Wilhelm Scherer Prize
The Scherer Prize was donated in 1910 by the Germanist and banker heir Richard M. Meyer (1860–1914) in memory of his teacher Wilhelm Scherer (1841–1886) and his son Fritz Joachim Wilhelm Meyer, who died early. Meyer was the grandson of the Berlin banker Elias Joachim Meyer (1783–1849), who founded the EJ Meyer bank in Berlin in 1816 and from whose Hamburg branch the Wölbern & Co. bank emerged in 1956 . The bank's corporate foundation has been named after Richard M. Meyer's extensive social commitment since May 2012.
In 1910 Richard M. Meyer established the foundation of the same name at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in honor of his teacher, which honored work in the field of German philology. In addition to grants and grants for printing costs, the foundation also awarded the Scherer Prize until 1923. Friedrich Neumann , Herbert Cysarz and Karl Viëtor were among the first to receive prizes until the foundation lost its fortune due to inflation in the 1920s. The Scherer Prize was awarded for the last time in 1923. In 1927 the foundation was merged with other foundations without assets.
The Richard M. Meyer Foundation awards since 2010 in cooperation with the Humboldt University of Berlin and the Free University of Berlin every two years, which is endowed with 5,000 euros Scherer Award for Doctoral and Habilitation Theses in the field of ancient and modern German literature at both Universities were submitted.
Award winners
- 2010 Thomas Wegmann "Seals and trademarks: For the observation and processing of advertising in the literary field 1850–2000"
- 2012 Charlotte Kurbjuhn "A trace at the bottom of the imagination", On the history of the aesthetic figure of thought "Contour"
- 2014 Burkhardt Wolf “Fortuna di Mare. Literature and Seafaring "
- 2016 Anna Lena Scholz "Kleist / Kafka - Discourse History of a Constellation"
- 2018 Annika Hildebrandt "War communities - literature and politics around 1750"