Biography of Gunter Grass
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Gunter Grass is a German poet, novelist, playwright, sculptor, and printmaker. Grass describes himself as a "Spataufklarer", a belated apostle of enlightenment in an era that has grown tired of reason ("Gunter"). He was born in Danzig, Germany (currently Gdansk, Germany) on October 16, 1927. Grass wrote his first unpublished novel when he was only thirteen. Like many teenagers during World War II, Grass was a member of the Hitler Youth. He served under Luftwaffe when he was drafted at age sixteen. Grass was wounded and became a prisoner of war under American forces, but he survived. After the war, he worked as an apprentice to a stone cutter and as a drummer. From 1944-1946 he was also a farm laborer and a miner.
Gunter Grass studied art in Dusseldorf. He supported himself by dealing in the Black Market. Grass was also a tombstone cutter, and he played in a jazz band. He used the little free time that he had to write, spending his earlier years writing mostly plays. Grass's plays were said to have been "absurd" and "approaching aesthetic nonsense (Wilpert 308)." He started using the influence of Bertolt Brecht and wrote his most popular and most controversial play, The Plebians Rehearse the Uprising: A German Tragedy.
Grass studied in West Berlin at the academy of Fine Arts in 1948. He made many journeys to Italy, France, and Spain in the 1950's. In 1954 he married Anna Margareta Schwartz. Grass settled in West Berlin in the early 1960's. In 1978 he divorced Schwartz, and only a year later he married Ute Grunert.
In 1955 Gunter became a member of Gruppe 47, he later described it in one of his books. The writers' association encouraged him, and he started to produce...
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...is lifetime Grass has received many awards and prizes, among these are the Preis der Gruppe 47 in 1958, "Le meilleur livre etranger" in 1962, the Buchner Prize in 1965, the Fontane Prize in 1968, Premio Internazionale Mondello in 1977, the Alexander-Majakowski Medal in 1979, the Antonio-Feltrinelli Prize in 1982, and the GroBer Literaturpreis der Bayerischen Akademie in 1994. Grass has also received doctorates from Kenyon College and the Universities of Harvard, Poznan, and Gdansk ("Grass"). He was also elected President of Berlin Academy of Arts and served for three years.
In October of 1999 the seventy-one-year-old writer received the Nobel Prize for his achievements in the literary category. His strong political standings, which are often unpopular, prevented him from getting this well deserved award earlier. Grass is still writing and speaking to this day.
Then Geisel left home at age 18 to attend Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. When he was there he was editor in chief for the college’s humor magazine named Jack-O-Lantern. One night when he was in his dorm he and some of his friends were caught drinking in their dorm room in violation of the Prohibition law. For that he was kicked off the magazine staff but he continued to write for it under the name “Seuss”.
Elie Wiesel was a Nobel Prize winning writer, teacher, and activist known for his many writings including his memoir, Night. He was born on September 30, 1928 in Sighet, Romania and grew up
When he was fifteen years old his mother died from appendicitis. From fifteen years of age to his college years he lived in an all-white neighborhood. From 1914-1917, he shifted from many colleges and academic courses of study as well as he changed his cultural identity growing up. He studied physical education, agriculture, and literature at a total of six colleges and universities from Wisconsin to New York. Although he never completed a degree, his educational pursuits laid the foundation for his writing career. He had the knowledge of philosophy and psychology. He attempted to write when he was a youth, but he made a choice to pursue a literary career in 1919. After he published Cane he became part of New York literary circles. He objected both rivalries that prevailed in the fraternity of writers and to attempts to promote him as a black writer (Clay...
Grimes, William. "Toni Morrison Is '93 Winner of Nobel Prize in Literature." The New York Times 8 Oct. 1993, Late Edition ed.: n. pag. Print.
Elie Wiesel was born in Sighet, Transylvania (later known as Romania) on September 30, 1928. Elie focused on Jewish religious studies before being relocated to Nazi death camps in WWII. Wiesel survived; he eventually began to write about his experiences in his memoir Night. He became an activist, orator and teacher. He spoke out against persecution and injustice. People should look at what Elie Wiesel and many other Jews went through just to be able to live in this world. The people living now should be appreciative of everything that is given and more.
* Walther von LoewenichLuther: The Man and His Work, trans. Lawrence W. Denef(Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1986).
When Seuss was in high school, his art teacher told him he would never draw realistically. After one art lesson, he walked out of the class and never returned. Ted went to Dartmouth College, where he was an editor for Jack-O-Lantern, the college humor magazine. After getting in trouble for drinking gin in his room, Ted began to draw and write under different pseudonyms, including Seuss. Seuss himself claims that he used the name for his humorous essays and drawings, saving the name Geisel for his serious novels (MacDonald, 2004, p. 3). When Seuss became a magazine cartoonist, he began signing his work “Dr. Theophrastus Seuss” in 1927. He shortened that to “Dr. Seuss” in 1937 after his writings in Judge magazine (MacDonald, p. 5), and that is how Ted Geisel became Dr. Seuss.
Israel Isidore Baline was born in the Russian village of Tyumen on May 11th, 1888. His family left in the mid 1890s to escape the persecution of the Jewish community and settled in New York City (biography.com). Israel dropped out of school at age thirteen (Kenrick 143). Baline was a street singer as a teen and in 1906 he got a job as a singing waiter in Chinatown (biography.com). The first song he ever had published was called “Marie From Sunny Italy” (biography.com). He wrote it in 1907 with Nick Nicholson writing the music. Baline’s name was misspelled on the sheet music as “I. Berlin” (biography.com). He decided to keep it and changed his name to Irving Berlin (biography.com) . It was in this way that the legend was born.
Alice Walker is still alive today, and still continues to write. She has also won many awards such as The National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Price for Fiction. She was also inducted into the California Hall of Fame in the California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts in 2007.
John Wayne Gacy was married for the second time in 1972 to Carol Hoff. He set up a business as a renovation contractor at this time. This marriage also ended partly because Carol was frightened of he husband's temper.
Seuss won countless number of prizes including the 1984 Pulitzer Prize, Caldecott Honor Medals, and several doctorates, his primary motivation, his wife Helen, suffered from many lengthy and threatening illnesses including cancer. She ultimately committed suicide in 1967 and in 1968 Geisel remarried to an old friend, Audrey Stone Diamond. Along with a second wife, Geisel acquired his first and only children, Lark, fifteen at the time, and Lea, who was eleven. Although it was clear Geisel always wanted to have children, he and his wife were unable to. Instead, he would boast of a more-than-just-imaginary daughter, Chrysanthemum-Pearl. The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, his second children’s book to be published, was dedicated to “Chrysanthemum-Pearl (aged 89 months, going on 90).” He even included her on Christmas cards, along with Norval, Wally, Wickersham, Miggles, Boo-Boo, Thnud, and other make believe
Ray Douglas Bradbury became interested in books and writing at the age of seven and aware of the "fabulous world of future and the world of fantasy," through the arrival of Buck Rogers in comic strips and the magazine Amazing Stories. Thus begun his journey into a life of fantastic and futuristic types of literature that would be synonymous with his name (Kunitz, 1955, p. 111).
“Rightly or wrongly, Robert Frost has achieved a reputation as a poet of nature…” (Gerber 155). Yes, Frost does use imagery of nature in his poems, but to say he is a “nature poet” is distorting his poetry by overlooking the poem’s darker complexions (Gerber 155). An aspect of his poems that is frequently overlooked is the main character’s internal conflict. In “The Road Not Taken” and “Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening” characters are faced with an inner conflict metaphorically described by nature.
Robert Lee Frost, born in San Francisco, California on March 26th 1874 was named after Robert E. Lee, the commander for the Confederate armies during the American Civil War. He’s an American poet, who drew his images from t he New England countryside and his language from New England speech. Although his images and voice often seem familiar and old, his observations have an edge of skepticism and irony that makes his work, never as old-fashioned, easy, or carefree as it appears. He was one of America’s leading 20th century poets and a four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize.