German author born in Cologne. Böll was brought up a Roman Catholic in a middle-class family with pacifist and anti-Nazi sympathies. As a young boy, Böll was brave enough to stand up to young Nazi bullies and he refused to join the Hitler Jugend, which he relates to in his autobiographical What's to Become of the Boy?, Or, Something to Do with Books (1981, Was soll aus dem Jungen bloss werden? Oder: Etwas mit Bücher). His father, Viktor Böll, was a carpenter and sculptor; his mother, Maria (née Hermann), looked after the couple's many children. Heinrich was his father's eighth child and third son; Maria was his widowed father's second wife.