That Elke Erb is this year’s büchner prize of the German Academy for language and poetry, the escalating debate about the fairness of the allocation of important literature awards, and the büchner prize is the most important in Germany – not silent let. The “luck” that the Nobel prize had in the past year, as at the same time, a man (Peter Handke) and a woman (Olga Tokarczuk) could be awarded, not you liked your choice of the Darmstadt Academy for the Stockholm double award had its cause in the previous scandal within the Swedish Academy, which in the year 2018 to be a waiver of the designation of a literature Nobel prize winner. And you don’t want to imagine what would be the losgewesen, if a year would later have been two men named. The Jury with two options tend to be under more pressure, as that would have been a single of the case.
Andreas platthaus
editor responsible for the literature and literary life.
F. A. Z.
The different perception of the two recent Nobel prize winners, admittedly, is also due to the scandal potential of around Handke, showed the Double-edginess of a purely to the question of man or woman reduced viewing: Olga Tokarczuk was in the public’s perception in addition to Handke largely and was the traditionalists more as a “quota woman” rather than a serious winner – a view of the literary qualities of their books grotesque evaluation. She threatens not to Elke Erb, because the poet is quite different than that of their Polish colleague for decades, a well-known, especially known in Germany. About the quality of their poetry is a Consensus.
It didn’t need a youth bonus
In the run-up to the announcement today, was an admonition has been noted that in the last twenty years, five women in Darmstadt, Germany, were awarded. But the büchner prize of course, just because he knows its importance, as a tribute to a life’s work, and as long as we don’t have it in Germany to do with a numerical balance between the important writers. To request the Darmstädter Jury, you may be correct with your decisions, is unhistorical. At best, one could argue that earlier and more often, younger authors have been chosen to büchner prize-winner than it is today – Hans Magnus Enzensberger, and Durs grünbein are famous examples of this – and would again dared, it would in fact be impossible to ignore the strong role of women in contemporary German literature. Elke Erb is but eighty-two years old; it didn’t need a youth bonus, you Excel.
