In a democratic vote titled "Preis der Gruppe 47" (Prize of Group 47), it elevated many who were beginning their writing careers.
[2] Group 47 had no organizational form, no fixed membership list, and no literary program, but was strongly influenced by Richter's invitations.
In its early days, Gruppe 47 offered young writers a platform for the renewal of German literature after World War II and the end of censorship in Nazi Germany.
It later became an influential institution in the cultural life of the Federal Republic of Germany, as important contemporary writers and literary critics participated in the meetings.
The magazine was printed from literary texts, but the publishers (Andersch and Richter) understood it was primarily a political body, in which they argued for a free Germany as a bridge between East and West.
[4] After Ruf ceased publication, Hans Werner Richter began to plan a successor magazine, which he wanted to dub Der Skorpion (The Scorpion).
On the 6th and 7 September in 1947, Richter held an editorial meeting with authors from the area of the planned newspaper in Ilse Schneider-Lengyel's house, on Bannwaldsee, near Füssen.
Despite the group's preference for realistic Trümmerliteratur (the post-war "rubble literature"), there was no official literary program, no common poetics and only a few principles about not allowing fascist or militarist texts.
The author and critic Hans Georg Brenner suggested the name, associating the group with the Spanish Generación del 98 (Generation of '98) before.
Richter, who rejected any organizational form of the meetings, whether "club, association, or academy", agreed with the proposal, saying "‘Group 47’ – that is without obligation and actually says nothing.
Starting from the thesis that "genuine artistry" was always "the same as the opposition to Nazism," Andersch stated that "the younger generation stood before a tabula rasa, faced with the necessity to accomplish a renewal of German intellectual life, through original creations.
Franz Joseph Schneider, who had belonged to the group since the previous year, donated a prize of 1000 Deutsche Marks ($532).
In addition, the group openly criticized the idealized, poetic dewey-eyedness of some modern prose, as well as the tendency to write about distant time instead of the here-and-now.