Will you think of Gunter Grass differently now?

Question

Now that he has "come out" as a former Waffen SS member will people be less interested in his books?

Answer 1

More interested. The problem is that over the years he had been attacking many German right wing politicians for not telling about/denying their involvement in the nazi-regime. Many of those are now more than willing to question his moral integrity and to shed a new light on his work as an author and his political engagement.
But those are the same people who did not want to talk about their own past and who have always demanded to draw a line under the German past = the Holocaust, for instance Martin Walser. I question their moral integrity.
On the other hand there have always been serious scientists who have questioned the way Grass dealt with the German past eg. in his novel Im Krebsgang about the sinking of the Gustloff. This is not the first book that takes an exculpating look at Germans in the 2nd world war and shows them as victims. He also said he didn't know about the Nazi concentration camps and atrocities - this is highly unbelievable. Especially, now that we know he had been a member of the Waffen SS that was massively involved in concentration camp affairs.
Like in the Walser case, German media make out that Grass is being hunted by enemies and the public and like in Walser's case this is not true. The majority of German politicians and writers defend Grass, 78% of the German population think that he should not return his Nobel price, etc. He is by no means a victim. Soon after the war, Wehrmacht soldiers started spreading the legend that they were the real victims of the war and nobody wanted to hear about the experiences of Jews. This changed after the 1963 Auschwitz trials and the 1968 students' revolution and again after the broadcasting of the American TV series Holcoaust.
But still or increasingly most Germans do not want to believe that their parents or grandparents were villains - and Grass now is a representative for all those grandparents.
Most of the negative reactions towards Grass come from citizens of the countries that at the very worst suffered under the German occupation - among them are former friends of Grass - authors from Norway and the Netherlands, the citizens of Gdansk who always deemed Grass to be 'the good German', and Israeli author Yoram Kaniuk who already had a bad experience with Grass in the 1990s, etc. etc.. I think these are the people who have the right to pass judgement on Grass - not a victim, but obviously, if only for a short period of his life, a perpetrator.
Many people will read his novels and stories again and look for signs - they will find them. It's up to everyone if they will still be able to enjoy his books - it certainly is no crime to do so!

Answer 2

i think more interested. i read the tin drum many years ago when it first came out. certainly not the work of an average '"psychopath". i am certainly no apologist for that regime, and all of the SS units were peopled by unsavory types. but, i feel that some among them were probably a bit less dysfunctional than the rest. in any event, if a work of art is valuable i think it should be viewed on its own merits, alone. if we called into question the morality and criminality of each and every creator of good art, we'd probably have a lot less to enjoy.