Heinrich Heine Prize (City of Düsseldorf)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Heinrich Heine Prize of the City of Düsseldorf is a culture prize awarded in honor of Heinrich Heine . It was donated by the city of Düsseldorf on the occasion of Heine's 175th birthday. The award "is given to personalities who, through their intellectual work in the sense of the basic human rights, for which Heinrich Heine campaigned, promote social and political progress, serve international understanding or spread the knowledge that all people belong together".

The Heine Prize was awarded every three years from 1972; since 1981 it has been awarded every two years. The awarding of the Heine Prize 1995 was postponed to 1996. Since then, the Heine Prize has been awarded every two years. It was initially endowed with 25,000 DM. In 2000 the prize money was set at 25,000 euros, and in 2006 the city of Düsseldorf doubled the prize money to 50,000 euros.

Award winners

The 2006 award scandal

As part of the award ceremony planned for 2006, which was to represent the climax of the celebrations for the 150th year of Heinrich Heine's death, the jury decided to award the award to Peter Handke . According to press reports, the city council of Düsseldorf did not want to support this decision because of Handke's attitude towards Slobodan Milošević and the Yugoslav wars. Handke had repeatedly called for a differentiated view of the person of Milošević and the Balkan wars.

Two of the jury members, Sigrid Löffler and Jean-Pierre Lefèbvre (* 1943; from the École normal supérieure ), then announced their resignation. This should be understood as a protest against those jurors who “circulate unsubstantiated as well as defamatory statements about the winner” .

In the run-up to the decisive council meeting, Handke refused to accept the award in writing, as he did not want to see his person and his work “exposed again and again to bullying by such party politicians” .

There are different opinions about the correct interpretation of Peter Handke's letter. From his letter to the mayor it does not appear that he rejects the award; rather, he only complains about the behavior ("rabble-rousing") of the Düsseldorf politicians, which in his opinion is impossible, and asks that a council meeting or event with them be avoided. Also, the statutes of the Heine Prize 2006 do not permit any withdrawal from the award or the annulment of the award winners. The official proclamation of the Lord Mayor that Peter Handke was the winner of the Heine Prize 2006 was not contradicted at any time by the city council or committees of the city of Düsseldorf. Since the city council of Düsseldorf did not deal with the matter or make a decision, Peter Handke is still regarded as the winner of the 2006 Heine Prize.

The actors Rolf Becker , Käthe Reichel and others created the alternative Berlin Heinrich Heine Prize for Peter Handke . Peter Handke rejected this too. After the scandal, the award of the prize was reorganized and the decision-making authority of the 13-member jury was strengthened. The selection of the award winner is now considered final.

literature

  • Peter Jamin: The Handke Scandal - How the debate about the Heinrich Heine Prize exposed our cultural society , Gardez! Verlag, Remscheid 2006, ISBN 3-89796-180-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Heinrich Heine Prize of the State Capital Düsseldorf. www.all-around-new-books.de, accessed on December 4, 2011
  2. ↑ a b See Amos Oz receives Heine Prize 2008 ( Memento from March 12, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) at tagesschau.de, June 21, 2008 (accessed on June 21, 2008)
  3. ↑ Press release of the state capital Düsseldorf from October 19, 2014
  4. ↑ The City of Düsseldorf's Heine Prize goes to AL Kennedy , buchmarkt.de, October 3, 2016, accessed on October 3, 2016.
  5. ↑ AL Kennedy's speech , bellacaledonia.org brings Kennedy's acceptance speech (English), accessed February 3, 2017
  6. ↑ Heine Prize 2018 for Leoluca Orlando. In: www.duesseldorf.de. July 8, 2018, accessed November 3, 2018 .
  7. ↑ Publicist Rachel Salamander receives Heine Prize , deutschlandfunkkultur.de, published and accessed on July 13, 2020.
  8. ↑ Sigrid Löffler and Jean-Pierre Lefèbvre: “Handke and no end. Why we are stepping down from the jury of the Heinrich Heine Prize ” , Süddeutsche Zeitung , June 2, 2006.
  9. ↑ See correspondence between Handke and the Lord Mayor on the rejection of the award , also published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on June 9, 2006.