W. G. Sebald
Winfried Georg Sebald (18 May 1944 – 14 December 2001), known as W. G. Sebald or (as he preferred) Max Sebald, was a German writer and academic. At the time of his death at the age of 57, he was being cited by literary critics as one of the greatest living authors. Life Sebald was born in Wertach, Bavaria, the second of the three children of Rosa and Georg Sebald, and his parents' only son. From 1948 to 1963, he lived in Sonthofen. His father had joined the Reichswehr in 1929 and served in the Wehrmacht under the Nazis. His father remained a detached figure, a prisoner of war until 1947; his maternal grandfather, the small-town police officer Josef Egelhofer (1872–1956), was the most important male presence during his early years. Sebald was shown images of The Holocaust while at school in Oberstdorf and recalled that no one knew how to explain what they had just seen. The Holocaust and European modernity, especially its modes of warfare and persecution, later became central themes in his work. Sebald studied German and English literature first at the University of Freiburg and then at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, where he received