Author Seiler honored with Georg Büchner Prize
The novelist and poet Lutz Seiler was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize 2023 in Darmstadt on Saturday. In his younger years, he had a strong feeling that later ebbed away, the longing for a mentor, said Seiler at a ceremony of the German Academy for Language and Poetry at the Staatstheater. "I never found him, not even the formative role model whose imitation could have been an entrance or a bridge into the world of writing." Today he could say that reading, reading in its many forms, has filled this role, said the author of poems, essays and novels such as "Kruso". The 50,000 euro prize is one of the most important literary awards in the German-speaking world.
In his acceptance speech, Seiler, who was born in Gera in 1963, referred to his childhood in Thuringia and the uranium mining there, which also shaped his work, but also looked at the current political situation. For our species, "care and protection" would be the right means, but the prerequisite for this is peace. "War, on the other hand, as we are experiencing it today, means the continuation and acceleration of the comprehensively brutal destruction of biographies, families and landscapes that characterized the last century.
The laudator, journalist and literary scholar Lothar Müller, said of Seiler: "Without his voice, his tone, his awareness of language and form, contemporary German literature would be poorer, much poorer."
The Academy has been awarding the prize to writers who write in German since 1951. It is funded by the federal government, the state of Hesse and the city of Darmstadt. Winners include Max Frisch (1958), Günter Grass (1965) and Heinrich Böll (1967), and most recently Elke Erb and Clemens J. Setz. The prize is named after the playwright and revolutionary Georg Büchner ("Woyzeck"). He was born in the Grand Duchy of Hesse in 1813 and died in Zurich in 1837.
In addition to the Georg Büchner Prize, there were other awards. The evolutionary biologist Matthias Glaubrecht was honored with the Sigmund Freud Prize for scientific prose and the literary critic Jutta Person with the Johann Heinrich Merk Prize for literary criticism and essay. The awards are each endowed with 20,000 euros.
Seiler's literary works often reflect his experiences with uranium mining in Thuringia, where he was born. His poetry, essays, and novels, including "Kruso," have significantly contributed to contemporary German literature, as acknowledged by journalist and literary scholar Lothar Müller. The Georg Büchner Prize, one of the most prestigious literary awards in the German-speaking world, is not the only accolade Seiler has received; he was also honored with the Sigmund Freud Prize for scientific prose and the Johann Heinrich Merk Prize for literary criticism and essay.
Source: www.dpa.com
