This year the Erich-Maria-Remarque Peace Price of €25,000 will be awarded to the theatre director and author Henning Mankell, born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1948. The author will be honoured for his works on Africa. The playwright and author Lukas Bärfuss, born in Thun, Switzerland, will receive the Special Prize of €5,000 for his Africa book “A Hundred Days”. Both awardees unites an expressive and engaged literary debate with the conflicts of the African Continent against the background of colonialism and neo-colonialism.
The award ceremony will take place at the Marienkirche, Osnabrück, on Friday, the 18th of September at 11 am. The laudation for Henning Mankell will be held by the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Prof. Dr. Horst Köhler, the one for Lukas Bärfuss by the cultural editor of the "Spiegel", Dr. Volker Hage.
Henning Mankell’s connection to Africa dates back to 1972, the year of his first journey to Guinea-Bissau. In 1986 he took over as the director of the Teatro Avenida in Maputo/Mozambique where he spends more than half the year. Since then Africa has been second home to the Swedish author. His life and engagement on-site inspired him to his multi-facetted Africa works which compare impressively with the work of Erich-Maria Remarque. Among his many books dealing with Africa the novels worth special mention are “Chronicler of the Winds” and “I Die, but My Memory Lives on“, but especially “Die flüsternden Seelen“ (The Whispering Souls) – an equally historical and poetic novel of world acclaim.
Lukas Bärfuss is one of the most successful playwrights of recent years. His plays are staged all over the world. With “Hundred Days“ he has produced his first novel which has aroused enormous public interest. It is the story of an ethical error of judgement which facilitated one of the most horrible crimes of the century in Rwanda. The novel about the Rwandan civil war discusses a dark chapter in Africa’s history, one in which Europe is deeply involved. “Hundred Days” a meticulously researched novel of extremes, displays the drama of Swiss development aid in Rwanda in 1994, the start of the genocide.
In the spirit of Erich Maria Remarque, after whom the Peace Prize is named, the award is conferred for fiction, journalistic or humanistic work dealing with peace at a national or international level, and for exemplary commitment to peace, humanity and the freedom of mankind against oppression.
The panel, chaired by Prof. Dr. Claus Rollinger, President of Osnabrück University, consists of Prof. Heinz Ludwig Arnold, Prof. Dr. Hans Mommsen, Prof. Dr. Rita Süssmuth, Dr. Hubert Winkels and Prof. Dr. Tilman Westphalen as representatives of the Erich Maria Remarque Association. The representatives of the City of Osnabrück are Lord Mayor Boris Pistorius, Jutta Sauer, Director of Literaturbüro Westniedersachsen, and Dr. Sven Jürgensen press officer of the City of Osnabrück.
The Erich-Maria-Remarque Peace Prize has already been awarded to Lev Kopelev (1991), Hans Magnus Enzensberger (1993), Uri Avnery (1995), Ludvík Vaculík (1997), Houshang Golshiri (1999), Svetlana Alexijewich (2001), Prof. Dr. Dan Bar-On and Mahmoud Darwish (equally 2003), Leoluca Orlando (2005) and Prof. Dr. Tony Judt (2007).
The Special Prize has been awarded to Anja Lundholm (1991), Dörte von Westernhagen (1993), Miljenko Jergović (1995), die Gemeinsame deutsch-tschechische Historikerkommission (Joint German-Czech Committee of Historians) (1997), das Gründungskomitee des Verbandes iranischer Schriftsteller (Foundation Committee of the Council of Iranian Writers) (1999), MEMORIAL (the international society for historical care) (2001), Jurij Andruchowycz (2005) and Grigorij Pasko (2007).
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