Siegfried Lenz was born in Lyck, East Prussia (now Ełk, Poland), the son of a customs officer. After graduating in 1943 he was drafted into the Kriegsmarine.
At the University of Hamburg, he studied philosophy, English and literary history. His studies were cut off early when he became an intern for the daily newspaper Die Welt, where he served as an editor from 1950 to 1951. It was there he met his future wife, Liselotte, whom he married in 1949.
In 1951, Lenz used the money he had earned from his first novel, Habichte in der Luft ("Hawks in the air"), to finance a trip to Kenya. During his time there he wrote about the Mau Mau Uprising in his short story "Lukas, sanftmütiger Knecht" ("Luke, gentle servant"). After 1951, Lenz worked as a freelance writer in Hamburg, where he joined the Group 47 group of writers. Together with Günter Grass he became engaged with the Social Democratic Party and championed the Ostpolitik of Willy Brandt. As a supporter of rapprochement with Eastern Europe, he was a member of the German delegation at the signing of the Treaty of Warsaw (1970). In October 2011, he was made an honorary citizen of his home town Ełk, which had become Polish as a result of the border changes promulgated at the 1945 Potsdam Conference.
In 2003, Lenz joined the Verein für deutsche Rechtschreibung und Sprachpflege (Society for German Spelling and Language Cultivation) to protest against the German orthography reform of 1996.[4]
His wife, Liselotte, died in 2006 after 57 years of marriage. Four years later he married his 74-year-old neighbour, Ulla, who had helped him after the death of his wife.[5] Siegfried Lenz died at the age of 88 on 7 October 2014 in Hamburg.[6][7]
After his death, a previously unpublished novel, Der Überläufer ("The Turncoat"), which Lenz had written in 1951, was published. Found among his effects, it is a novel about a German soldier who defects to Soviet forces.[8]
The Siegfried Lenz Prize is a literary prize awarded every two years in Hamburg by the Siegfried Lenz Foundation. The prize is awarded to "international writers who have gained recognition with their narrative work and whose creative work is close to the spirit of Siegfried Lenz." A five-member jury appointed by the Foundation selects winners. The prize includes an award of 50,000 euros, ranking among the highest-endowed literature awards in Germany. The prize was initiated by Siegfried Lenz in 2014 before his death in October of that year.
Der Überläufer (2016) ISBN978-3-455-81402-6 (English: The Turncoat, trans. John Cullen)
Novellas and short story collections
So zärtlich war Suleyken: masurische Geschichten (1955) – short stories OCLC3570259
Der Geist der Mirabelle: Geschichten aus Bollerup (1975) – short stories
Die Erzählungen (2006) – short stories ISBN3-455-04285-6 (First published by Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag: Vol. 1: 1949–1958. Vol 2: 1959–1964. Vol. 3: 1965–1984) (English: The Selected Stories of Siegfried Lenz, selections from Die Erzählungen, 1995)
^"Hamburgische Ehrenbürger" (in German). Chancellery of the Senate. Archived from the original on 2011-09-25. Retrieved 2009-10-06. Hat mit seinem literarischen Werk zur Erneuerung und Anerkennung Deutschlands im Geiste des Humanismus beigetragen (Has contributed with his literary work to the renewal and recognition of Germany in the spirit of humanism)
