Heinrich Theodor Böll (German: [ˈhaɪnʁɪç ˈteːodoːɐ̯ ˈbœl] (listen); 21 December 1917 – 16 July 1985) was one of Germany's foremost post-World War II writers. He was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize in 1967 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972.

Biography

Böll was born in Cologne, Germany, to a Roman Catholic and pacifist family that later opposed the rise of Nazism. Böll refused to join the Hitler Youth during the 1930s. He was apprenticed to a bookseller before studying German studies and classics at the University of Cologne.

Conscripted into the Wehrmacht, he served in Poland, France, Romania, Hungary and the Soviet Union.

In 1942, Böll married Annemarie Cech, with whom he would have three sons; she later collaborated with him on a nu…Read more on Wikipedia