Grass considers rejecting German-Polish prize after uproar

Nobel literature laureate Guenter Grass has offered to pass up a prize for improving German-Polish ties due to outrage over his revelation he served with the notorious Waffen SS elite Nazi forces, his office said Wednesday.

Grass's office said he would not accept the International Bridge Prize of the twin cities of Goerlitz in Germany and Zgorzelec in Poland if the jury reconsidered its choice due to complaints by conservative politicians.

The president of the prize committee, Willi Xylander, said he stood by Grass.

"I hope I can change his mind," Xylander said, adding he planned to meet with the author.

"Grass was chosen for the prize for his contributions to German-Polish reconciliation."

The award, which includes a 2,500-euro (3,200-dollar) cash prize, is to be presented December 15. Grass was selected as its recipient in March, months before his shock announcement.

Xylander said the jury had received dozens of letters in recent weeks about the award, most of them supporting Grass. The author's office said he would make his final decision on the basis of the conversation with Xylander.

Grass, 78, confessed earlier this month that he had been conscripted into the elite corps responsible for some of the worst Nazi atrocities as a 17-year-old in the final months of World War II.

Critics in Germany and Poland demanded to know why Grass, who said he had never fired a shot with the force, had kept his silence for six decades even while he insisted his fellow Germans face up to the country's Nazi past.

"It's only now, with age, that I have found a suitable way of talking about it from a wider perspective," Grass wrote last week in a letter to the Polish city of Gdansk, where he was born in 1927 when it was known as the Free City of Danzig and mainly inhabited by Germans.

dlc/shn

AFPEntertainment-Germany-Poland-history-WWII-literature

AFP 301751 GMT 08 06

COPYRIGHT 2006 Agence France-Presse. All rights reserved.