BERLIN: German Nobel prize-winning author Gunter Grass left hospital Friday after undergoing a long-planned medical examination, a spokesman said.
“He was discharged today (Friday),” a spokesman for the Asklepios Klinik St. Georg hospital in the port city of Hamburg told AFP, without giving details.
Grass, 84, who recently provoked a heated international debate after lambasting Israel in a poem, was admitted following heart problems, a hospital spokesman said Monday confirming a report by the mass-circulation Bild.
His doctor said Tuesday he was having an “examination which has long been planned and, if need be, treatment in the hospital,” without giving details on the nature of the medical exam.
Grass was working and did not have to remain in bed, the doctor Karl-Heinz Kuck said in the written statement Tuesday, adding: “There's no danger to his life.”
Grass sparked outrage at home and abroad earlier this month with an opinion piece titled “What Must Be Said” in which he said he feared a nuclear-armed Israel “could wipe out the Iranian people” with a “first strike.”Israel has barred Grass from visiting the country, declaring him persona non grata.
One of Germany's most influential intellectuals, Grass saw his substantial moral authority undermined by his 2006 admission, six decades after World War II, that he had been a member of Hitler's notorious Waffen SS as a 17-year-old.
Grass achieved world fame with his debut novel, “The Tin Drum” in 1959, and has pressed his country for decades to face up to its Nazi past.
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