‘Tin Drum’ author Guenter Grass dies

Author Guenter Grass, who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1999 for 1959’s “The Tin Drum,” about Germans dealing with their catastrophic Nazi history, died Monday at the age of 87.

Guenter Grass

"The Tin Drum" was followed by "Cat and Mouse" and "Dog Years," the Danzig Trilogy -- after the town of his birth, now the Polish city of Gdansk.

Combining naturalistic detail with fantastical images, the trilogy captured the German reaction to the rise of Nazism, the horrors of the war and the guilt that lingered after Adolf Hitler's defeat through a young boy in Danzig who decided not to grow up while playing his tin drum.

"His literary legacy will stand next to that of Goethe," German Culture Minister Monika Gruetters said. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was a German writer and statesman and an early participant in the Sturm und Drang literary movement which unfettered extremes of emotion.

Grass was a grocer’s son born in Danzig. He is survived by four children from his first marriage to Anna Schwarz, two stepchildren from his second marriage to Ute Grunert, and two children born to other partners.