Günter Grass

About Günter Grass

Gunter was raised a Catholic and he served as an altar boy when he was a kid. His parents ran a grocery store with an attached apartment in Danzig-Langfuhr. He had a younger sister, named Waltraud, who was born in 1930. He went to the Danzig gymnasium Conradinum. At the age of 16, he became an Air Force “helper”. Shortly thereafter, he was conscripted into the National Labor Service. Shortly after turning 17, in November of 1944, he volunteered for submarine service with Nazi Germany’s Kiregsmarine so that he could escape the confinement he felt as a teen in his parents’ house, which he considered stuffy Catholic lower-middle class. Gunter was refused by the Navy and he was instead called up for the 10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg late in 1944. It wasn’t until 2006 that he revealed that