Kurt Vonnegut: 1922-2007

Kurt Vonnegut was born on November 11, 1922. He attended Cornell University from 1941 to 1942, where he served as assistant managing editor and associate editor for the student newspaper, the Cornell Daily Sun, and majored in biochemistry.

While at Cornell, Vonnegut enlisted in the U.S. Army and the experience as a soldier and prisoner of war had a profound influence on his later work. Captured by the Wehrmacht troops on December 14, 1944 he was imprisoned in Dresden. There Vonnegut witnessed the February 13/14, 1945 bombing of Dresden, which destroyed most of the city. Vonnegut was one of just seven American prisoners of war in Dresden to survive. The Germans put him then to work gathering bodies for mass burial. This experience formed the core of one of his most famous works, Slaughterhouse-Five.

After returning from World War II he married his childhood sweetheart, but the couple separated in 1970.

Vonnegut attempted suicide in 1984 and later wrote about this in several essays. On January 2000 he was hospitalized for smoke inhalation after a fire at his home. Vonnegut had tried to extinguish the flames with a blanket.

Vonnegut died at the age of 84 on April 11, 2007, in Manhattan, New York after suffering irreversible brain injuries as a result of a fall at his home.