Gruppe 47

Gruppe 47, informal association of German-speaking writers that was founded in 1947 (hence its name). Gruppe 47 originated with a group of war prisoners in the United States who were concerned with reestablishing the broken traditions of German literature. Feeling that Nazi propaganda had corrupted their language, they advocated a style of sparse, even cold, descriptive realism devoid of pompous or poetic verbiage. Returning to Germany, they founded the weekly Der Ruf (“The Call”), which...