Goethe Prize of the City of Frankfurt am Main

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The Goethe Prize of the City of Frankfurt am Main was founded in 1927. It is currently awarded every three years to celebrate Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's birthday on August 28th. It is intended for personalities who have already come into their own with their work and whose creative work is worthy of an honor dedicated to the memory of Goethe.

Six of the previous winners were women (as of 2020).

history

The idea for the foundation of the award went back to Ernst Beutler from the Free German Hochstift , who was joined by Alfons Paquet , Lord Mayor Ludwig Landmann (who later became Secretary of the Board of Trustees) and the exhibition director Otto Ernst Sutter . The city council agreed on August 31, 1926 and provided the prize money and RM 3,000  administrative costs.

The prize, endowed with RM 10,000, was awarded for the first time on August 28, 1927 in the so-called "State Hall" of the Goethe House . The award winner was fifty-nine-year-old Stefan George , who was unimpressed, initially rejected the award and only accepted it after public pressure. In the second year Albert Schweitzer was awarded the prize at the suggestion of the writer and Secretary of the Board of Trustees, Alfons Paquet. In 1929, after long discussions, the conservative cultural critic Leopold Ziegler was elected, and the board of trustees showed clear differences for the first time. However, these were only the prelude to the 1930 award. The Board of Trustees voted for Sigmund Freud with only seven to five votes. Until then, Freud had not been publicly honored for his life's work in Germany. In particular, the representatives of the Goethe institutions spoke out vehemently against the Viennese psychoanalyst. For the 200th birthday of Goethe's mother Aja , a woman was to be honored in 1931. The choice fell on Ricarda Huch, who was preferred to Käthe Kollwitz.

In the newspaper Hamburger Anzeiger of August 28, 1935, in the course of the announcement of the “solemn handover of this year's Goethe Prize to Hermann Stegemann”, it is also reported that “some time ago (...) an order was made, which the Award-related responsibility has been redistributed. The Lord Mayor of Frankfurt now awards the prize after hearing a board of directors who has replaced the previous board of trustees. The board of directors consists of the mayor , the Reich and Prussian ministers for science, education and popular education , the Reich minister for public enlightenment and propaganda , the head of the cultural office of the city of Frankfurt, a member to be nominated by the board of directors of the Free German Hochstift in Frankfurt. The managing director of the board of directors to be appointed by the mayor has to submit proposals for the selection of personalities to be distinguished in good time. ' This is what the new statutes say. "

The awards were thus under the sign of National Socialist rule from 1933 to 1942 . Kolbenheyer (1937) and Schäfer (1941) openly admitted their support for the regime, Stehr (1933) and Stegemann (1935) gave the award “[...] not in honor. They replace missing aesthetic qualities with strict convictions [...] ”. In 1940 the poet Agnes Miegel received the prize “[…] as a gifted seer who has always worked for the rebirth of the German kind […].” The prizes were presented until 1942 and 1960 (to Ernst Beutler) in the Goethe House on the Großer Hirschgraben .

After 1945

The first prize winner after the war was the Göttingen physicist Max Planck , "[...] who courageously defended freedom of conscience and the right to believe in a time of spiritual bondage." Planck was proposed as early as 1944, but rejected by the Reich Ministry of Culture because of his opposition to National Socialism been.

Nowadays, the city ​​council of Frankfurt am Main decides on the proposal of the board of trustees, which is composed as follows: the mayor as chairman, a representative of the city council, a representative of the cultural department, the director of the Free German High Foundation, the Hessian minister for science and art, the university president of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, a writer, a poet and a personality of cultural life. The last three are determined by a municipal resolution.

The Goethe Prize consists of an artistically designed certificate written on parchment and is currently endowed with 50,000 euros. Until 1949 the award was annual, since 1952 it has been awarded every three years. The awards have been presented in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt since 1948 (except for Peter Stein in 1988 and Ernst Beutler in 1960 ) . In the Honorary Regulations of the City of Frankfurt am Main (version of June 20, 2002) it says: "The Goethe Prize can be awarded to a person who has already achieved recognition through their work and whose creative work is worthy of an honor dedicated to the memory of Goethe."

Award winners

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Lutz Walther, Manfred Wichmann: Stefan George. Tabular curriculum vitae in the LeMO ( DHM and HdG )
  2. ^ Adolf Fink. In: Peter Hahn (Ed.): Literature in Frankfurt. athenäum, Frankfurt am Main 1987, ISBN 3-610-08448-0 , p. 626
  3. ^ Adolf Fink. In: Peter Hahn (Ed.): Literature in Frankfurt. athenäum, Frankfurt am Main 1987, ISBN 3-610-08448-0 , p. 628
  4. Extract from the award document to Max Planck
  5. Honorary Regulations of the City of Frankfurt am Main (PDF; 130 kB)