Günter Grass, the German author who has died at a clinic in Lübeck aged 87, won the 1999 Nobel Prize for Literature and was known for his critical view of Germany’s Nazi past, developed in imaginative novels including The Tin Drum.
Hubert Winkels, the literary editor of German public radio, said that while the postwar years had produced other great writers in Germany, Grass was “unique” in establishing himself as a figure that spanned culture, politics and society.
Mr Winkels told the FT: “He was engaged not only on German but on worldwide issues such as disarmament. Nobody can do this any more. The worlds of culture and politics and so on have become too separate.”