Heinrich Böll: the most Russian German writer. Biography Unloved for the truth

Biography

Heinrich Böll was born on December 21, 1917 in Cologne, into a liberal Catholic artisan family. From to g. 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 wrote poetry and stories from early childhood, turns out to be 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. A year after leaving school, he is sent to work at 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 g.

In 1969, the premiere of the documentary "The Writer and His City: Dostoevsky and St. Petersburg", shot by Heinrich Böll, took place 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 German writer of the post-war generation to be awarded the Nobel Prize. To a large extent, 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 print demanding an investigation into the deaths of members of the RAF. His story The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, or How Violence Arises and Where It Can Lead (1974) was written by Böll under the impression 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 invasion of the state and the press into the private life of an ordinary person. Böll's latest works, The Caring Siege (1979) and The Image, Bonn, Bonn (1981), also tell about the danger of state supervision over its citizens and the “violence of sensational headlines”. In 1979, the novel Fursorgliche Belagerung was published, written back in 1972, when the press was full of materials about the Baader and Meinhof terrorist group. The novel describes the devastating social consequences arising from the need to strengthen security measures during a time of massive violence.

In 1981, the novel What Will Become a Boy, or Something about the Book Part (Was soll aus dem Jungen bloss werden, oder: Irgend was mit Buchern) was published - memories of his 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, novellas, novels and articles of the writer were published in Russian, and his books were published in much larger circulations than at home, in the FRG. The writer visited the USSR several times, but he was also known as a critic of the Soviet regime. Received A. Solzhenitsyn and Lev Kopelev, expelled from the USSR. In the previous 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 beginning of perestroika.

In the same 1985, a previously unknown novel by the writer - "Soldier's Legacy" (Das Vermachtnis), which was written in 1947, but was published for the first time, was published.

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 its creation, was the author himself, burdened with 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 in 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 closely cooperating with the Green Party (its branches exist in many countries, including Russia). The Foundation supports projects in the field of civil society development, ecology, and human rights.

Essays

• Aus der "Vorzeit".
• Die botschaft... (News; 1957)
• Der Mann mit den Messern... (The Man with Knives; 1957)
• So ein Rummel.
• Der Zug war pünktlich... (Train arrives on schedule; 1971)
• Mein teures bein... (My Dear Foot; 1952)
• Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa ...... (Traveler, when 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 for Christmas; 1959)
• Die waage der baleks... (Libra Balekov; 1956)
• Abenteuer eines Brotbeutels... (The Story of One Soldier's Sack; 1957)
• Die postkarte... (Postcard; 1956)
• Und sagte kein einziges Wort... (And didn't say a single word; 1957)
• Haus ohne Hüter... (House without an owner; 1960)
• Das Brot der frühen Jahre... (Early Bread; 1958)
• Der Lacher... (Laughter Provider; 1957)
• Zum Tee bei Dr. Borsig... (On a cup of tea at Dr. Borzig's; 1968)
• Wie in schlechten Romanen... (As in bad novels; 1962)
• Irisches Tagebuch... (Irish Diary; 1963)
• Die spurlosen... (Elusive; 1968)
• Doktor Murkes gesammeltes Schweigen... (The 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.
• Fürsorgliche Belagerung.
• Was soll aus dem Jungen bloß werden?.
• Das Vermächtnis... Entstanden 1948/49; Druck 1981
• Vermintes Gelände... (Mineralized area)
• Die verwundung... Frühe Erzählungen; Druck (Wounded)
• Bild-Bonn-Boenisch.
• Frauen vor flusslandschaft.
• Der engel schwieg... Entstanden 1949-51; Druck (Angel was silent)
• Der blasse hund... Frühe Erzählungen; Druck
• Kreuz ohne liebe... 1946/47 (Cross without Love; 2002)

• Heinrich Belle Collected works in five volumes Moscow: 1989-1996
  • Volume 1: Novels / Story / Stories / Essays; 1946-1954(1989), 704 pp.
  • Volume 2: Novel / Stories / Travel Diary / Radio Plays / Stories / Essays; 1954-1958(1990), 720 pp.
  • Volume 3: Novels / Story / Radio Plays / Short Stories / Essays / Speeches / Interviews; 1959-1964(1996), 720 pp.
  • Volume 4: Story / Novel / Stories / Essays / Speeches / Lectures / Interviews; 1964-1971(1996), 784 pp.
  • Volume 5: Story / Novel / Stories / Essays / Interview; 1971-1985(1996), 704 pp.

Heinrich Böll became a full-fledged writer at the age of 30. His first novel, The Train Comes on Time, was published in 1949. This was followed by many more novels, short stories, radio broadcasts and essay collections, and in 1972 the Nobel Prize in Literature "for an creativity that combines a wide scope of reality with a high art of character creation, and which was a significant contribution to the revival of German literature." Heinrich Böll was the first German-speaking author to receive this award since Hermann Hesse in 1946. His works have been translated into over 30 languages ​​and he is one of the most widely read authors in Germany.

WITH THE EYES OF A CLOWN (1963)

Scene from the film "Through the Eyes of the Clown" (1976)

The career of the famous artist Hans Schnier begins to crumble after his beloved Maria refuses to marry him. This tragedy forces him to reconsider his past. He returns to his hometown of Bonn, where he is given memories: the death of his sister, the demands of his millionaire father and the hypocrisy of his mother, who first fought to "save" Germany from the Jews, then worked to conclude peace.

GROUP PORTRAIT WITH A LADY (1971)

Still from the film "Group portrait with a lady" (1977)

For this resourceful and caustic novel about the impact of the Nazi regime on ordinary citizens, Heinrich Böll was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972. Collecting in this work the stories of completely different people, the author shows us in many ways strange, but very "human" paths chosen by people trying to survive in a world marked by political madness, absurdity and destruction. The plot centers around a German woman named Leni Pfeiffer, whose romance with a Soviet prisoner of war both sustains and destroys her life. The narrator converses with those who knew Pfeiffer, and their stories are combined into a dazzling mosaic, rich in satire, but also with hope for a normal life.

UNDER THE CONVOY OF CARE (1979)

Fritz Tholm succeeded in taking a powerful place in Germany. But with fame comes fear and vulnerability. And with the appearance of a threat, his life is shrouded in an all-consuming "protection net" of police protection and supervision. Imprisoned in his own home, which he cannot leave, where every visitor is a potential suspect, and every item is a possible bomb, Tholme and his family spend days waiting for when and how the threat will overtake them.

THE LOST HONOR OF KATARINA BLUM, OR HOW VIOLENCE COMES OUT AND WHAT IT CAN LEAD TO (1974)

A scene from the film "The Abused Honor of Katharina Blum" (1975)

In an era when journalists will stop at nothing for a high-profile story, Heinrich Böll's novel is more relevant than ever. The connection of German woman Katharina Blum with a young man who becomes involved in terrorist activities makes her the target of a journalist who is ready to tarnish a person's honor for the sake of a loud headline. As the attacks on the woman escalate, and she becomes a victim of various anonymous threats, Katrina realizes that there is only one way out of this situation. The author turns to the detective genre, starting the novel with a confession of a crime, involving the reader in a web of sensations, murder and an imminent wave of violence.

BILLIARDS AT HALF-TEN (1959)

Another work of the author, which secured him in the forefront of the fierce opposition to war and fascism. The story follows Robert Fachmel, who is sent to the front of World War II to command the retreating forces of Germany. And, despite his anti-Nazi feelings, the hero fights to restore normal life at the very end of the war. As a meticulous person, Fachmel maintains a strict schedule, including a daily billiards game. But when an old friend suddenly appears in his life, and now an important person in Nazi rule, Fakhmel is forced to control not only public, but also private life.

... AND BONUS

This is a novel that Heinrich Böll wrote one of the first in his work, but the book was published only in 1985.

SOLDIER HERITAGE (1947)

1943 year. Wenck, a young German soldier guarding the coast of Normandy, finds himself embroiled in a war in which loneliness and suffering are the main enemies. Corruption is rife at the top of the command, as ordinary soldiers are forced to cross mined fields to steal potatoes from neighboring French farms, commanders profit from the stolen rations. Contrary to army rank and protocol, Wank strikes up a friendship with Lieutenant Schelling, who incurred the wrath of the commanders to protect his soldiers. All this hatred, lies and dishonor lead to unexpected consequences when the heroes are sent to the Russian front.

For the sincerity of his works and political activity, Heinrich Böll was called "the conscience of the nation." "He was an advocate for the weak and an enemy of those who are always confident in their own infallibility. He advocated freedom of spirit wherever it was threatened," - this is how former German President Richard von Weizsacker described Böll in a letter of condolences to the writer's widow.

Böll was the first German writer after Thomas Mann to receive 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 "electoral amnesia" of his compatriots.

Life on the border of eras

Böll House in Eifel

Böll's life spanned several periods in German history. He was born a subject of Emperor Wilhelm II, grew up in the Weimar Republic, survived Hitler's times, World War II, the occupation, and finally actively participated in the formation of West German society.

Heinrich Böll was born in 1917 in Cologne into 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 began attending a Catholic school, and then continued 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 high school in 1937, Böll intended to continue his studies at the university, but this was refused. 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 was taken prisoner by the United States. For Böll, this was truly a day of liberation, so he always retained a sense of gratitude towards the allies who had rid Germany of Nazism.

Towards professionalism

After the war, Böll returned to Cologne. And already in 1947 he began to publish his stories. In 1949, his first book was published - the novel "The Train Came On Time". 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, unnamed; they symbolized suffering humanity; they did what they were ordered to do and perished. These people hated the war, but not the enemy soldiers.

The books immediately attracted critics' interest, but circulation sold poorly. Böll, however, continued to write. By the end of the 50s, Böll was moving away from the topic of war. At this time, his writing style is also being improved. In Billiards at half past nine, often hailed as his best novel, Böll uses sophisticated storytelling techniques to capture the entire experience of three generations of a wealthy German family in a single day. The novel "Through the Eyes of a Clown" reveals the mores of the Catholic establishment. Böll's most voluminous and most innovative novel, Group Portrait with a Lady, takes 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 is an ironic sketch of tabloid gossip.

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 de facto ban on Russian editions of Böll lasted from mid-1973 until the last days of his life. The "fault" for this was the writer's public and human rights activities, his angry protests against the introduction of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia, active support of the dissident movement.

It all started with Böll's incredible success in the Soviet Union. The first publication came out back in 1952, when the only international magazine of that time, In Defense of Peace, published a story by a young West German author called A Very Dear Leg.

Since 1956, Russian editions of Böll have appeared regularly, in colossal circulations. Perhaps nowhere in the world were his translations so popular as 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 about Böll one could say that he is 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 convinced 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 only called upon to awaken this conscience, and not to be its embodiment.

Active political position

Heinrich Böll, Nobel laureate

Böll has always actively intervened in politics. Thus, he decisively defended such dissident Soviet writers as Lev Kopelev and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

He was also critical of the capitalist system. When asked whether humane capitalism exists, he somehow replied: "There really cannot be such a thing. The way the capitalist economy functions and should function, does not allow for 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, sympathizes with socialist ideas about justice.

The writer does this so decisively 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 who represented 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 it is a very good tool."

The writer died in 1985. At the funeral ceremony, Böll's friend, priest Herbert Falken, concluded his sermon with the following words: “On behalf of the deceased, we pray for peace and disarmament, for readiness for dialogue, for a fair distribution of benefits, for reconciliation of peoples and forgiveness of guilt, which is a heavy burden especially on us , Germans ".

Anastasia Rakhmanova, forehead

(1917-1985) german writer

For the first time they started talking about Heinrich Böll at the end of the 40s. XX century, when in the German magazine "Welt und Worth" was published a review of his first book "The train arrives on time." The article ended with a prophetic comment from the editor: "You can expect the best from this author." Indeed, even during his lifetime, critics recognized Böll as "the best writer of everyday life in Germany in the middle of the 20th century."

The future writer was born in the ancient German city of Cologne in the family of a hereditary cabinetmaker. Fleeing from persecution by supporters of the Anglican Church, Böll's ancestors fled England during the reign of King Henry VIII. Heinrich was the sixth and youngest child in the family. Like most of his peers, at the age of seven, he began to study in a folk four-grade school. Neither he nor his father liked the spirit of drill that reigned in her. Therefore, after completing the course, he transferred his son to the Greco-Latin gymnasium, where he studied classical languages, literature and rhetoric.

Already from the second grade, Heinrich was considered one of the best students, wrote poems and stories, which repeatedly received prizes in competitions. On the advice of his teacher, he even sent his works to the city newspaper, and although not a single story was published, the editor of the newspaper tracked down the young man and advised him to continue his literary studies. Later, Heinrich refused to join the Hitler Youth (the youth organization of the Nazi party) and was one of the few who did not want to participate in the Nazi processions.

After graduating with honors from the gymnasium, Heinrich did not continue his education at the university, which was dominated by the Nazis. He enrolled as an apprentice in a second-hand bookstore owned by one of his family's acquaintances, and at the same time was engaged in self-education, having read almost all world literature in a few months. However, an attempt to escape from reality, to withdraw into his own world was unsuccessful. In the fall of 1938, Böll was recruited into the labor force: for almost a year he worked in logging in the Bavarian black forest.

Returning home, he entered the University of Cologne, but studied there for only a month, because in July 1939 he was drafted into the army. Henry went first to Poland and then to France. In 1942, after receiving a short leave, he came to Cologne and married his longtime acquaintance Annemarie Cech. After the war, they had two sons.

In the summer of 1943, the unit in which Böll served was sent to the Eastern Front. Subsequently, he reflected his feelings of departure in the story "The Train Comes on Time" (1949). On the way, the train was blown up by partisans, Böll was wounded in the arm, and instead of the front he ended up in a hospital. After recovering, he again went to the front and this time was wounded in the leg. Having barely recovered, Böll again went to the front and after just two weeks of fighting he received a shrapnel wound in the head. He spent more than a year in the hospital, after which he was forced to return to his unit. However, he was able to obtain legal leave from injury and briefly returned to Cologne.

Böll wanted to move to the village with his wife's relatives, but the war ended, and American troops entered Cologne. After several weeks in a POW camp, Böll returned to his hometown and continued his studies at the university. To provide for his family, at the same time he began to work in the family workshop, which his older brother inherited.

At the same time, Böll again began to write stories and send them to various magazines. In August 1947, Karusel magazine published his story Farewell. Thanks to this publication, its author entered the circle of young writers grouped around the Klich magazine. In this anti-fascist edition in 1948-1949. a number of Böll's stories appeared, later combined into the collection "Wanderer, when you come to the Spa ..." (1950). The collection was published by the Berlin publishing house "Middelhauw" almost simultaneously with the publication of Böll's first story "The Train Is Never Late" (1949).

In it, Böll convincingly and dynamically spoke about the tragic fate of those whose young years fell on the world war, showed the regularity of the emergence of anti-fascist views, caused by the inner disorder and disunity of people. The release of the story brought fame to the aspiring writer. He entered the literary "group of 47s" and began to actively publish his articles and reviews. In 1951 Böll was awarded the Group Prize for the story "Black Sheep".

The year 1952 became a milestone in the life of the writer, when his novel "Where have you been, Adam?" In it, Böll, for the first time in German literature, spoke about the harm that fascism caused to the fate of ordinary people. Critics immediately accepted the novel, which could not be said about the readers: the circulation of the book was sold out with difficulty. Böll later wrote that he "frightened the reader when he too uncompromisingly and harshly expressed what was on everyone's lips." The novel has been translated into many European languages. He made Böll famous outside of Germany.

After the publication of the novels And He Didn't Say a Single Word (1953), A House Without a Master (1954), and the novel Early Bread (1955), critics recognized Böll as the greatest German writer of the front-line generation. Realizing the need to go beyond one theme, Böll devoted his next novel, Billiards at half past nine (1959), to the history of a family of Cologne architects, masterfully inscribing the fate of three generations in the events of European history.

The writer's rejection of bourgeois money-grubbing, philistinism, and hypocrisy becomes the ideological basis of his work. In the story "Through the Eyes of a Clown," he tells the story of a hero who prefers to play the role of a jester in order not to submit to the hypocrisy of the society around him.

The release of each work of the writer becomes an event. Böll is actively translated all over the world, including the USSR. The writer travels a lot, in less than ten years he has traveled almost the whole world.

Böll's relationship with the Soviet authorities was rather difficult. In 1962 and 1965, he came to the USSR, vacationed in the Baltics, worked in archives and museums, wrote a script for a film about Dostoevsky. He clearly saw the shortcomings of the Soviet system, wrote openly about them, spoke in defense of the persecuted writers.

At first, his harsh tone was simply "not noticed", but after the writer provided his house for the residence of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, expelled from the USSR, the situation changed. Böll was no longer published in the USSR, and for several years his name was tacitly banned.

In 1972 he published his most significant work - the novel "Group portrait with a lady", which tells a semi-anecdotal story about how a middle-aged man is restoring the honor of his acquaintance. The novel was recognized as the best German book of the year and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. "This revival," said the chairman of the Nobel Committee, "is comparable to the resurrection from the ashes of a culture that seemed to be doomed to complete destruction, but gave new shoots."

In 1974, Böll published the novel The Outraged Honor of Katharina Blum, in which he spoke about a heroine who did not accept the circumstances. The novel, ironically interpreting the life values ​​of post-war Germany, caused a great public outcry and was filmed. At the same time, the right-wing press began persecuting the writer, who was called "the spiritual mentor of terrorism." After the CDU won the parliamentary elections, the writer's house was searched.

In 1980, Böll fell seriously ill, and doctors were forced to amputate part of his right leg. For several months, the writer was bedridden. But after a year he was able to overcome the disease and returned to active life.

In 1982, at the International Congress of Writers in Cologne, Böll delivered a speech "Images of Enemies", in which he recalled the dangers of revanchism and totalitarianism. Shortly thereafter, unknown persons set fire to his house, and part of the writer's archive burned down. Then the council of the city of Cologne awarded the writer the title of honorary citizen, presented him with a new house and acquired his archive.

In connection with the fortieth anniversary of the surrender of Germany, Böll wrote a "Letter to my sons." In a small but capacious work, he frankly spoke about how difficult it was for him to reevaluate the past, what inner torments he experienced in 1945. It so happened that in 1985 Böll also published his first novel, The Soldier's Legacy. It was completed in 1947, but the writer did not publish it, considering it immature.

Having told about the war in the East, the writer wanted to completely reckon with the past. The same theme is heard in his latest novel, Women Against the Background of a River Landscape, which went on sale just a few days after Böll's death.

Speeches, meetings with readers caused an exacerbation of the disease. In July 1985, Böll was again in the hospital. Two weeks later, there was an improvement, the doctors recommended that he go to a sanatorium to continue treatment. Böll returned home, but died unexpectedly the next day of a heart attack. It is symbolic that literally a few hours before this, the writer signed his last publicistic book "The Ability to Grieve" to print.

Heinrich Böll was born on December 21, 1917 in Cologne, into a liberal Catholic artisan family. 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 - the story "The Train Comes on Time" (1949), the collection of stories "Wanderer, when you come to the 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 post until 1974.

Heinrich Böll tried to appear in print demanding an investigation into the deaths of members of the RAF.

The writer visited the USSR several times, but he was also known as a critic of the Soviet regime. Received A. Solzhenitsyn and Lev Kopelev, expelled from the USSR.

Belle Heinrich (December 21, 1917, Cologne - July 16, 1985, ibid.), German writer. Born December 21, 1917 in a family in a liberal Catholic family of cabinetmaker and artisan, 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 wrote poetry and stories from early childhood, turns out to be one of the few students in the class who did not join the Hitler Youth. However, a year after leaving school, he is recruited into forced labor. Served 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 was going to study literature, but after a few months he received a draft summons from the Wehrmacht. In 1939-1945 he fought as an infantryman in France, took part 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 POW camp. After his release, he worked as a carpenter, and then continued his education at the university, studying philology. Belle's literary debut took place in 1947, when his story "The News" was published in one of the Cologne magazines. Two years later, the novel The Train Came On Time (1949) was published as a separate book, telling about a soldier who, like Belle himself, deserted from the army. In 1950 Belle became a member of Group 47. In 1952, in the keynote article "Recognition of the Literature of Ruins", a kind of manifesto of this literary association, Belle called for the creation of a "new" German language - simple and truthful, connected with concrete reality. In accordance with the proclaimed principles, Belle's early stories are distinguished by stylistic simplicity, they are filled with vital concreteness. Belle's collections of stories "Not Just for Christmas" (1952), "The Silence of Dr. Murke" (1958), "The City of Familiar Faces" (1959), "When the War Started" (1961), "When the War Was Over" (1962) found a response not only among the general reading public and critics. In 1951, the writer received the Group 47 prize for the story "Black Sheep" about a young man who does not want to live by the laws of his family (this topic would later become one of the leading in Belle's work). From stories with uncomplicated plots, Belle 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 experience, the realities of the first very difficult post-war years were recognized in them, the problems of the social and moral consequences of the war were touched upon. The novel Billiards at half past nine (1959) brought Belle the fame of one of the leading German prose writers. Formally, it 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 the half-century history of Germany. "Billiards at half past nine" consists of the internal monologues of eleven heroes, 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 writing style, focused on the revival of the German language after the bombastic style of the Nazi regime. The grandiose Abbey of St. Anthony is becoming a kind of embodiment of Germany, in a design competition for the construction of which Heinrich Femel once won and which was blown up by his son Robert, who left after the death of his wife in the anti-fascist underground. Post-war Germany, in which the heroes of the novel live, turns out, according to Belle, to be not much better than pre-war Germany: lies reign here too, money for which one can buy off the past. A notable phenomenon in Germanic literature was the following pain

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Belle's second work, Through the Eyes of a Clown (1963). Belle's novel, not rich in events, is, in fact, an internal monologue of the protagonist, circus artist Hans Schnier, the son of a millionaire industrialist, who recalls the years of his childhood in the war, his post-war youth, reflects on art. After the hero was left by his beloved Marie, whom Shnir considers "his wife before God", he begins to fall out of the rhythm of life, his "two congenital diseases - melancholy and migraine" are aggravated. Alcohol becomes the medicine against the failure of life for Hans. As a result, Shnir cannot enter the circus arena, he is forced to interrupt his performances for a while. Returning to his apartment in Bonn, he calls up acquaintances to find Marie, who became the wife of the Catholic leader Züpfner, but to no avail. From the hero's memoirs, 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 with his classmates and, later, at twenty, when he rejected his father's offer to continue his work, choosing the path of a free artist. The hero finds no support in anything: neither in love, nor in a well-established life, nor in religion. “Catholic by intuition,” he sees how churchmen at every step violate the letter and spirit of the Christian commandments, 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 the election of Belle in 1971 as president of the International PEN Club, before which he was already president of the German PEN Club. He held this post until 1974. In 1967 - Böll receives the prestigious German Georg Büchner Prize. And in 1972 he was the first German writer of the post-war generation to be awarded the Nobel Prize. To a large extent, the decision of the Nobel Committee was influenced by the release of the novel by the writer "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, the life of Leni Gruyten-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, Belle came out in their defense, justifying the horrendous actions of the unreasonable internal policy of the West German authorities, the impossibility of individual freedom in modern German society. Heinrich Böll tried to appear in print demanding an investigation into the deaths of members of the RAF. His story The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, or How Violence Arises and Where It Can Lead (1974) was written by Belle under the impression 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 Belle's later works, is the invasion of the state and the press into the private life of an ordinary person. The dangers of state oversight of its citizens and the "violence of sensational headlines" are also described in Belle's latest works - "The Caring Siege" (1979) and "Image, Bonn, Bonn" (1981). In 1979, the novel Fursorgliche Belagerung was published, written back in 1972, when the press was overwhelmed with materials about the Baader Meinhof terrorist group. The novel describes the devastating social consequences arising from the need to strengthen security measures during a time of massive violence. Belle was the first and perhaps the most popular West German writer of the young post-war generation in the USSR, whose books became available thanks to the thaw of the late 1950s and 1960s. From 1952 to 1973, more than 80 stories, novellas, novels and articles of the writer were published in Russian, and his books were published in much larger circulations than at home, in the FRG. Belle was a frequent visitor to the USSR. In 1974, despite the protest of the Soviet authorities, he provided A.I. Solzhenitsyn, exiled by the Soviet authorities from the USSR, from the time

a new refuge in his home in Cologne (in the previous period, Belle illegally exported the manuscripts of the dissident writer to the West, where they were published). As a result, Belle'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 What Will Become a Boy, or Something about the Book Part (Was soll aus dem Jungen bloss werden, oder: Irgend was mit Buchern) was published - memories of his early youth in Cologne. In 1987, the Heinrich Böll Foundation was established in Cologne, a non-governmental organization closely cooperating with the Green Party (its branches exist in many countries, including Russia). The Foundation supports projects in the field of civil society development, ecology, and human rights. Böll died on July 16, 1985 in Langenbroich. In the same 1985. the very first novel of the writer is published - "Soldier's Legacy" (Das Vermachtnis), which was written in 1947, but was published for the first time.