Wolfdietrich Schnurre

Schnurre was born in Frankfurt am Main on 22 August 1920 to Otto and Erna Schnurre (née Zindel). Schnurre was raised by his father after Erna Schnurre left the family during his early childhood and remarried.[2] A student at the time of Schnurre's birth, Otto Schnurre earned his income as a factory worker and graduated with a PhD in ornithology in 1921.[3] The two lived in the Oberrad and Eschersheim districts of Frankfurt from 1920 to 1928. Schnurre frequently fell ill during childhood and was repeatedly placed in the care of Christian children's homes; traumatic experiences there contributed to his scepticism of religion in later life.[4]

In 1934, Schnurre and his father moved to Berlin-Weißensee, where Otto Schnurre had found a job as deputy head librarian of the Berlin City Library. Schnurre attended a secular state school in Berlin until 1934, when he switched to a Humanistisches Gymnasium.[5] Schnurre, who was relatively independent from an early age due to his father being preoccupied with work and affairs with women, grew up in a lower- to lower-middle-class social environment. He later characterised his experiences at school as largely shielded from National Socialist ideological influences, stating that his teachers were largely socialists, communists and proponents of the Weimar Democracy.[6]

Schnurre served in the army of Nazi Germany from 1939 until 1945.[7] The exact circumstances of his entry into service are unknown; according to his own version of events, which he recounted in a 1989 interview, he was conscripted into the Reich Labour Service in 1939 and volunteered for the Wehrmacht because he anticipated imminent conscription and was able to choose his branch of service this way.[8]

During his military service, which included postings in Poland, Germany and France,[9] Schnurre was repeatedly arrested and assigned to Strafkompanien. The exact reasons for these disciplinary actions are unknown, though at least some of them can be attributed to Schnurre's refusal to comply with the Wehrmacht's prohibition on writing. Schnurre unsuccessfully attempted desertion in 1945, and was arrested and sent to a prisoner camp. In April 1945, he successfully escaped the camp and fled to Westphalia. Schnurre was captured by British troops and briefly imprisoned near Paderborn. He had married during the war; the couple had a son who was born in October 1945.[10]

Following his release from British captivity, Schnurre worked on a farm and later returned to East Berlin in 1946, where he became a trainee at Ullstein Verlag, and wrote as an art, film, and literature critic for publications that had been licensed by the American occupying powers. His writing for Western publications led to conflicts with the Soviet authorities in East Berlin, leading to Schnurre moving to West Berlin two years later.[11]

Schnurre's war experiences had made him uncomfortable with working under superiors, so he quit work as a critic and became a freelance writer for radio stations and print publications in 1950. He remarried in 1952.[12]

Schnurre's grave, Waldfriedhof Berlin Zehlendorf

Schnurre was a founding member of the literary association Gruppe 47 and his short story Das Begräbnis (The funeral) was the first piece of literature read at the group's initial meeting.[11] He became a member of the Federal Republic of Germany's branch of PEN in 1958,[11] but left in 1961 to protest against PEN's silence after the construction of the Berlin Wall, which had separated him from his father.[13] In 1964, he developed severe polyneuritis that left him completely paralysed for more than a year,[14] and his recovery was slow.[1] The costs of his extended hospital stay also led to financial troubles.[15]

In 1965, his second wife died of suicide after 13 years of marriage. He remarried a year later; the couple adopted a son in 1974.[10] In 1981, he published his first and only novel, Ein Unglücksfall (An accident, A misfortune).[1] Schnurre moved to Felde in the early 1980s, leaving his family behind. During this time, his literary output decreased as Schnurre spent time in nature – particularly watching birds – instead.[10] He died of heart failure in Kiel on 9 June 1989 and was buried in the Waldfriedhof Zehlendorf cemetery in Berlin.[16] He left behind detailed instructions for his funeral, requesting that there be no speech, sermon or music. Instead, he asked for "someone with a good voice" to read the "most beautiful story in the world", Unverhofftes Wiedersehen ("Unexpected reunion") by Johann Peter Hebel, and that the guests engage in small talk "at the grave, or at least at the cemetery".[17]

Schnurre was highly active as an author and published more books than any other German author in the period between 1945 and 1972.[1] His large and diverse[18] body of works has been described as "hard to bring down to a catchy formula" by biographer Katharina Blencke.[19] Despite this diversity, the Second World War consistently emerges as a fundamental thematic complex in Schnurre's works.[20] While Schnurre had wanted to become an author since his childhood, he published little before 1945. The war catalysed his desire to write and heavily influenced the themes of his work.[21] Forgetting and remembrance, death, violence, and especially guilt were frequent topics of his writings.[22] Blencke has stated that Schnurre's "fundamental feeling of guilt became the crucial driver of his writing",[23] and that his own memory served as the most important source of literary material.[24] Schnurre is sometimes characterised as an exponent of the rubble literature movement,[25] a short (1945 – c. 1950) period in German literary history during which some German authors – often former soldiers – sought to capture the psychological and physical destruction they encountered after their return and to re-establish German literature by explicitly distancing themselves from the language and ideology of Nazi Germany.[26]

Schnurre was uncomfortable with political labels and never joined a party,[27] but expressed support for socialist ideas, specifically for the ideology of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany, a short-lived offshoot of the Social Democratic Party of Germany that had dissolved long before he reached adulthood.[28] Unlike many other German authors of the time, however, he did not intend for his writings to function as a vehicle for political agitation, but primarily as a means for "moral-ethical activation of the reader".[29] He wanted to "write as a contemporary"[30], and explicitly intended for his stories to be read by "average" and young readers.[31] In his acceptance speech for the Georg Büchner Prize of 1983, he described his approach to writing:

... I am otherwise of the opinion that the author, in the interest of the balance of his story, does not have the right to solve problems. He has to perceive them, rip them open, push his actors into them.

... ich ansonsten der Ansicht bin, daß der Literat, im Interesse der Ausgewogenheit seiner Geschichte, kein Recht hat, Probleme zu lösen. Er hat sie wahrzunehmen, aufzureißen, seine Akteure hineinzustoßen.

— Schnurre 1983

Schnurre's early works were widely received and found their way into contemporary German school textbooks.[48] He also held frequent and successful public readings for varied audiences.[31] Despite this early success, he faded into relative obscurity in later life and is less present in public discourse than other important German writers.[49] Scholars have proposed a number of factors that may have contributed to this, such as the diversity of his work which made him hard to categorise as an author, the declining popularity of short stories as an art form following the immediate post-war period, and the inherently small print runs and limited reception of poetry and children's literature.[50]

Despite his diminishing presence in public discourse, Schurre received several awards for his works, including in his late years. Among those awards were the Immermann-Preis (1959), the Georg Marckensen Literature Award (1962), the Federal Cross of Merit (Bundesverdienstkreuz, 1981), the Literature Award of the City of Cologne (1982), the Georg Büchner Prize (1983) and the Culture Award of the City of Kiel (1989).[51]

Some of Schnurre's works include:[52]