Heinrich Böll
Birthday December 21, 1917
Birth Sign Sagittarius
#174,245 Most Popular
About
Acclaimed German author whose most famous works include Billiards at Half-past Nine, The Bread of Those Early Years, Group Portrait with Lady, and The Safety Net. He was the 1972 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Before Fame
He grew up in Germany and was forced into the Wehrmacht despite having earlier declined the opportunity to join the Hitler Youth. He published his first novel, The Train was on Time, in 1949.
Trivia
His works have been translated into thirty languages.
Family Life
He was born into a German Catholic family that opposed Nazism. He studied German at the University of Cologne.
Associated With
He gave refuge to fellow author and Nobel Prize-winner, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, when Solzhenitsyn was exiled from Russia.
