Siegfried Lenz is a German writer, who has written novels and produced several collections of short stories, essays, and plays for radio and the theatre. He was awarded the Goethe Prize in Frankfurt-am-Main on the 250th Anniversary of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's birth. Lenz and his wife, Liselotte, also exchanged over 100 letters with Paul Celan and his wife, Gisèle Lestrange between 1952 and 1961. Siegfried Lenz was born in Lyck , East Prussia, was a son of a customs officer. After his graduation exam in 1943, he was drafted into the navy. According to documents released in June 2007,... he may have joined the Nazi party on 20 April 1944. This was released with the names of several other well known German authors and persons, like Dieter Hildebrandt and Martin Walser. Shortly before the end of World War II, he defected to Denmark, but became a prisoner of war in Schleswig-Holstein. After his release, he attended the University of Hamburg, where he studied philosophy, English, and Literary history. His studies were cut off early, however, as he became an intern for the daily paper Die Welt, and served as its editor from 1950 to 1951.
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