By DPA
Berlin : One of Germany’s most important contemporary authors, Walter Kempowski, died early Friday at the age of 78, his publisher said.
Kempowski, who established himself as a bestselling author and chronicler of the German middle class, had been suffering from intestinal cancer.
He is best known for his series of novels called German Chronicles and the monumental Echolot (Echo Sounder), a collection of documents on the reality of life during World War II.
German government spokesman Thomas Steg described Kempowski as “one of the most prominent authors in the German language.”
Kempowski’s first success as an author was the autobiographical novel Tadelloser und Wolff, in which he describes his youth in Nazi Germany from the viewpoint of a well-off middle class family.
Other works included The Good Old Days and Last Greetings. His last book, All for Nothing, appeared in 2006.
Born in 1929 in Rostock, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison by a Soviet military tribunal, of which he served eight years in the East German city of Bautzen.
After his release in the 1950s, he moved to West Germany and became a teacher in a small village near Hamburg.
He was surrounded by his family at the deathbed in a hospital in the town of Rotenburg, his publishing house Knaus said.