In 1972, the writer was honored with the Nobel Prize in Literature – as the first West German laureate after the Second World War. "I was born in Cologne...": Heinrich Böll always understood the lifelong "attachment" to his birthplace and the Rhineland as a root of his literary work. However, the themes of his work (and soon his fame) extend far beyond the region and come together to form a "continuation" that made him the first chronicler and admonisher of post-war West German society. Heinrich Böll, born on December 21, 1917, died on July 16, 1985, was the critical instance of the old, the "Rhineland" Federal Republic, the only true "people's writer" that it produced.
His high international reputation, especially in Eastern Europe, and the Nobel Prize in Literature, which Böll received in Stockholm in 1972, have ratified this role and function "in foreign policy". However, it grew out of individual as well as collective experiences during Germany's darkest times; it was articulated in a broad, diverse body of work that asked how we Germans could cope with the burden of our history after Auschwitz and Stalingrad and regain a "livable country" and a "livable language".
Böll's first short stories and narratives, which appeared right after the end of the war and remain impressive to this day, encapsulate the experiences of a generation that lost its youth in the war. In the 1950s, the light and shadow sides of reconstruction come into focus. Böll increasingly turns to the novel form and draws a first assessment of the era with "Billard um halb zehn" (1959). As a founding member of the influential "Gruppe 47", he is a calm yet compelling voice of "non-conformist" literature. The pitfalls of the economic miracle, historical amnesia, and false (Christian) morality are focal points of his criticism, which finds its sharpest expression in the fiercely debated novel "Ansichten eines Clowns" (1963).
Heinrich Böll's literary, moral, and political authority stems from his personal inability to "play along", as the philosopher Adorno recognized. In his novel "Gruppenbild mit Dame" (1970), Böll celebrates the quality of a self-determined life that resists external constraints. Shortly thereafter, he finds himself embroiled in bitter disputes over his plea for a nuanced approach to leftist terrorism and faces defamation. He responds to the violence debate in 1974 with "Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum". He is also heard, not without bitterness, in the disarmament debates of the 1980s. Böll was repeatedly "celebrated and spat upon", as his contemporary Willy Brandt noted.
The great interest in his passing, which extended far beyond the literary world, has once again brought Böll's representative role to light. A certain tragedy may lie in the fact that Böll himself could not sufficiently perceive, in confrontation, what his artistic and public work meant and achieved for the internal democratization of the Federal Republic and its conflict issues, as well as regarding its acceptance – regardless of whether his books will be read in the future. Marcel Reich-Ranicki wrote in his obituary: "But as long as there is a German literature, he will be remembered with respect and gratitude."
