Heinrich Böll was born on December 21, 1917 in Cologne, into a liberal Catholic family of an artisan. From 1924 to 1928 he studied at a Catholic school, then continued his studies at the Kaiser Wilhelm Gymnasium in Cologne. He worked as a carpenter, served in a bookstore.
In the summer of 1939, Böll entered the University of Cologne, but in the fall he was drafted into the Wehrmacht. During World War II, Böll is captured by the Americans. After the war, he returned to the University of Cologne and studied philology.
Böll began publishing in 1947. The first works are the story "The Train Comes on Time" (1949), the collection of short stories "Wanderer, when you come to Spa ..." (1950) and the novel "Where have you been, Adam?" (1951, Russian translation 1962).
In 1971, Böll was elected president of the German PEN club, and then headed the international PEN club. He held this position until 1974.
Heinrich Böll tried to appear in the press demanding an investigation into the deaths of RAF members.
The writer repeatedly visited the USSR, but was also known as a critic of the Soviet regime. He hosted A. Solzhenitsyn and Lev Kopelev, who were expelled from the USSR.
Bell Heinrich (December 21, 1917, Cologne - July 16, 1985, ibid.), German writer. Born on December 21, 1917 in a liberal Catholic family of a cabinet maker and craftsman, sculptor. From 1924 to 1928 he studied at a Catholic school, then continued his studies at the Kaiser Wilhelm Gymnasium in Cologne. After graduating from high school in Cologne, Böll, who has been writing poetry and short stories since early childhood, is one of the few students in the class who did not join the Hitler Youth. However, a year after graduation, he is involved in forced labor. Worked in a bookstore. After graduating from the classical gymnasium (1936), he worked as an apprentice seller in a second-hand bookstore. In April 1939, he enrolled at the University of Cologne, where he planned to study literature, but after a few months he received a call from the Wehrmacht. In 1939-1945 he fought as an infantryman in France, participated in battles in Ukraine and Crimea. In 1942 Böll marries Anna Marie Cech, who bore him two sons. Together with his wife, Böll translated into German such American writers as Bernard Malamud and Salinger. In early 1945, he deserted and ended up in an American prisoner of war camp. After his release, he worked as a carpenter, and then continued his education at the university, studying philology. Bell's literary debut took place in 1947, when his story "The News" was published in one of the Cologne magazines. Two years later, The Train Came On Time (1949), a novel by the novice writer, was published as a separate book, telling about a soldier who, like Belle himself, deserted from the army. In 1950, Bell became a member of the Group of 47. In 1952, in the program article "Recognition of the Literature of Ruins", a kind of manifesto for this literary association, Bell called for the creation of a "new" German language - simple and truthful, associated with concrete reality. In accordance with the proclaimed principles, Bell's early stories are distinguished by stylistic simplicity, they are filled with vital concreteness. Bell's short story collections Not Only for Christmas (1952), The Silence of Dr. Murke (1958), The City of Familiar Faces (1959), When the War Started (1961), When the War Ended (1962) resonated not only among the general reading public, and critics. In 1951, the writer received the "Group of 47" award for the story "The Black Sheep" about a young man who does not want to live according to the laws of his family (this topic would later become one of the leading ones in Bell's work). From stories with uncomplicated plots, Bell gradually moved on to more voluminous things: in 1953 he published the story "And He Didn't Say a Single Word", a year later - the novel "A House Without a Master". They are written about the recent experiences, they recognized the realities of the first very difficult post-war years, touched upon the problems of the social and moral consequences of the war. The fame of one of the leading prose writers of Germany was brought to Bell by the novel "Billiards at half past ten" (1959). Formally, its action takes place over the course of one day, September 6, 1958, when a hero named Heinrich Femel, a famous architect, celebrates his eightieth birthday. In fact, the action of the novel contains not only events from the life of three generations of the Femel family, but also half a century of German history. "Billiards at half past nine" consists of eleven internal monologues, the same events are presented to the reader from different points of view, so that a more or less objective picture of the historical life of Germany in the first half of the 20th century is formed. Böll's novels are characterized by a simple and clear style of writing, focused on the revival of the German language after the pompous style of the Nazi regime. The grandiose Abbey of St. Anthony becomes a peculiar embodiment of Germany, in the competition for the construction of which Heinrich Femel once won and which was blown up by his son Robert, who went into the anti-fascist underground after the death of his wife. Post-war Germany, in which the heroes of the novel live, turns out, according to Belle, not much better than pre-war: here, too, lies reign, money for which you can pay off the past. A notable phenomenon in German literature was the following pain
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Bell's first work is Through the Eyes of a Clown (1963). Belle's uneventful novel is, in fact, an internal monologue of the protagonist, circus performer Hans Schnier, the son of a millionaire industrialist, who recalls the years of his childhood that fell on the war, post-war youth, and reflects on art. After the hero was left by his beloved Marie, whom Schnier considers "his wife before God", he begins to fall out of the rhythm of life, his "two congenital diseases - melancholy and migraine" worsen. For Hans, the cure for life's failure is alcohol. As a result, Schnier cannot enter the circus arena, he is forced to interrupt his performances for a while. Returning to his apartment in Bonn, he calls his acquaintances to find Marie, who has become the wife of the Catholic leader Züpfner, but to no avail. From the memoirs of the hero, the reader understands that he fell out of life long before he lost his beloved - even in adolescence, when he refused to participate in the teachings of the Hitler Youth along with his classmates and, later, at the age of twenty, when he rejected his father’s offer to continue his work, choosing the path of a free artist. The hero does not find support in anything: neither in love, nor in an established life, nor in religion. "Catholic by intuition", he sees how churchmen violate the letter and spirit of Christian commandments at every step, and those who sincerely follow them in the conditions of modern society can turn into an outcast. In 1967 Böll received the prestigious German Georg Büchner Prize. The pinnacle of international recognition was Bell's election in 1971 as president of the International PEN Club, before which he had already been president of the German PEN Club. He held this post until 1974. In 1967, Böll received the prestigious German Georg Büchner Prize. And in 1972 he was the first of the German writers of the post-war generation to be awarded the Nobel Prize. In many ways, the decision of the Nobel Committee was influenced by the release of the writer's new novel "Group Portrait with a Lady" (1971), in which the writer tried to create a grandiose panorama of the history of Germany in the 20th century. In the center of the novel is the life of Leni Gruiten-Pfeiffer, described through the eyes of many people, whose personal fate turned out to be closely intertwined with the history of her homeland. In the early 1970s, after a series of terrorist attacks carried out by West German ultra-left youth groups, Bell came out in their defense, justifying the horrific actions by the unreasonable internal policy of the West German authorities, the impossibility of individual freedom in modern German society. Heinrich Böll tried to appear in the press demanding an investigation into the deaths of RAF members. His story The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, or How Violence Arises and What It Can Lead to (1974) was written by Belle under the influence of attacks on the writer in the West German press, which, not without reason, dubbed him the “inspirer” of terrorists. The central problem of The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, like the problem of all of Bell's later works, is the intrusion of the state and the press into the privacy of the common man. The dangers of state surveillance of its citizens and the "violence of sensational headlines" are also told by Belle's last works - "Caring Siege" (1979) and "Image, Bonn, Bonn" (1981). In 1979, the novel Fursorgliche Belagerung (Under the Escort of Care) was published, written back in 1972, when the press was full of materials about the Baader Meinhof terrorist group. The novel describes the devastating social consequences that arise from the need to increase security measures during mass violence. Bell was the first and, perhaps, the most popular West German writer of the young post-war generation in the USSR, whose books became available due to the “thaw” of the late 1950s and 1960s. From 1952 to 1973, more than 80 stories, short stories, novels and articles of the writer were published in Russian, and his books were published in much larger circulations than in his homeland, in Germany. Bell was a frequent visitor to the USSR. In 1974, despite the protest of the Soviet authorities, he provided A. I. Solzhenitsyn, expelled by the Soviet authorities from the USSR, from the times
new home in his house in Cologne (in the previous period, Bell illegally exported the manuscripts of the dissident writer to the West, where they were published). As a result, Bell's works were banned from publication in the Soviet Union. The ban was lifted only in the mid-1980s. with the beginning of perestroika. In 1981, the novel Was soll aus dem Jungen bloss werden, oder: Irgend was mit Buchern, What Will Become of the Boy, or Some Case in the Book Part, is a memoir of early youth in Cologne. In 1987, the Heinrich Böll Foundation was established in Cologne, a non-governmental organization that closely cooperates with the Green Party (its branches exist in many countries, including Russia). The Fund supports projects in the development of civil society, ecology, and human rights. Böll died on 16 July 1985 in Langenbroich. In the same 1985 The writer's very first novel, The Soldier's Legacy (Das Vermachtnis), was published in 1947, but was published for the first time.
Biography
Heinrich Böll was born on December 21, 1917 in Cologne, into a liberal Catholic family of an artisan. From a year he studied at a Catholic school, then continued his studies at the Kaiser Wilhelm Gymnasium in Cologne. He worked as a carpenter, served in a bookstore. After graduating from high school in Cologne, Böll, who has been writing poetry and short stories since early childhood, finds himself one of the few students in the class who did not join the Hitler Youth. After graduating from the classical gymnasium (1936), he worked as an apprentice seller in a second-hand bookstore. One year after graduation, he is sent to work in an Imperial Labor Service labor camp.
In 1967 Böll received the prestigious German Georg Büchner Prize. In Böll, he was elected President of the German PEN Club, and then headed the International PEN Club. He held this post until
In 1969, Heinrich Böll's documentary The Writer and His City: Dostoevsky and Petersburg premiered on television. In 1967 Böll traveled to Moscow, Tbilisi and Leningrad, where he collected material for him. Another trip took place a year later, in 1968, but only to Leningrad.
In 1972, he was the first of the German writers of the post-war generation to be awarded the Nobel Prize. In many ways, the decision of the Nobel Committee was influenced by the release of the writer's new novel "Group Portrait with a Lady" (1971), in which the writer tried to create a grandiose panorama of the history of Germany in the 20th century.
Heinrich Böll tried to appear in the press demanding an investigation into the deaths of RAF members. His story The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, or How Violence Arises and What It Can Lead to (1974) was written by Böll under the influence of attacks on the writer in the West German press, which, not without reason, dubbed him the “inspirer” of terrorists. The central problem of The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, like the problem of all Böll's later works, is the intrusion of the state and the press into the privacy of the common man. The dangers of state surveillance of its citizens and the "violence of sensational headlines" are also told by Böll's last works - "Caring Siege" (1979) and "Image, Bonn, Bonn" (1981). In 1979, the novel Under Escort of Care (Fursorgliche Belagerung) was published, written back in 1972, when the press was overflowing with materials about the Baader and Meinhof terrorist group. The novel describes the devastating social consequences that arise from the need to increase security measures during mass violence.
In 1981, the novel Was Soll Aus dem Jungen bloss werden, oder: Irgend was mit Buchern, What Will Become of the Boy, or Some Case in the Book Part, is a memoir of early youth in Cologne.
Böll was the first and, perhaps, the most popular West German writer of the young post-war generation in the USSR, whose books were published in Russian translation. From 1952 to 1973, more than 80 stories, short stories, novels and articles of the writer were published in Russian, and his books were published in much larger circulations than in his homeland, in Germany. The writer repeatedly visited the USSR, but he was also known as a critic of the Soviet regime. He hosted A. Solzhenitsyn and Lev Kopelev, who were expelled from the USSR. In the preceding period, Böll illegally exported Solzhenitsyn's manuscripts to the West, where they were published. As a result, Böll's works were banned from publication in the Soviet Union. The ban was lifted only in the mid-1980s. with the start of perestroika.
In the same 1985, the writer's previously unknown novel, The Soldier's Legacy (Das Vermachtnis), was published, which was written in 1947, but was published for the first time.
In the early 1990s, manuscripts were found in the attic of Böll's house, which contained the text of the writer's very first novel, The Angel Was Silent. This novel, after being created, was the author himself, burdened by a family and in need of money, "disassembled" into many separate stories in order to receive a larger fee.
He was buried on July 19, 1985 in Bornheim-Merten near Cologne with a large crowd of people, with the participation of fellow writers and politicians.
In 1987, the Heinrich Böll Foundation was established in Cologne, a non-governmental organization that closely cooperates with the Green Party (its branches exist in many countries, including Russia). The Fund supports projects in the development of civil society, ecology, and human rights.
Compositions
- Aus der "Vorzeit".
- Die Botschaft. (News; 1957)
- Der Mann mit den Messern. (Man with knives; 1957)
- So ein Rummel.
- Der Zug war punktlich. (The train arrives on schedule; 1971)
- Mein teures Bein. (My Dear Leg; 1952)
- Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa…. (Traveler, when will you come to Spa…; 1957)
- Die Schwarzen Schafe. (Black Sheep; 1964)
- Wo warst du, Adam?. (Where Have You Been, Adam?; 1963)
- Nicht nur zur Weihnachtszeit. (Not Just Under Christmas; 1959)
- Die Waage der Baleks. (Balekov Scales; 1956)
- Abenteuer eines Brotbeutels. (The story of one soldier's bag; 1957)
- Die postcard. (Postcard; 1956)
- Und sagte kein einziges Wort. (And Didn't Say a Single Word; 1957)
- Haus ohne Hüter. (House without a master; 1960)
- Das Brot der fruhen Jahre. (Bread of the Early Years; 1958)
- Der lacher. (Purveyor of Laughter; 1957)
- Zum Tee bei Dr. Borsig. (On Dr. Borsig's cup of tea; 1968)
- Wie in Schlechten Romanen. (Like bad novels; 1962)
- Irisches Tagebuch. (Irish Diary; 1963)
- Die Spurlosen. (Elusive; 1968)
- Dr. Murkes gesammeltes Schweigen. (Silence of Dr. Murke; 1956)
- Billard um halb zehn. (Billiards at half past nine; 1961)
- Ein Schluck Erde.
- Ansichten eines Clowns. (Through the Eyes of a Clown; 1964)
- Entfernung von der Truppe. (Unauthorized absence; 1965)
- Ende einer Dienstfahrt. (How one business trip ended; 1966)
- Gruppenbild mit Dame. (Group portrait with a lady; 1973)
- "Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum . The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum
- Berichte zur Gesinnungslage der Nation.
- Fursorgliche Belagerung.
- Was soll aus dem Jungen bloß werden?.
- Das Vermachtnis. Entstanden 1948/49; Druck 1981
- Vermintes Gelande. (mined area)
- Die Verwundung. Frühe Erzählungen; Druck (Injured)
- Bild-Bonn-Boenisch.
- Frauen vor Flusslandschaft.
- Der Engelschwieg. Entstanden 1949-51; Druck (Angel was silent)
- Der blasse hund. Frühe Erzählungen; Druck
- Kreuz ohne Liebe. 1946/47 (Cross Without Love; 2002)
- Heinrich Bell Collected works in five volumes Moscow: 1989-1996
- Volume 1: Novels / Tale / Stories / Essays; 1946-1954(1989), 704 pp.
- Volume 2: Novel / Tales / Travel diary / Radio plays / Stories / Essays; 1954-1958(1990), 720 pp.
- Volume 3: Novels / Tale / Radio plays / Stories / Essays / Speeches / Interviews; 1959-1964(1996), 720 pp.
- Volume 4: Tale / Novel / Stories / Essays / Speeches / Lectures / Interviews; 1964-1971(1996), 784 pp.
- Volume 5: Tale / Novel / Stories / Essays / Interviews; 1971-1985(1996), 704 pp.
For the sincerity of his works and political activity, Heinrich Böll was called "the conscience of the nation." "He was a lawyer for the weak and an enemy of those who are always confident in their own infallibility. He stood for the freedom of the spirit wherever it was threatened," - this is how former German President Richard von Weizsäcker described Böll in a letter of condolence to the writer's widow.
Böll was the first German writer after Thomas Mann to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. He always felt like a German, but at the same time he sharply criticized the "public hypocrisy" of the government and the "selective amnesia" of his compatriots.
Life on the edge of eras
Böll's house in the Eifel
Böll's life covered several periods of German history. He was born a subject of Emperor Wilhelm II, grew up in the Weimar Republic, survived the Nazi era, World War II, the occupation, and finally actively participated in the formation of West German society.
Heinrich Böll was born in 1917 in Cologne in the family of a sculptor and cabinetmaker. Böll's parents were very religious people, however, it was they who taught their son to make a clear distinction between the Christian faith and the organized church. At the age of six, Böll begins attending a Catholic school, and then continues his studies at the gymnasium. After the Nazis came to power, Böll, unlike most of his classmates, refused to join the Hitler Youth.
After graduating from the gymnasium in 1937, Böll intended to continue his studies at the university, but this was refused to him. For several months he studied bookselling in Bonn, and then for six months he had to carry out labor service, digging trenches. Böll again tried to enter the University of Cologne, but he was drafted into the army. Böll spent six years at the front - in France and in Russia; four times he was wounded, several times he tried to evade service, feigning illness. In 1945, he is in American captivity. For Böll, this was indeed a day of liberation, so he always retained a sense of gratitude towards the allies who had delivered Germany from Nazism.
On the way to professionalism
After the war, Böll returned to Cologne. And already in 1947 he began to publish his stories. In 1949, his first book, The Train Came on Time, was published. In his first works, which can be attributed to the genre of the so-called "ruin literature", Böll talked about soldiers and their beloved women, about the cruelties of war, about death. The heroes of Böll's works remained, as a rule, nameless; they symbolized suffering humanity; they did what they were ordered to do and died. These people hated war, but not enemy soldiers.
The books immediately attracted the attention of critics, but circulation was poor. Böll, however, continued to write. By the end of the 1950s, Böll was moving away from the topic of war. At this time, his writing style also improved. In Billiards at 9:30, often cited as his finest novel, Böll uses sophisticated narrative techniques to compress the experiences of three generations of a wealthy German family into a single day. In the novel Through the Eyes of a Clown, the morals of the Catholic establishment are revealed. "Group Portrait with a Lady", Böll's most voluminous and most innovative novel, is presented in the form of a detailed bureaucratic report, where about sixty people characterize a certain person, thus creating a mosaic panorama of German life after the First World War. "The Lost Honor of Katharina Bloom" - an ironic sketch on the gossip of the tabloid press.
Unloved for the truth
Heinrich Böll with Alexander Solzhenitsyn
A separate chapter in the life of Heinrich Böll is his love for Russia and active support of the dissident movement.
Böll knew a lot about Russia and had a clear position on many aspects of Russian reality. This position is reflected in many of the writer's works. Böll's relationship with the Soviet leadership was never cloudless. The actual ban on Russian editions of Böll lasted from mid-1973 until the last days of his life. The writer's social and human rights activities, his angry protests against the entry of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia, and active support of the dissident movement served as the "fault" for this.
And it all started with Böll's incredible success in the Soviet Union. The first publication came out as early as 1952, when the only international magazine of that time, In Defense of Peace, published a short story by a young West German author, A Very Expensive Leg.
Since 1956, Böll's Russian editions have appeared regularly, in colossal print runs. Perhaps nowhere in the world his translations were as popular as they were among the Russian audience. Böll's close friend Lev Kopelev once remarked: "If Turgenev was said to be the most German of Russian writers, then Böll could be said to be the most Russian of German writers, although he is a very 'German' writer.
On the role of literature in the life of society
The writer was convinced that literature is extremely important in the formation of society. In his opinion, literature in the usual sense of the word is capable of destroying authoritarian structures - religious, political, ideological. Böll was sure that the writer, to one degree or another, is able to change the world with the help of his work.
Böll did not like to be called "the conscience of the nation." In his opinion, the conscience of the nation is the parliament, the code of laws and the legal system, and the writer is called only to awaken this conscience, and not be its embodiment.
Active political position
Heinrich Böll, Nobel laureate
Böll has always been actively involved in politics. Thus, he resolutely came out in defense of such Soviet dissident writers as Lev Kopelev and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
He was also critical of the capitalist system. When asked if there is a humane capitalism, he once answered: "There really cannot be such a thing. The way the capitalist economy functions and should function does not allow any humanism."
By the mid-1970s, Böll's assessment of German society became extremely critical, and his political views were also "sharpened". He does not accept the ideology of mature capitalism with its double morality, they sympathize with socialist ideas about justice.
The writer does this so resolutely and publicly that at some point he turns out to be almost an "enemy of the state" - in any case, a figure of official censure. Until his death, Heinrich Böll participated in public life as a dissident representing views that were unacceptable from an official point of view.
Fame is a means to do something for others
Böll was a very popular writer. He commented on his attitude to fame as follows: "Fame is also a means to do something, to achieve something for others, and this is a very good tool."
The writer died in 1985. At the funeral ceremony, Böll's friend, priest Herbert Falken, concluded his sermon with these words: "On behalf of the deceased, we pray for peace and disarmament, for readiness for dialogue, for a fair distribution of benefits, for the reconciliation of peoples and for the forgiveness of the guilt that lies a heavy burden especially on us , Germans".
Anastasia Rakhmanova, lb
Heinrich Böll- German writer and translator.
Born in Cologne, one of the largest cities in the Rhine Valley, in a large family of cabinetmaker Viktor Böll and Marie (Hermanns) Böll. Böll's ancestors fled England under Henry XIII: like all zealous Catholics, they were persecuted by the Anglican Church.
After graduating from high school in Cologne, Böll, who had been writing poetry and short stories since early childhood, was one of the few students in the class who did not join the Hitler Youth. However, a year after graduation, the young man was involved in forced labor, and in 1939 he was called up for military service. Böll served as a corporal on the Eastern and Western fronts, was wounded several times and was eventually captured by the Americans in 1945, after which he spent several months in a prisoner of war camp in southern France.
Upon returning to his hometown, Böll studied for a short time at the University of Cologne, then worked in his father's workshop, in the city bureau of demographic statistics, and at the same time did not stop writing - in 1949 the first story "The Train Came on Time" was published and received a positive response from critics ( Der Zug war punktlich, a story about a young soldier who is about to return to the front and die soon. The Train Came on Time is Böll's first in a series of books that describe the futility of war and the hardships of the post-war years; such are “Wanderer, when you come to Spa...” (Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa, 1950), “Where have you been, Adam?” (Wo warst du, Adam?, 1951) and Bread of the Early Years (Das Brot der fruhcn Jahre, 1955). Böll's authorial style, writing simply and clearly, was oriented towards the revival of the German language after the pompous style of the Nazi regime.
Departing in his first novel Billiards at half past nine (Billiard um halbzehn, 1959) from the manner of the “literature of the ruins”, Böll tells about a family of famous Cologne architects. Although the action of the novel is limited to just one day, thanks to reminiscences and digressions, the novel tells about three generations - the panorama of the novel covers the period from the last years of the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm to the flourishing "new" Germany of the 50s. "Billiards at half past nine" differs significantly from Böll's earlier works - and not only in the scale of the presentation of the material, but also in formal complexity. “This book,” wrote the German critic Henry Plard, “delivers great consolation to the reader, for it shows the healing power of human love.”
In the 60s, Böll's works become even more complex compositionally. The action of the story "Through the Eyes of a Clown" (Ansichten eines Clowns, 1963) also takes place within one day; in the center of the story is a young man who speaks on the phone and on whose behalf the story is being told; the hero prefers to play the role of a jester in order not to submit to the hypocrisy of post-war society. “Here we again encounter Böll's main themes: the Nazi past of the representatives of the new government and the role of the Catholic Church in post-war Germany,” wrote German critic Dieter Henicke.
The theme of "Unauthorized absence" (Entfernung von der Truppe, 1964) and "The end of one business trip" (Das Ende einer Dienstfahrt, 1966) is also opposition to official authorities. More voluminous and much more complex compared to previous works, the novel Group Portrait with a Lady (Gruppenbild mit Dame, 1971) is written in the form of a report consisting of interviews and documents about Leni Pfeiffer, thanks to which the fate of another sixty people is revealed. “Tracking the life of Leni Pfeiffer over half a century of German history,” wrote the American critic Richard Locke, “Böll created a novel that glorifies universal human values.”
"Group portrait with a lady" was mentioned at the time of Böll's Nobel Prize (1972), received by the writer "for his work, which combines a wide coverage of reality with a high art of creating characters and which has become a significant contribution to the revival of German literature." “This revival,” Karl Ragnar Girov, a representative of the Swedish Academy, said in his speech, “is comparable to the resurrection of a culture that has risen from the ashes, which, it seemed, was doomed to complete destruction and, nevertheless, to our common joy and benefit, gave new shoots ".
By the time Böll received the Nobel Prize, his books had become widely known not only in West but also in East Germany and even in the Soviet Union, where several million copies of his works were sold. However, Böll played a prominent role in the activities of the PEN Club, an international writers' organization, through which he supported writers who were subjected to oppression in the countries of the communist regime. After Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974, he lived with Böll until he left for Paris.
In the same year that Böll helped Solzhenitsyn, he wrote a nonfiction story, Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum, in which he sharply criticized corrupt journalism. This is the story of a wrongly accused woman who ends up killing a reporter who lied about her. In 1972, when the press was overwhelmed with material about the terrorist group Baader-Meinhof, Böll wrote the novel Under Escort of Care (Fursorgliche Вlagerung. 1979), which describes the devastating social consequences that arise from the need to increase security measures during mass violence.
In 1942 Böll married Anna Marie Cech, who bore him two sons. Together with his wife, Böll translated into German such American writers as Bernard Malamud and Jerome D. Salinger. Böll died at the age of 67, while near Bonn, visiting one of his sons. In the same 1985, the writer's very first novel, The Soldier's Legacy (Das Vermachtnis), was published, which was written in 1947, but was published for the first time. "Soldier's Legacy" tells about the bloody events that took place during the war in the Atlantic and Eastern Front. Despite the fact that some anguish is felt in the novel, notes the American writer William Boyd, The Soldier's Legacy is a mature and significant work; "It exudes from suffering clarity and wisdom."
