Aachen Peace Prize
Aachen Peace Prize is the name of both an association founded in 1988 with headquarters in Aachen and an award from this association.
One of the reasons for the foundation was Henry Kissinger's highly controversial award of the Charlemagne Prize in 1987.
46 people founded the association. The purpose of the association is the appreciation of people or groups who have contributed from "below" to the understanding of the peoples and the people among themselves as well as to break down enemy images and to build trust. The award ceremony and the winners are not tied to any nation, religion or ideology. The association sees itself as an urban citizens' initiative. From 1988 to 1997 Pastor Albrecht Bausch was the association's chairman and had a strong influence on the association's work.
The award ceremony takes place annually after the anti-war day demonstration on September 1st as a public celebration in the Aula Carolina .
Today the association has around 400 members, including around 350 individuals, and around 50 organizations. These include the city of Aachen , the DGB region NRW Süd-West, the Catholic organizations Misereor and Missio (the latter with dormant membership), which have their headquarters in Aachen, the diocesan council of Catholics in the diocese of Aachen , the Protestant church district of Aachen, and numerous others church organizations, the SPD sub-district, the district executive of the Greens and Die Linke in the Aachen city region.
In 1996 the council of the city of Aachen, dominated by a coalition of the SPD and the Greens, decided to join the association. In 1999 the city resigned with the votes of the then CDU and FDP majority. In 2004, the City Council of Aachen, now again with a majority of the SPD and Greens, unanimously decided to re-join the association.
Prize winners
The statutes of the Aachen Peace Prize e. V. does not make any distinction between national and international award winners. The award-winner selection process at the general meeting of the association also hardly allows for a targeted division into one award winner from Germany and one from abroad. However, if such a distribution arises, the terms national and international award winners are often used.
| year | National award winners | International award winners |
|---|---|---|
| 1988 |
- |
|
| 1989 | ||
| 1990 |
Vera Wollenberger medical research team from Neuss |
- |
| 1991 |
Women in Black ( Israel ) |
|
| 1992 |
Kerstin and Thomas Meinhardt for the arms export project group, Idstein |
Human rights initiative COPADEBA ( Latin America ) |
| 1993 |
Peace Tax Network , Günter Lott and Reinhard Egel |
|
| 1994 |
Kailash Satyarthi and SACCS ( India ) |
|
| 1995 |
Leyla Zana ( Turkey ) |
|
| 1996 | ||
| 1997 |
Community secondary schools Eschweiler - Dürwiß and Aretzstraße - Aachen |
Gush Shalom with Uri Avnery (Israel) |
| 1998 |
Walter Herrmann and supporter of the Cologne Western Wall |
IFCO / Pastors for Peace (Latin America) |
| 1999 |
Wandering church asylum in North Rhine-Westphalia |
|
| 2000 |
Reconstruindo a Esperança ( Mozambique ) |
|
| 2001 |
Kazuo Soda ( Japan ) |
|
| 2002 |
Barbara Lee ( USA ) |
|
| 2003 |
Reuven Moskovitz and Nabila Espanioly (Israel) |
|
| 2004 |
- |
Eren Keskin (Turkey) and the Soldiers' Mothers Committee in Saint Petersburg ( Russia ) |
| 2005 |
Roy Bourgeois (USA) |
|
| 2006 |
- |
|
| 2007 |
Josef Steinbusch , founder of the “Pinocchio” children's circus |
Peace Community of San José de Apartadó ( Colombia ) |
| 2008 |
Andreas Buro , promoter of the German peace movement |
Machsom Watch , an Israeli / Palestinian human rights group and Mitri Raheb ( Palestine ) |
| 2009 |
Berliner Compagnie , alternative touring theater |
Zdravko Marjanović , Bosnian-Serbian peace activist |
| 2010 | Austen Peter Brandt and Phoenix e. V. , sustainable reduction of racism | Marco Arana (Peru) |
| 2011 | Militarization Information Center and Jürgen Grässlin | |
| 2012 | Borderline europe - human rights without borders ev ( Elias Bierdel ) | Alejandro Cerezo Contreras |
| 2013 | First "schools without the Bundeswehr": Robert-Blum-Gymnasium (Berlin) , Käthe-Kollwitz-Schule (Offenbach) |
International School Dohuk , Iraq ( Kurdish area ) for their peace work with students of all ethnicities and religions |
| 2014 | Lively Classical Music - Political Action | Code Pink (USA) women-initiated grassroots movement for peace and social justice |
| 2015 | - | Rakotonirina Mandimbihery Anjaralova, Lumbela Azarias Zacarias and Balorbey Théophilius Oklu ( Morocco ) Archbishop Dieudonné Nzapalainga and Imam Kobine Layam ( Central African Republic ) |
| 2016 | Open Heath citizens' initiative | Committee of Scientists for Peace |
| 2017 | Youth network for political actions (JunepA), initiative against nuclear weapons, arms exports and free trade as well as for climate protection | No MUOS , an initiative that has been calling for the closure of transmission systems ( MUOS ) on a US military base in Sicily since 2008 |
| 2018 | Peng! Collective from Berlin | Concern Universal Colombia from Colombia, represented by the managing director Siobhan McGee and the program manager Jaime Bernal |
| 2019 | Initiative group against nuclear weapons (Cochem-Zell) and the campaign "Büchel is everywhere - free of nuclear weapons. Now" | The nominated Ruslan Kotsaba (Ukraine) waived the award on May 22, 2019, so the cancellation of the nomination planned for June 2019 will become obsolete. |
Selection process
Every member of the Aachen Peace Prize e. V. is entitled to submit proposals for award winners. External persons or organizations can also submit proposals, but these will only be dealt with if a member of the association accepts the proposal. The board of directors first votes on all of the suggestions received. The five proposals with the best result in the board will be presented to the general meeting, provided that at least two thirds of the board approve the proposal. The general assembly then selects two of the five proposals made by the board, which, however, also require a two-thirds majority in the general assembly. If there is no two-thirds majority for the proposal with the second-best result, only one winner will be awarded. So far, however, this has only happened once in 2006. There is no distinction between national and international award winners in the election process. The new winners will be announced on May 8th .
Problems with award winners
The Cologne Wailing Wall and its initiator Walter Herrmann , winner of the 1998 award, declared their withdrawal from the Aachen Peace Prize Association in 2012. This was preceded by a dispute within the association about the desire of several members to distance themselves from Herrmann. In the Aachener Nachrichten , Gerald Eimer wrote that Herrmann had posted “ anti-Semitic and anti-Israel caricatures” on the Cologne Wailing Wall. Hermann had hung a photo of a demonstrator holding up an anti-Israel cartoon there and was reported by actor Gerd Buurmann for inciting people. The investigation against Herrmann was discontinued.
The Hulda Pankok Comprehensive School in Düsseldorf rejected the award that was to be awarded to it in 2013. One does not want to be “misused for political statements”, the circumstances that are perceived as worthy of the award do not apply.
On May 8, 2019, the association's board announced that this year's peace award would go to the western Ukrainian blogger and activist Ruslan Kotsaba . According to research by the writer blog Salon Columnists , Kotsaba had not only played down the Holocaust in a video, but also blamed the Jews themselves for it. In the wording (based on a translation by Boris Reitschuster ):
“The Jews probably remember this period [meaning the Holocaust] with sorrow, how they ran like sheep and were shot in the thousands, although they were only guarded by one or two machine gunmen, although they were still every convoy with their bodies could have crushed. But they just felt that they had to serve a sentence for cultivating National Socialism, cultivating communism. "
After initially the board member of the association, Lea Heuser, had spoken of a "manipulation" of the video, Kotsaba admitted a little later that he had made these statements, claiming that the statements were out of context and he was also disapproving meanwhile distance the content. The association's board of directors and member of the Bundestag Andrej Hunko (Die Linke) considered the statements to be “completely unacceptable”, but initially wanted to hold on to the award ceremony. The reason was: Kotsaba had transformed from a representative of “questionable political positions” and a supporter of the Euromaidan , which ultimately led to the war in eastern Ukraine , to a “determined opponent and pacifist”. This statement, which was posted on the club's Facebook page, aroused fierce criticism from supporters of the Euromaidan and opponents of eastern Ukrainian separatism because Hunko gave the impression that anti-Semitism was a feature of the Ukrainian independence movement. The statement was deleted after a few hours. On May 10, 2019, the association's board announced that it would revoke its decision to award the award to Kotsaba; Subject to a member vote, which did not come about, as Kotsaba waived the award on May 22, 2019.
An overview of how the association deals with problematic award winners can be found on the salon columnists' website.
Further actions
In addition to the award ceremony, the association is also politically active in the interests of its members. In November 2006, the association filed a criminal complaint against Chancellor Angela Merkel and Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung for “preparing the Bundeswehr for wars of aggression” , citing the Bundeswehr's white paper . The association thus initiated broad reporting. The Attorney General's office declined to pursue the allegations made in the criminal complaint.
The association belongs to the Cooperation for Peace .
Web links
- Aachen Peace Prize V. - Citizens' initiative from the Aachen peace movement. Retrieved March 22, 2018 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ May 8, 1988 - May 8, 2013. The Aachen Peace Prize turns 25. In: aixpaix.de. May 8, 2013, accessed on August 19, 2019 (interview with Otmar Steinbicker).
- ↑ MH: Mourning for "father" of the Aachen Peace Prize Albrecht Bausch. In: Aachener Nachrichten . December 27, 2017, accessed January 15, 2020 (obituary).
- ↑ To the homepage.
- ↑ "You, Dr. Brzosko-Mędryk, honoring and thanking you involves two things. On the one hand - especially as a young German that moves me - the respect for your fate and - combined with deep shame and great gratitude for it - that you are reaching out to us Germans again today for a common future. On the other hand, it is also about the symbol and example of Poland, especially for us Germans. Poland became a symbol of suffering… ”(from Christian Lawan's laudation).
- ↑ Aachen Peace Prize goes to “Borderline Europe”. In: welt.de . May 8, 2012, accessed September 7, 2018.
- ↑ Laureate 2012. Alejandro Cerezo Contreras and the Comité Cerez. In: aachener-friedenspreis.de. 2012, accessed August 19, 2019 .
- ↑ a b Katrin Schmiedekampf: Crumbling front . In: The time . No. June 26 , 2013 ( zeit.de [accessed on September 28, 2013]).
- ↑ a b “Schools without the Bundeswehr” receive a peace prize. In: Welt online . September 2, 2013, accessed September 28, 2013 .
- ↑ a b Honor for Italian and German activists. (No longer available online.) In: Deutschlandfunk . September 1, 2017, formerly in the original ; accessed on September 7, 2018 (no mementos). ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) .
- ↑ a b Ruslan Kotsaba does not receive the Aachen Peace Prize 2019. Aachen Peace Prize eV, May 22, 2019, accessed on May 23, 2019 .
- ↑ board resolution of the Aachen Peace Prize eV to Ruslan Kotsaba. In: aachener-friedenspreis.de, May 10, 2019, accessed on May 10, 2019.
- ↑ Controversial laureate leaves the Peace Prize. In: Aachener Nachrichten . August 24, 2012, accessed April 15, 2014 .
- ^ Claudia Hauser: Cologne Cathedral Square. Acquittal for the initiator of the Wailing Wall. In: Kölner Stadtanzeiger . February 12, 2014, accessed May 8, 2017.
- ↑ From Aachen to Zyklon B. In: salonkolumnisten.com. May 9, 2019, accessed May 11, 2019 .
- ↑ Ruslan Kotsaba: The Russians bred Stalin and Hitler. In: dailymotion . September 1, 2018, accessed May 11, 2019 .
- ^ Scandal at the Aachen Peace Prize. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . May 11, 2019, accessed May 11, 2019 .
- ^ No Aachen Peace Prize to Ruslan Kotsaba. In: Deutsche Welle . May 10, 2019, accessed May 11, 2019 .
- ↑ board resolution of the Aachen Peace Prize eV to Ruslan Kotsaba. In: Aachen Peace Prize. May 10, 2019, accessed May 11, 2019 .
- ^ Karl-Hermann Leukert : The justice of the peace. In: salonkolumnisten.com. May 14, 2019, accessed May 15, 2019 .
- ^ Wording of criminal charges against Chancellor Merkel and Minister Jung. In: ag-friedensforschung.de, November 15, 2006, accessed on March 22, 2018 (PDF; 63 kB).
- ↑ Cooperation for Peace, Contributors. In: koop-frieden.de, accessed on March 22, 2018.