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Siegfried Lenz

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Occupation
  
Novelist

Notable works
  
The German Lesson

Nationality
  
German

Name
  
Siegfried Lenz


Alma mater
  
University of Hamburg

Role
  
Writer

Period
  
1956–2014

Parents
  
Otto Lenz, Luise Lenz

Siegfried Lenz wwwdwcomimage01798043730300jpg

Born
  
17 March 1926 Lyck (Elk), East Prussia (
1926-03-17
)

Notable awards
  
Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (1988) Goethe Prize (2000) Honorary citizen of Schleswig-Holstein (2004)

Died
  
October 7, 2014, Hamburg, Germany

Spouse
  
Liselotte Lenz (m. 1949–2006)

Movies
  
The Tide Is Punctual, The Lightship, Man in the River, Time of the Innocent, Arne's Legacy

Books
  
The German Lesson, Das Feuerschiff, Der Mann im Strom, The selected stories of, The Heritage

Similar People
  
Gunter Grass, Heinrich Boll, Julius Stettenheim, Thorsten Schmidt, Jerzy Skolimowski

Siegfried lenz schriftsteller und menschenfreund


Siegfried Lenz ( [ˈziːkfʁiːt ˈlɛnts]; 17 March 1926 – 7 October 2014) was a German writer of novels, short stories and essays, as well as dramas for radio and the theatre. In 2000 he received the Goethe Prize on the 250th Anniversary of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's birth.

Contents

Life

Siegfried Lenz Siegfried Lenz Biography Siegfried Lenz39s Famous Quotes

Siegfried Lenz was born in Lyck, East Prussia (now Ełk, Poland), the son of a customs officer. After graduating in 1943, he was drafted into the Kriegsmarine.

Siegfried Lenz Siegfried Lenz Dickinson College Wiki

According to documents released in June 2007, he may have joined the Nazi Party at the age of 18 on 20 April 1944 along with several other German authors and personalities, such as Dieter Hildebrandt and Martin Walser. However, Lenz subsequently said he had been included in a collective "joining" of the Party without his knowledge. Shortly before the end of World War II, he fled to Denmark, but was held briefly as a prisoner of war in Schleswig-Holstein. He then worked as a translator for the British army.

Siegfried Lenz Masurian Stories by Siegfried Lenz Leopard

At the University of Hamburg he studied philosophy, English, and literary history. His studies were cut off early when he became an intern for the daily newspaper Die Welt, where he served as an editor from 1950 to 1951. It was there he met his future wife, Liselotte whom he married in 1949.

Siegfried Lenz FileBundesarchiv B 145 BildF0307570016 Siegfried Lenz

In 1951, Lenz used the money he had earned from his first novel Habichte in der Luft to finance a trip to Kenya. During his time there, he wrote about the Mau Mau Uprising in his short story "Lukas, sanftmütiger Knecht". After 1951 Lenz worked as a freelance writer in Hamburg, where he joined the Group 47 group of writers. Together with Günter Grass, he became engaged with the Social Democratic Party and championed the Ostpolitik of Willy Brandt. As a supporter of rapprochement with Eastern Europe he was invited to the signing of the Treaty of Warsaw (1970). In October 2011 he was made an honorary citizen of his home town Ełk, which had become Polish as a result of the border changes promulgated at the 1945 Potsdam Conference.

Siegfried Lenz Siegfried Lenz Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

In 2003, Lenz joined the Verein für deutsche Rechtschreibung und Sprachpflege (Society for German Spelling and Language Cultivation) to protest the German orthography reform of 1996.

Siegfried Lenz Siegfried Lenz Das unscheinbare Gold der Gesellschaft

He died at the age of 88 on 7 October 2014 in Hamburg.

After his death, a previously unpublished novel, Der Überläufer (The Turncoat), which Lenz had written in 1951, was published. Unwelcome in the cold-war era, this novel about a German soldier who defects to Soviet Union forces, was found among his effects.

Ethics

Critic Gerhardt Csejka described Lenz as one of the German authors who saw it as his duty to help the German people "pay off the enormous debts", which "the Germans together with their honoured Führer had burdened themselves." Lenz saw it as his obligation to "take preventive actions against any danger of a reoccurrence."

Honors

In 1988 Lenz was awarded with the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, a prize given annually at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The Goethe Prize of Frankfurt am Main (Goethepreis der Stadt Frankfurt) was given to Lenz in 2000. A year later, Lenz was honored with the highest decoration of Hamburg, the honorary citizenship. Since 2004 Lenz has been honorary citizen of Schleswig Holstein, since 18 October 2011 honorary citizen of his hometown Ełk (Lyck). In 2010 he won the Italian International Nonino Prize.

References

Siegfried Lenz Wikipedia