ABSTRACT
Günter Grass’s career on the matter of the German past, which has undoubtedly supplied him with his life-long theme, falls into at least three phases. The first and perhaps most exciting phase ran from Die Blechtrommel (1959) to Willy Brandt’s election victory precisely ten years later, which Grass had worked tirelessly to assure. In the second phase Grass’s pronouncements on the Nazi legacy take on a different character. In 1970 he published the first of three public addresses on the subject of Auschwitz. Each time a museum or university is his forum, indicating that his mission is both commemoration and education. The third phase runs into his third great period of public campaigning: his activities directed against reunification policy in 1989–1990 and beyond. In a way this is peculiar as the changes in German and European politics had been seismic. His creative career was injected with a new lease of life.
