Günter Kunert, a German writer who rose to prominence in the 1960s with satirical and increasingly critical works about the repressive Communist government in East Germany, which eventually led him to flee to the West, died on Sept. 21 at his home in the village of Kaisborstel , in northern Germany. His family said the cause was complications of pneumonia. Mr. Kunert had settled in Kaisborstel in 1979, drawn by the peace and privacy he had craved during his final years in East Germany. His searingly satirical voice was rooted in the deprivations he suffered as a half-Jewish child under the Nazis and came into its own under the repressions of Erich Honecker’s East Germany in the 1970s. After his emigration, and even after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, he continued to highlight the differences between the two countries that had opposed each other during the Cold War.

Source: New York Times October 07, 2019 18:30 UTC