Photo Gallery Günter Grass Looks Back
Grass designs the covers for his own books, such as 1959's "The Tin Drum." "It requires the same care that's needed in writing," he told SPIEGEL.
Grass dances with his daughter Helen in Stockholm after receiving the Nobel Prize for literature in 1999. "I don't spend the whole day thinking about the fact that I'm a Nobel laureate," he says.
"The Tin Drum" is probably Grass's best-known work. It was made into an Oscar-winning film by the respected German director Volker Schlöndorff (right), seen here with the child star David Bennent in a 1979 photo taken on the set.
Grass shocked Germany in 2006 when he revealed, in the first volume of his autobiography, "Peeling the Onion," that he had been a member of Hitler's Waffen-SS. This photo shows US Army documents that proved Grass was a member. "'I didn't volunteer for the Waffen-SS," he told SPIEGEL.
Grass was active in the center-left Social Democratic Party. This 1985 photo shows him with Gerhard Schröder (left), who would become German chancellor in 1998, and former German Chancellor Willy Brandt.
