Birth of Heinrich Böll

Heinrich Böll was born on 21 December 1917 in Cologne. A German novelist and short-story writer, Boll became one of the most important voices of postwar German literature. Drafted into the army, he served in the Second World War and later wrote about the experience of war and the moral and social ruin that followed in works such as The Train Was on Time, Billiards at Half-Past Nine and The Clown. His novel The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum criticized sensationalist journalism. He was an outspoken critic of the political and religious establishment and a supporter of dissidents in the Soviet Union, and in 1972 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.

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