Buchheim died on Thursday of heart failure, the office of Bavarian state Premier Edmund Stoiber announced on Friday.

An art collector as well as a writer, Buchheim wrote 30 books in a career spanning 65 years, many of them about art and artists.

But it was the film of his 1973 novel about a wartime German U-boat that made him famous.

"Das Boot," directed by Wolfgang Petersen in 1981, described the mission of the U-96, its attacks on Allied ships and the fear of its crew as they came under attack themselves.

Personal experience

Buchheim served on U-boats himself as a war reporter during World War II.

His collection of art is on display at the Fantasy Museum at Starnberg in southern Germany.

Buchheim wrote his first book, an autobiographical work about himself as a young artist, in 1935. His last work, "Der Abschied" (The Farewell) was penned in 2000.