Changes
[[Image:Günter Grass.jpg|left|140px|Günter Grass]]
'''Günter Grass''' (Danzig 1927) [[German]] writer, poet, sculptor, printmaker and former member of the [[Schutzstaffel|Waffen-SS]]<ref>[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/08/12/wss12.xml I was in Hitler's SS, admits Günter Grass]</ref>. In 1999 he was awarded the [[Nobel Prize]]. The same year he received the Prize "PrÃncipe de Asturias de las Letras". His works includes 25 books. His first novel was ''The Tin Drum'' (Die Blechtrommel), 1959. (recently works: Mein Jahrhundert , 1999 and Im Krebsgang, 2002.) In his "German tragedy" The Plebeians Rehearse the Uprising, and published political speeches and essays, he advocated a Germany free from fanaticism and totalitarian ideologies... Vehement debate and criticism were aroused by his mammoth novel Ein weites Feld which is set in the DDR in the years of the collapse of communism and the fall of the Berlin wall. <ref> [http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1999/grass-bio.html Günter Grass] The Nobel Prize in Literature 1999 </ref>
Among Grass' several awards are Gruppe 47 Prize (1958), Critics' Prize (1960, Germany), Foreign Book Prize (1962, France), Bühner Prize (1965), Fontane Prize (1968), Heuss Prize (1969), Mondello Prize (1977, Palermo), Carl von Ossiersky Medal (1977), Viareggio-Versilia Prize (1978), Majakowski Medal (1977), Feltrinelli Prize (1982), Leonhard Frank Ring (1988).
