Gunter Grass, awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, has died at the age of 87, according to his publishing house.
Grass, whose works include The Tin Drum and Cat and Mouse, died in a hospital in the northern German city of Luebeck, the Steidl publishing house said on Monday.
Grass was lauded by Germans for helping to revive their culture in the aftermath of World War II and helping to give voice and support to democratic discourse in the postwar nation.
Yet he provoked the ire of many in 2006 when he revealed in his memoir Skinning the Onion that, as a teenager, he had served in the Waffen-SS, the combat arm of Adolf Hitler’s paramilitary organisation.
In 2012, Grass drew sharp criticism at home and was declared persona non grata by Israel after publishing a prose poem, What Must Be Said, in which he criticised what he described as Western hypocrisy over Israel’s undeclared nuclear programme and labelled the country a threat to “already fragile world peace” over its belligerent stance on Iran.
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