Fontane Prize

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Fontane Prize was the literary prize of the Berlin Art Prize . It was named in relation to the existing since 1913, according to Theodor Fontane named Theodor Fontane Prize of Arts and Letters .

history

At the foundation of the Berlin Art Prize - Jubilee Foundation 1848/1948 in 1948, it was awarded without award criteria and without a jury solely by the Senator for Popular Education. The first art prizes were only awarded in the performing arts and music, but not in literature.

It was only when the first statute was resolved to award the prize that it provided for a “Prize for Literature” in Section 20. This was composed of three equally equipped prizes:

  • the Fontane Prize , which was to be awarded on the day of Fontane's death, September 20, to the author of a novel "which brings the democratic ideals of freedom and humanity to bear in an artistically particularly convincing manner",
  • the playwright's award "which goes to the author of the best dramatic work of the previous year",
  • the Berlin Literature Prize , which was awarded to the author of a literary work that “must have been published by a Berlin publisher” - but not a novel or stage work.

Since dividing the prize into three proved to be inexpedient, when the literary prize was first awarded in 1949, only the Fontane Prize was awarded to Hermann Kasack for his novel The City Behind the Stream . In 1950 no literature prize was awarded at all. On February 14, 1951, the division into three parts was repealed by a resolution by the Senate and the date of the award was moved to March. From now on, the literary prize was to be awarded as the “Fontane Prize for literary works of all genres”. In 1960 the poet Mascha Kaléko was to receive the Fontane Prize; However, because of a former SS member on the jury, Hans Egon Holthusen , she refused.

The GDR also followed up on the historic prize of 1913: from 1954, the Potsdam District Council awarded a prize under the name Theodor Fontane Prize for Art and Literature .

For the Fontane Prize of the Berlin Art Prize, the award winners were announced by the Senate of Berlin on the recommendation of a jury, the majority of which were political, on March 18 each year. The governing mayor awarded it on behalf of the Berlin Senate until 1969 . Because of the scandal at the award ceremony on March 18, 1969, when the winners of the Fontane Prize Wolf Biermann and the Literature Prize of the Young Generation Peter Schneider publicly passed on their prizes to the extra-parliamentary opposition in order to demonstrate the gap between the representatives of the civil order and to point out the rebellious youth, the Berlin Art Prize including the Fontane Prize was not awarded in 1970. In future, the West Berlin Academy of the Arts should award them autonomously . At the end of 1970, the Academy therefore decided on new guidelines for awarding prizes: The prizes have been awarded without a ceremony since 1971. Instead of the previous six main prizes, there are now only two Art Prizes Berlin - Jubilee Foundation 1848/1948 , which the Academy of Arts awarded on behalf of the State of Berlin.

In 1978 the two main prizes were merged into one main prize, which from then on is awarded annually alternating between the six sections of the academy. The award is now only given to the Literature Section every six years. This awarded the Berlin Art Prize, endowed with 15,000 euros since 2002, as the "Fontane Prize". Since 2011, the previous Berlin Art Prize and the Fontane Prize of the Literature Section have been awarded under the same name as the Great Berlin Art Prize .

Award winners

Earlier version of the price

A Theodor Fontane Prize for Art and Literature has been awarded since 1913 .

The award winners (selection) were:

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Official Journal of the Magistrate of Greater Berlin, Part 3, Education No. 17 of October 19, 1949
  2. ^ Fischer Weltalmanach 1961. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main, p. 301

Web links