Martin Walser, among the last of a generation of acerbic, socially engaged novelists who dominated the German literary scene after World War II, died on July 26 in Überlingen, Germany, a city on Lake Constance, along the Swiss border. His publisher, Rowohlt, announced his death in a statement but did not provide a cause. Alongside writers like Henrich Böll, Günter Grass and Siegfried Lenz, Mr. Walser wrote essays, plays and novels that skewered what they saw as the complacent conservatism of Germany as it rebuilt itself into an economic powerhouse during the 1950s and ’60s. “If one were to cite an example of historically conscious, committed writing in postwar German literature, who else would spring to mind than Martin Walser?” President Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany wrote after Mr. Walser’s death. In 1981, he received the Georg Büchner Prize, the highest literary honor in Germany.

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Persons: Martin Walser, Rowohlt, Henrich Böll, Siegfried Lenz, Walser, Frank, Walter Steinmeier, “ Ein, Georg Büchner Locations: Überlingen, Germany, Lake Constance, Swiss