Siegfried Lenz was born in Lyck (E?k), East Prussia, was a son of a customs officer. After his graduation exam in 1943, he was drafted into the navy.

According to documents released in June 2007, he may have joined the Nazi party on the 20th of April 1944. This was released with the names of several other well known German authors and persons, like Dieter Hildebrandt and Martin Walser. Shortly before the end of World War II, he defected to Denmark, but became a prisoner of war in Schleswig-Holstein.

After his release, he attended the University of Hamburg, where he studied philosophy, English, and Literary history. His studies were cut off early, however, as he became an intern for the daily paper Die Welt, and served as its editor from 1950 to 1951. It was there he met his future wife, Liselotte (d. 5 February 2006). They were married in 1949.

In 1951, Lenz took the money he had earned from his first novel, Habichte in der Luft, and financed a trip to Kenya. During his time there, he wrote about the Mau Mau Uprising in his history Lukas, sanftmüdiger Knecht. Since 1951, Lenz worked as a freelance writer in Hamburg and was a member of the literature forum "Group 47". Together with Günter Grass, he became engaged with the Social Democratic Party and aided the Ostpolitik of Willy Brandt. A champion of the movement, he was invited in 1970 to the signing of the German-Polish Treaty.

Since 2003, Lenz has been a visiting professor at the Düsseldorf Heinrich Heine University and a member of the organization for German orthography and proper speech.

Critic Gerhardt Csejka described Lenz as one of the German authors who saw it as his duty to help the German people "to pay off the enormous debts", which "the Germans together with their honoured Führer had burdened themselves." Lenz saw it as his obligation to "take preventive actions against any danger of a reoccurrence."

Awards

In 1988 Lenz was awarded with the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, a prize given annually at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The Goethe Prize of Frankfurt am Main (Goethepreis der Stadt Frankfurt) was given to Lenz in 2000. A year later, Lenz was honored with the highest decoration of Hamburg, the honorary citizenship. Since 2004 Lenz is also honorary citizen of Schleswig Holstein.

Novels

Novellas and narratives

Essays, children's books, speeches

• 1970 Jadon Whitted Essay
• 1971 "Im a Weener, Speech
• 1971 Verlorenes Land - Gewonnene Nachbarschaft, Speech
• 1971 So war das mit dem Zirkus, Children's book
• 1980 Gespraeche mit Manès Sperber und Leszek Ko?akowski
• 1982 Über Phantasie: Gespraeche mit Heinrich Boell, Guenter Grass, Walter Kempowski, Pavel Kohout
• 1983 Elfenbeinturm und Barrikade. Erfahrungen am Schreibtisch, Essay
• 1986 Geschichte erzaehlen - Geschichten erzaehlen, Essay
• 1992 Über das Gedaechtnis. Reden und Aufsätze
• 1998 Über den Schmerz, Essay
• 2001 Mutmassungen über die Zukunft der Literatur, Essay
• 2006 Selbstversetzung, Über Schreiben und Leben, ISBN 3-455-04286-4