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Siegfried Lenz, 25 March 2004

German writer Siegfried Lenz (b. 17 March 1926 in Lyck, East Prussia) has written twelve novels and produced several collections of short stories, essays, and plays for radio and the theatre. He was awarded the Goethe Prize in Frankfurt-am-Main on the 250th Anniversary of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's birth. Lenz and his wife, Liselotte, also exchanged over 100 letters with Paul Celan and his wife, Gisèle Lestrange between 1952 and 1961.

Siegfried Lenz was born in 1926, the son of a customs officer in Lyck, East Prussia. After his graduation exam in 1943, he was drafted into the navy. Shortly before the end of World War II, he defected to Denmark, but became a prisoner of war in Schleswig-Holstein.

After his release, he attended the University of Hamburg, where he studied philosophy, English, and Literary history. His studies were cut off early, however, as he became an intern for the daily paper "Die Welt," and served as its editor from 1950 to 1951. It was there he met his future wife, Liselotte (d. February 5, 2006). They were married in 1949.

Since 1951, Lenz worked as a freelance writer in Hamburg and was a member of the literature forum "Group 47." Together with Günter Grass, he became engaged in the SPD movement and aided the "Eastern Politics" of Willy Brandt. A champion of the movement, he was invited in 1970 to the signing of the German-Polish Contract.

Since 2003, Lenz has been a visiting professor at the Düsseldorf Heinrich Heine University and a member of the organization for German "Rechtschreibung" (grammar reform) and proper speech.

In 1951, Lenz took the money he had earned from his first novel, Habichte in der Luft, and financed a trip to Kenya. During his time there, he wrote about the Mau-Mau Rebellion in his history Lukas, sanftmüdiger Knecht.

• 1960 Das Feuerschiff (The Lightship, translated by Hoffmann and Campe Verlag, 1962)
• 1968 Deutschstunde (German Lesson, translated E. Kaiser and E. Wilkins, New Directions, 1968)
• 1973 Das Vorbild (An Exemplary Life, Secker & Warburg, 1976)
• 1978 Heimatmuseum (The Heritage, translated K. Winston, Secker & Warburg, 1981)
• 1985 Exerzierplatz (Training Ground, translated G. Skelton, Methuen, 1991)
• 1990 Die Klangprobe
• 1994 Die Auflehnung
• 1995 The Selected Stories of Siegfried Lenz (Northwestern University Press) ISBN 0-8101-1314-7

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