolboy he stood up to peer pressure and refused to join the Hitler Youth. In 1939, however, he was drafted into the German infantry, serving throughout the war and suffering several wounds. Returning to Cologne after the war, he published his first short story in 1947. Critical and popular acclaim followed quickly, enabling Böll to devote his life to literature.

Böll's early works focus on the impact of Nazi rule on ordinary people, particularly soldiers like himself, affected by events beyond their control. In Der Zug war puenktlich (1949; The Train Was on Time), a haunting story of a soldier who foresees his own death while waiting to be transported to the eastern front, and Wo warst du, Adam? (1951; Adam, Where Art Thou?), he describes the horror and absurdity of war. As a writer, Böll reacted to the war with anger and condemnation. While revealing the complicity of respectable institutions, such as the Catholic church, in Hitler's political success in Germany, Böll points to the catastrophic consequences of Nazi policies. According to Wilhelm Johannes Schwarz, Böll's "predominant attitude to the war is disgust and vexation…. He tells only of its boredom, of filth and vermin, senselessness, and futile waste of time."

Postwar Germany is the setting of Boll's novels of the 1950s. Und sagte kein einziges Wort (1953; And Never Said a Word) relates a family man's difficulties in adjusting to civilian life. This novel received much critical attention and helped establish Böll's reputation as a master storyteller. Haus ohne Hueter (1954; The Unguarded House) is about the struggle for daily survival in a warn-torn city as experienced by two fatherless boys.

Böll's novels written in the 1950s and 1960s examine Germany's efforts to forge a new identity while exorcising the demons of its Nazi past. As in his earlier work, he approaches his subject from an individual's point of view. Always a perceptive and ironic oberver, Böll mercilessly uncovers the moral blindness, historical amnesia, rapacity, vulgar consumerism, and indifference to human values of a production-oriented society that adopts materialism as a means of forgetting its infernal past. In Ansichten eines Clowns (1963; The Clown), a frustrated performer exposes the hypocrisy of prosperous Germans, including his own family, who subordinate ethical principles to opportunistic concerns. Gruppenbild mit Dame (1971; Group Portrait with Lady), an ambitious work that received a mixed response from critics, is structured as a biography based on accounts by the protagonist's friends and acquaintances. Late works, such as Fuersorgliche Belagerung (1979; The Safety Net) and Frauen vor Flusslandschaft (1985; Women in a River Landscape), treat the complex political reality of the last decade of the Federal German Republic.

Critics have praised Boll for his ability to convey his feelings and ideas in simple, concise, and effective prose. Furthermore, some commentators view Böll's style as a conscious protest against the formal complexity of classical German literature, comparing his work to that of Ernest Hemingway, whom Böll himself cited as an influence. The directness and accessibility of Böll's prose especially comes to the fore in his witty portrayal of the absurdity of everyday life, as exemplified by his two short story collections, Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa (1950; Traveler, If You Come to the Spa) and 18 Stories (1966).

Although aware of his importance, critics have hesitated to bestow unqualified praise on Böll. As Robert C. Conard concluded: "Böll has never received universal critical acceptance, not even from those who find his stories some of the best written in the middle decades of the century. That sentimentalism and idealism dominate his work and that he cannot always adequately execute his intentions are the charges most often heard. Minor weaknesses in Böll's work, however, seem not to affect his popularity with a discriminating public. Already he stands in the company of two of his favorite writers: Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. Like them, he has produced eminently readable work imbued with moral power."

Further Reading

Monde (international edition), July 18-24, 1985.

New York Times, July 17, 1985.

Time, July 29, 1985.

Times (London), July 17, 1985.

Washington Post, July 17, 1985; July 28, 1985.

Böll, Rene, Viktor Böll, Reinhold Neven DuMont, Klaus Staeck, and Robert C. Conard, Heinrich Böll, Twayne, 1981.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale, Volume 2, 1974, Volume 3, 1975, Volume 6, 1976, Volume 9, 1978, Volume 11, 1979, Volume 15, 1980, Volume 27, 1984, Volume 32, 1985, Volume 72, 1992.

Conrad, Robert, Heinrich Böll, Twayne, 1981.

Friedrichsmeyer, Erhard, The Major Works of Heinrich Böll: A Critical Commentary, Monarch Press, 1974.

MacPherson, Enid, A Student's Guide to Böll, Heinemann, 1972.

Reid, James Henderson, Heinrich Böll: Withdrawal and Re-Emergence, Wolff, 1973.

Schwartz, Wilhelm Johannes, Heinrich Böll, Teller of Tales: A Study of His Works and Characters, Ungar, 1969.

Böll, Heinrich (Cologne, 1917-85, Bornheim-Merten nr. Cologne), the son of a joiner, was apprenticed to a bookseller in Bonn and completed one semester at Cologne University, reading classical philology and German, before being called up for labour service and drafted into the army in 1939. Four times wounded, he was taken prisoner in 1945, but in the same year returned to settle in Cologne. He resumed his studies and family life, taking various jobs before devoting himself full-time to writing. Within a few years he became known as a formidable critic of authority who stood by his convictions and did not shun controversy. A Roman Catholic by upbringing, he directed his criticism against what he considered to be malpractices within the institution of the Church and against the encyclical Humanae Vitae, and in his tract Brief an einen jungen Katholiken (1958 and 1961) conveyed a frank expression of his views on the Church's approach to morality. In politics he was disillusioned by the decision of the Social Democrats (SPD) to join the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) in the so-called ‘Grand Coalition’ (Große Koalition) in (1965; he denounced the social malaise of the new Federal Republic, the spread of materialistic attitudes resulting from the ‘economic miracle’ (Wirtschaftswunder), and nuclear armament. He stood for Human Rights, and in 1974 was the host to the novelist and Nobel Prize winner A. Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918) immediately after the latter's eviction from Russia, which Böll himself had visited in 1962.

The absurdity and horror of war, as well as the problem of guilt, is the main concern of his early work which established his reputation as a writer of fiction. An exponent of the German brand of the genre, he began with short stories, Die Botschaft, Kumpel mit dem langen Haar (both 1947), Der Zug war pünktlich (1949), the collection of 25 short stories Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa … (1950), and Die schwarzen Schafe (1951), a story for which he received the prize of the Gruppe 47 in 1951. In the same year he published his first novel, Wo warst du, Adam?, which favours the episodic structure held together by a central figure, a technique that underlies his entire novelistic oeuvre; this form suited his professed aim to depict a variety of situations representing social and political forces that entrap, destroy, or challenge ordinary men and women, and families. The compassionate humanity and moral intent informing his realism is especially effective through his increasingly subtle use of different nuances of humour, irony, and satire.

His output after 1951 consisted mainly of novels and stories and a few radio plays. In the satire Nicht nur zur Weihnachtszeit (1952) an elderly lady is obsessed by the idea of celebrating Christmas in 1945 exactly as it was in the time of plenty before the war. The obsession persists beyond Christmas and through the year, with candles being lit and carols sung every night. Obsession, the result of deep-seated frustration and disillusionment, also underlies the title-story of the collection of satires Doktor Murkes gesammeltes Schweigen und andere Satiren (1958). With Und sagte kein einziges Wort (1953), Böll began a series of novels reflecting the conditions of the early post-war years. Haus ohne Hüter (1954) deals with the difficulties of boys orphaned in the war. Das Brot der frühen Jahre (1955) is a more positive work, in which materialistic values are rejected by a pair of young lovers. The stories So ward Abend und Morgen, containing among others Die Postkarte, also appeared in 1955, and Unberechenbare Gäste in 1956. These were written at various times between 1951 and 1956; Die Waage der Baleks und andere Erzählungen (1958) and Der Bahnhof von Zimpren (1959) unite stories from early collections with new ones. Böll's journeys to Ireland and his attractive Irisches Tagebuch (1957) were a kind of escape to a scene in which materialism and new-won affluence were less oppressive than at home. Im Tal der donnernden Hufe (1957) reflects the problems of puberty. Many German treatments of this subject end in suicide, but Böll implies that the crisis is surmounted. The title refers to an erotic fantasy invented by the two boys, Paul and Griff. The climax of Böll's work in the 1950s is the novel Billard um halb zehn (1959), a reckoning between the new generation and the old. It was also the starting-point for a current of opinion critical of Böll's work. Two stories published in 1962 (Als der Krieg ausbrach—Als der Krieg zu Ende war) were originally broadcast as Die Kaffeemühle meiner Großmutter. They are reminders both of what ‘the ordinary man’ had gone through and of the diversity of ‘ordinary men’. The novel Ansichten eines Clowns (1963) marks a further stage in Böll's disapproval of the modern economic state and of that of the Church. The element of ironic masquerade, prominent in this novel, recurs in the story Entfernung von der Truppe (1964), which has a pronounced anti-militaristic message. A satirical appendix pokes fun at academic assessments and journalistic judgements. The same anti-militarism informs the novel Ende einer Dienstfahrt (1966). It is the story of a father and son, Gruhl by name, who, in an act of symbolical protest, deliberately set fire to a jeep of the Bundeswehr. They are given a light sentence and released. The mild ending reflects Böll's own aversion to violent action, but it is also meant to imply an uneasy conscience in the prosecuting authorities. His longest novel, Gruppenbild mit Dame (1971) is a further exposure of a present he dislikes and a past he abhors, presented in an exceptionally complex manner. Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum oder Wie Gewalt entstehen und wohin sie führen kann (1974) is a scathing indictment of journalistic and judicial malpractice, which is responsible for a young woman's ‘lost honour’, and in its approach bears some resemblance to Schiller's story Der Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre. Set against the background of terrorism involving the Baader-Meinhof group, it was a thinly disguised attack on Bildzeitung, one of the newspapers published by the group owned by Axel Springer. The novel Fürsorgliche Belagerung (1979) is similarly inspired by the years of terrorism and police protection in the 1970s. The story Das Vermächtnis (1982) centres on a soldier missing in Russia since 1943 who, it turns out, is dead, having been killed, not by the Russians, but by a German officer, once a schoolfriend, shortly before the German quarters were taken by the Russians. Schelling, who shot Schnecker, has survived and, with callous disregard of the past, still exploits life to the full. In contrast to him, the fictitious first-person narrator (Böll favours this technique), who breaks the news to the family, represents the conscience of that generation and its past that must not be forgotten. Du fährst so oft nach Heidelberg (1979) is a selection of short stories written between 1940 and 1979 (the title story is on the subject of Berufsverbot). The novel Frauen vor Flußlandschaft. Roman in Dialogen und Selbstgesprächen appeared after Böll's death in 1985. Der Engel schwieg, first announced for publication in 1950, appeared in 1992 (postscr. by W. Bellmann); a collection of stories, Der blasse Hund, written between 1936 and 1956-7, ed. Viktor Böll and K. H. Busse with a postscript by H. Vormweg, in 1995.

Gesammelte Erzählungen (2 vols.) appeared in 1981, Gedichte (2 vols.) in 1972 and 1975 respectively, collections of radio plays, Zum Tee bei Dr. Borsig. Acht Hörspiele in 1964 and Hörspiele in 1980.

The Frankfurter Vorlesungen (1966) are based on lectures Böll delivered during his Gastdozentur für Poetik at Frankfurt University. Böll's polemical writings appeared in a number of collections, including Erzählungen, Hörspiele, Aufsätze (1961), Hierzulande (1963), Aufsätze, Kritiken, Reden (1967), Neue politische und literarische Schriften (1973), Einmischung erwünscht. Schriften zur Zeit (1977), Gefahren von falschen Brüdern. Politische Schriften (1980), Spuren der Zeitgenossenschaft. Literarische Schriften (1980), Vermintes Gelände. Essay-istische Schriften 1977-1981 (1982), and Antikommunismus in Ost und West. Zwei Gespräche (1982). Über mich selbst (1958), is a short autobiographical sketch that refers to Böll's native landscape and his forebears; Was soll aus dem Jungen bloß werden? Oder: Irgendwas mit Büchern (1981) covers Böll's grammar-school years, 1933-7. All his major work has appeared in translation.

Film versions of Böll's fiction include Das Brot der frühen Jahre by H. Vesely (1962), Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum by M. von Trotta and V. Schlöndorff (1975), Ansichten eines Clowns by R. V. Jasný (1976), and Gruppenbild mit Dame by A. Petrović (1977).

A selection of Böll's extensive oeuvre appeared as Werke (10 vols.), ed. B. Balzer, 1977-80, ext. 1987.