Germany's Nobel prize-winning author Guenter Grass has come under attack from writers, literary critics, historians and politicians for his belated confession he was once a member of Hitler's Waffen SS.
The shock admission from the 78-year-old, famous for his 1957 novel "The Tin Drum", came in a newspaper interview on Saturday before the release in September of his autobiography "Peeling Onions" in which he explains why he joined at age 17.
"Grass's confession right before the publication of his autobiography leaves behind a bad taste of book promotion," wrote Bild am Sonntag newspaper columnist Helmut Boeger.
"Even after his admission, Grass remains Germany's most important living author. But he has lost his standing as a moral authority. He cannot be castigated for being a member of the SS ... But he can be for lying about it for 60 years."
Hellmuth Karasek, a leading literature critic, agreed there was no reason to reproach Grass for his membership of the Nazi's elite SS. Grass now admitted he volunteered for submarine duty at 15 but was rejected. He was later called up to the SS at 17.
Grass had previously said he was drafted in 1944 as a flak helper and held as a prisoner of war until 1946. After the war, he become an outspoken pacifist and icon of the German left.
"The fact he was in the SS at 17 is by itself a misdemeanour - had Grass not been one to throw his weight around as a moral authority so much since then," Karasek told German radio.
"If I were cynical, I would say he did not reveal it sooner at the risk of not winning a Nobel prize. Don't misunderstand me: Grass deserved the Nobel prize more than any other German writer. But everything now has to be seen in a new light."
Grass told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Saturday the dark secret had been weighing on his mind and was one of the reasons he wrote the book which details his war service.
"My silence through all these years is one of the reasons why I wrote this book," he said. "It had to come out finally."
Grass had for decades demanded that Germans come to terms with their Nazi past by coming clean on it. He won the Nobel prize for literature in 1999.
"After 60 years, this confession comes a bit too late," Joachim Fest, a leading historian, told Der Spiegel magazine. "I can't understand how someone who for decades set himself up as a moral authority, a rather smug one, could pull this off."
Grass biographer Michael Juergs was dumbfounded.
"I feel a personal disappointment," Juergs said.
One of the most powerful organisations in Nazi Germany, the SS was first an elite force of volunteers that played a key role in the Holocaust, operating the death camps in which millions died. But by the war's end, most were drafted and many under 18.
Ralph Giordano, a leading German-Jewish writer, said he would not condemn Grass and praised his belated confession.
"It's good what Guenter Grass has now done," Giordano said. "What's worse than making a mistake is not coming to terms with it. His example also shows how seducible young people can be."
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