The German Conscience: The Literature of Heinrich Böll

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature In 1972, Heinrich Böll was a postwar German novelist and essayist who became the leading writer of what was dubbed "the literature of the rubble". A pacifist who resisted the rise of the Nazis ( he refused to join the Hitler Youth or the Nazi Party), he was drafted into the Wehrmacht, was wounded four times, and ultimately became a prisoner of war when he was captured by American troops in 1945. After the war he began to write novels, stories, and essays that tried to come to grips with the memories of World War II, the Nazis, and the Holocaust, as well as to confront the guilt that came with them. Because he refused to shy away from the complexities of those events, and because he demanded examination and discussion of the German Past, he was called by many in Germany "The conscience of the nation". He died in 1985.

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