He avoids the official "heroes'" cemetery, done in such impeccable taste. (Why, he wonders, do the Germans do so much for their dead and so little for the living?)

Er meidet die überaus geschmackvollen offiziellen »Helden«friedhöfe. Warum nur, so denkt er, tun die Deutschen so viel für ihre Toten und so wenig für ihre Lebenden?

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Source, in full

"You Enter Germany" (1967); cited from Aufsätze, Kritiken, Reden (Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1967) p. 278. Translation: "You are Now Entering Germany", in Leila Vennewitz (trans.) Missing Persons and Other Essays (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1994) p. 48.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Heinrich Böll (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.