Housekeeper reveals home life of Günter Grass

Kate Connolly in Berlin
Wednesday October 17, 2007
The Guardian

Food for thought ... Günter Grass. Photograph: Guardian

His 80th birthday yesterday was marked by tributes from around the world from fellow writers and religious and political leaders, praising his contribution both to world literature and civil rights.

But it is Günter Grass's erstwhile housekeeper who has delivered the most touching homage, revealing the domestic side of Germany's favourite writer.

Margarethe Amelung has written her own literary tribute to her former employer based on the time she spent in his service in the 1960s. Called Five Grass Seasons, Ms Amelung paints a detailed picture of the daily life of the Grass family, who lived in the leafy southern Berlin district of Friedenau.

She recalls her surprise at the bohemian way in which they lived: "No wallpaper, no carpets, no tablecloths." She also talks of the amount of meat that Grass, a Nobel prize winner and author of novels such as The Tin Drum, regularly consumed.

"I think his love of meat kept his hair from going completely grey," she told Der Tagesspiegel.

Ms Amelung, the daughter of a protestant minister from Osnabrück, was taken on at the age of 16 shortly before the birth of Günter and his first wife Anna's fourth child. She had answered an advert in the magazine Christ and the World asking for someone to "peel the onions" for 220 deutschmarks a month.

The irony of the request is not lost on Grass aficionados. His last book was called Peeling the Onion, in which he revealed his membership of the Waffen SS in Nazi Germany. Ms Amelung's seemingly mundane domestic reflections, based on her diaries and letters home, are being seen by the publishing world as a welcome antidote to the admissions that shocked his fans around the world.

And they are being lapped up by Grass's public, who thought they knew everything about him but are only now learning of his love of apple juice and his aversion to kitchen appliances, which meant cream had to be beaten with a hand whisk.

Ms Amelung reveals details such as how she cooked his favourite meat dishes such as leg of mutton with rosemary and garlic, brawn, entrails soup, calf's brains and artichokes in vinaigrette. She produced the dishes for him on demand to keep him sustained while he wrote.

On peeling the onions, a task he avoided, she writes: "The tears were shooting out of my eyes. Herr Grass was showing signs of schadenfreude and said to his wife: 'Look at our Margarethe, she's crying tears of joy - over the onions.'"

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