article_snippet.sent: Grass died in a clinic in the city of Luebeck, where Grass was taken over the weekend, said Steidl publishing spokeswoman Claudia Glenewinkel.
article_snippet.sent: German media are reporting German died of pneumonia.
article_snippet.sent: Grass focused in much of German work on learning from the horror of war and genocide by exploring motifs from German childhood city of Danzig, which is now Gdansk, Poland.
article_snippet.sent: Günter Grass said German had no excuses for German choices back then, and that, as a teen, German may even have been excited about belonging to the unit, which German saw then as an elite group.
article_snippet.sent: And like Oskar Matzerath, the boy in "The Tin Drum," Grass' novel characters often slip into surreal situations.
article_snippet.sent: Grass was an icon in contemporary German culture with an unchanging iconic look -- he broad mustache, he eyes gazing over the top of he glasses, a tobacco pipe a constant companion in hand.
article_snippet.sent: Grass has also suggested that Germans should be forced to invite refugees from crisis regions to live in Germans homes as a way of offering more shelter to the world's destitute.
highlights_snippet.sent: Grass tried in Grass literature to come to grips with World War II and the Nazi era .
  
highlights_snippet.sent: Grass characters were the downtrodden, and Grass style slipped into the surreal .
  