Stadtschreiber (Literature Prize)

Stadtschreiber refers to a municipal literature prize, usually associated with a scholarship, which some cities have been awarding since the second half of the 20th century. The price is usually associated with a free apartment and usually an additional cultural task in the relevant community (often limited to two months, half a year or a full year). Variants of the Stadtschreiber are the Münchner Turmschreiber or the Seeschreiber (Wolfgangsee).

Germany

The first city clerk's office as a literary award since 1974 goes back to the author of Gruppe 47 , Franz Joseph Schneider , who was able to inspire local politicians in his hometown of Bergen-Enkheim for his idea of ​​the city ​​clerk of Bergen .

The Mainz city clerk is comparable in reputation to Bergen-Enkheim , who receives prize money and is also allowed to live in the city clerk's apartment in the Renaissance wing of the Gutenberg Museum for a year . The Dresden city clerk also receives a monthly allowance and free apartment , but only for six months.

The cities of Bernburg (Saale) , Erfurt , Gotha (Kurd-Laßwitz scholarship), Halle (Saale) , Hausach , Magdeburg , Mannheim , Otterndorf , Ranis , Rheinsberg , Rottweil , Soltau , Stuttgart , Trier , Tübingen and Unna also award a town clerk -Award. In 2013, Bayreuth advertised a town clerk grant for the first time. Since 2017 there is also a city clerk for the Ruhr area .

For India's guest country appearance at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2006, seven Indian and seven German authors traveled to the other country for four weeks as part of the “ Akshar City Writer” project and reported on their impressions in diary notes. The word Akshar comes from Sanskrit and means letter or alphabet, or a smallest, indestructible unit. All fourteen authors reported on their experiences at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

There is now an island clerk on Sylt and a village clerk in the Black Forest municipality of Eisenbach (Upper Black Forest) since 2006.

However, this form of the literary prize is not free from conflict, the writer Andreas Maier canceled in Potsdam in 2004 after the inexperienced city administration there had caused a terrible mess.

Strictly speaking, a bogus, but very attractive city clerk post is given by the Goethe-Institut . The two-month city ​​clerk in Beijing has almost nothing to do with the local government of the Chinese capital, but is a PR activity of the Red Gate Gallery there in cooperation with the Goethe Institute.

Austria

• City clerk of Graz
• City clerk of Salzburg
• Kitzbühel town clerk
• City clerk of Klagenfurt , automatically linked to the BKS audience award at the Ingeborg Bachmann competition
• Town clerk of Schwaz

Switzerland

• The city of Zug knew the institution of the city ​​observer from 1991 to 1994 . Werner Söllner , Martin R. Dean and Zsuzsanna Gahse received this award .
• Zurich (from 2010)

In Switzerland, in contrast to the prize winners discussed here, there is still the town clerk who fulfills a public function , usually referred to as the municipality clerk or state clerk .

Netherlands, Belgium

There are also town clerks in the Dutch-speaking area . The first city with a town clerk was Venlo in the province of Limburg in 1993. This was followed by Dordrecht in South Holland and Beverwijk in North Holland in 2001.

Many cities now have a so-called urban writer . In the Netherlands these are: Groningen , Middelburg , Velsen , Gouda , Tilburg , Enschede , Rotterdam , The Hague , Zütphen , Utrecht , Helmond , Zwolle , Alkmar , Deventer , Tiel , Nijmegen , Roermond , Haarlem , Vlaardingen , Leeuwarden , Hoorn , Den Helder , Valkenswaard , Westervoort , Zandvoort and Lelystad .

A special institution in the Netherlands is the award of the title Poet of Vaderland , which has been awarded since 2000 and is derived from the English Poet Laureate .

There is also a town or village clerk in the following Flemish cities: Antwerp , Ghent , Brussels , Galmaarden , Damme , Deinze , Halle , Diest , Doel , Ninove and Opwijk .

See also

• Artist in Residence

Web links

• Bergen-Enkheim Literature Prize (Frankfurt) ( Memento from November 2, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
• Between marketing and patronage: do city clerks promote literature? , Podcast of a 44-minute debate on SWR2 on July 4, 2016
• Anant Kumar: What exactly is a town clerk position? , Gotha.de from September 5, 2015

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Anant Kumar is a Kurd-Laßwitz fellow in 2015
2. ↑ Leselenz Hausach ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ Scholarship at the Stuttgart Writer's House
4. ^ City clerk of Bayreuth: Volker Strübing , July 2013
5. ↑ Gila Lustiger becomes town clerk Ruhr , deutschlandfunkkultur.de, July 26, 2017, accessed on July 27, 2017
6. ↑ Goethe-Institut : Akshar-Stadtschreiber for the Frankfurt Book Fair Guest Country India 2006 ( Memento of August 17, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
7. ↑ Dorfschreiber grant in Eisenbach
8. ↑ Literature returns after weeks of hacking scholarship , Berliner Zeitung of November 26, 2004, accessed July 3, 2016
9. ^ City clerk in Beijing , Goethe-Institut, accessed July 3, 2016
10. ↑ Literaturforum Schwaz - Stadtschreiber ( Memento of the original from April 21, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
11. ↑ City of Zug: Report and application for continuation, January 28, 1992 (pdf; 289 kB)
12. ^ City of Zug: Report and proposal for continuation, September 14, 1993 (pdf; 289 kB)
13. ↑ Minutes of the large municipal council of Zug , March 8, 1994 (pdf; 2.2 MB)
14. ↑ "Here comes our town clerk!" , Tages-Anzeiger from December 21, 2010
15. ↑ Writers in Residence website (Zurich)