Heinrich Böll

Henrich Böll was born in Cologne, Germany. He opposed the rise of Nazism, refusing to join the Hitler Youth as an adolescent (though he was later forced to serve in the Germany Army in World War II). Böll attended the University of Cologne, where he studied German and classics. He married Annemarie Ceche in 1942 and had three children with her. The couple would also go on to collaborate on various translations of German texts into English. While serving in World War II, he was captured by the U.S. Army and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp. After the war, Böll published his first novel, Der Zug war pünktlich (The Train Was on Time), in 1949. He went on to become a celebrated figure within 20th-century German literature, publishing such notable works as Billard um halb zehn (Billiards at Half-past Nine) and Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum (The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum) and earning prestigious awards such as the Georg Büchner Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature. He also served as President of PEN International from 1971 to 1973. But Böll’s career was also marked by scandal: his outspoken liberal social and political views angered the conservative press, which accused him of harboring terrorist sympathies. Böll died in Langenbroich, West Germany, in 1985, at the age of 67.