I believe Gunther Grass is a nice chap in privacy. By all means, he also is a person with an astounding capacity for portraying what he understands to be prominent as well as underlying features of the social/cultural reality around him.
Yet, when I hear the comments concerning his views on capitalism and german reunification intelligent people with substantial insights into these matters (like close friends of my own family in Eastern Germany), I can't help but getting the impression of an old, completely disorientated european intellectual.