Previous award winners

Born in East Berlin, writer Jenny Erpenbeck embarked on a career as a writer alongside her career as a theatre director in Germany and Austria. Her debut novel "Geschichte vom alten Kind" was published in 1999. In addition to other novels such as "Heimsuchung" (2008), "Aller Tage Abend" (2012), "Gehen, ging, gegangen" (2015) and "Kairos" (2021), Jenny Erpenbeck has published essays and plays, some of which she has directed herself. Her works have been translated into more than 30 languages. She has been honoured for her literary work in particular with a number of national and international awards, most recently the Uwe Johnson Prize.

By awarding the prize to Jenny Erpenbeck, the Board of Trustees, which decides on the award, is honouring an author "who critically examines controversial and current socio-political issues and presents them in a clear and comprehensible literary language that at the same time reflects the complexity of the problems and constellations dealt with. In her work, she always links the particular with the general by emphasising the manifold connections and dependencies of individual fates and relationships on social and historical dimensions. [...] Without nostalgic glorification, but with great linguistic subtlety, she repeatedly brings her own East German past and experience of reunification into the literary and social discourse and in this way keeps the dialogue and efforts at understanding between East and West alive."

The Croatian writer and journalist Slavenka Drakulić, born in 1949, became known for her novels "The Principle of Longing" (1989), "The Love Sacrifice" (1997), "Marble Skin" (1998), "As If I Didn't Exist" (1999), "Frida" (2007), "Dora and the Minotaur" (2016) and "Mileva Einstein and the Theory of Loneliness" (2018).

Her work repeatedly centres on the role of women in society and in gender relations - a topic that has not lost its topicality and is one of the defining discourses of the present day. She often locates these questions in the biographies of famous women. Often, however, war also forms the cruel backdrop for the negotiation of universal questions. In 2005, Slavenca Drakulić received the Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding for her book "Keiner war dabei. War Crimes in the Balkans on Trial."

Richard Swartz, born in 1945, is an internationally renowned Swedish writer and journalist who has worked for a number of well-known newspapers. His reportages and reports as well as his novels - including "Room Service" (1996), "Notlügen" (1998), "Ein Haus in Istrien" (1999), "Adressbuch" (2005), "Der andere nebenan" (2007), "Austern in Prag" (2019) - reflect the intellectual and political life of Western and Eastern Europe. His writing is always about the individual and their relationship to society. Like Stefan Heym, he sees the task of literature as accompanying people in their search for answers in contemporary life.

Joanna Bator, born in 1968, is recognised as an outstanding voice in contemporary European literature. With her texts, which are as idiosyncratic as they are skilfully and subtly told, she quietly but resolutely addresses current social issues and phenomena and explores them in their historical depths. Her latest novel "Dark, Almost Night" shows how hatred can destroy a society, how quickly the varnish of human morality can tear when people are confronted with change.

Joanna Bator was awarded the Nike, Poland's most important literary prize, for this novel in 2013. In 2016, the author was shortlisted for the International Literature Prize - House of World Cultures 2016. She previously published the novels "Sandberg" (2011) and "Wolkenfern" (2013) as well as numerous essays and articles.

Joanna Bator is the winner of the Spycher: Literature Prize Leuk 2014 and held the Friedrich Dürrenmatt Guest Professorship for World Literature in Bern in the winter semester 2014/15. In 2015, Joanna Bator lived and worked in Berlin for twelve months as a guest of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Programme. She holds a doctorate in philosophy and is an author and university lecturer who has taught in Warsaw, New York, London and Tokyo, among other places. She spent four years in Japan. Her home is in Poland.

"There is actually no such thing as "the writer". Different authors want different things, and it's only natural that not everyone who writes a book has the same goal. Some of us, like Nabokov, believe that aesthetic freedom is the only principle to follow. Others, like Orwell, insist that direct political interference is crucial. I tend to favour the former. But in times like these, everyone, including us writers, is forced to redefine the tension between their private lives, their questions and doubts, and the public sphere, which needs a very different language and solutions. A few weeks ago, for example, when I took part in the "Black Protest" demonstrations in Warsaw, where women stood up for their rights, I was sure that I was in the right place. It was important to put private projects aside in order to take a stand against a danger that threatened society as a whole. I firmly believe that as an author, I can only really influence the lives of many people, my contemporaries, if I write the right books at exactly the right time."
Joanna Bator

> Greeting from the Mayor of Chemnitz, Barbara Ludwig, at the award ceremony
> Laudation by Polish publicist Marta Kijowska for Joanna Bator
> Speech by the prizewinner Joanna Bator

Christoph Hein, born on 8 April 1944, is one of the most distinguished authors of our time. His literary work includes novels, essays, short stories, theatre plays, poetry and children's books. He became internationally recognised in 1982 with the novella "Der fremde Freund" (published in Germany in 1983 under the title "Drachenblut"). His most famous novels include "Der Tangospieler" (1988) and "Willenbrock" (2000), which was made into a film by Andreas Dresen. His most recent work is "Weiskerns Nachlass" (2011). In 1998, Christoph Hein was elected the first president of the reunited P.E.N. Centre. He also served as co-editor of "Freitag" until 2006.

Christoph Hein was born in the Silesian village of Heizendorf and grew up in Bad Düben. In 1960, he moved to West Berlin in order to be able to graduate from high school as a pastor's son. Before studying logic and philosophy in Leipzig and Berlin (1967 to 1970), Hein earned his living as an assembly worker, bookseller and assistant director to Benno Besson at the Deutsches Theater and the Volksbühne. After completing his studies, he returned to the Volksbühne as a dramaturge, where he worked alongside Heiner Müller as in-house director from 1973. Christoph Hein has been a freelance writer since 1979. As a member of the P.E.N. Centre of the GDR, he also intervened critically in debates, protesting, for example, at the X. Writers' Congress in 1987 against censorship and two years later against the arrest of Václav Havel. On 4 November 1989, Christoph Hein was one of the speakers at the demonstration of cultural workers on Berlin's Alexanderplatz.

Christoph Hein has received numerous awards, most recently the Uwe Johnson Prize (2012), the Eichendorff Literature Prize (2010) and the Walter Hasenclever Literature Prize (2008). He has also been awarded the Federal Cross of Merit (1994).

• Greeting from the Mayor of Chemnitz, Barbara Ludwig, at the award ceremony
• Laudation by the writer Ingo Schulze on Christoph Hein
• Speech by the prizewinner Christoph Hein

The laudatory speech for Bora Ćosić was held by Fritz Pleitgen, long-time director of WDR and former chairman of ARD, who is also the patron of the first conference of the International Stefan Heym Society. "Stefan Heym would have been very happy with this year's award winner," said Fritz Pleitgen. "Bora Ćosić is a writer who engages with our times, who pushes open doors, who leads us out of narrow thinking, who opens up new, surprising perspectives, who knows how to formulate all this brilliantly with wit and subtle or - if necessary - wicked humour, who above all would never sell his right to say and write what he thinks and feels for a comfortable life, no matter how unpleasant the reprisals threatened or imposed. These are the basic characteristics that connect Bora Ćosić with Stefan Heym."

The ceremony was accompanied by a musical programme featuring Beethoven and Mahler, the musical preferences of Stefan Heym and Bora Ćosić. During the event, Bora Ćosić also signed the Golden Book of the City of Chemnitz.

Ćosić, born in Zagreb in 1932, lived in Belgrade for 55 years until his emigration and has lived in German exile in Berlin and Rovinj (Croatia) since 1992.

In awarding the International Stefan Heym Prize of the City of Chemnitz to Bora Ćosić, the jury has chosen a great storyteller, satirist and critic of South-East Europe. Ćosić stands in the tradition of the Serbian avant-garde of the 60s and 70s and has published over 30 works. His best-known works include the award-winning novel "The Role of My Family in the World Revolution", a novel written in the late 1960s about the prediction of the fall of Yugoslavia from the perspective of a child, "The Land Zero" and "The Journey to Alaska". With this decision, the Board of Trustees also recognised Ćosić's enlightening role as a political writer.

"A long time ago, I stopped making strict distinctions between conditions in the East and West. The poet Adonis, who says that there are several Wests in every West and several Easts in every East, helps me today. If we say East and West, we simplify things. We can say that there are East in the West that are much more Eastern than the East, just as there are West in the East that are much more Western than the West. I only knew Stefan Heym, thanks to whose work we are all gathered here today, for a short time. But that is precisely what connects me with him and his dramatic life, my own fate, which is in a balancing act, a West-East balancing act."

The award winner Bora Ćosić in his acceptance speech

• Greeting from the Mayor of Chemnitz, Barbara Ludwig, at the award ceremony
• Laudation by Fritz Pleitgen for Bora Ćosić
• Speech by the award winner Bora Ćosić

Amos Oz, born in 1939, is the winner of several prestigious prizes, including the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (1992), the Israel Prize (1998), the Goethe Prize of the City of Frankfurt (2005), the Corine Honour Prize of the Bavarian Minister President (2006) and the Prince of Asturias Prize (2007).

Amos Oz, born in 1939, is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (1992), the Israel Prize (1998), the Goethe Prize of the City of Frankfurt (2005), the Corine Prize of the Bavarian Prime Minister (2006) and the Prince of Asturias Prize (2007). Amos Oz has published more than 30 books, including novels, short stories and political essays. His works are published in 37 languages.

• Message of greeting from the Mayor of Chemnitz, Barbara Ludwig, at the award ceremony

Amos Oz deceased
The great Israeli author Amos Oz passed away on 28 December 2018 at the age of 79. For decades, Oz campaigned for a peace solution between Israel and the Palestinians. His political presence and literary oeuvre were respected worldwide and honoured with numerous awards, including the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 1992, the Israel Prize for Literature in 1998 and the Goethe Prize of the City of Frankfurt in 2005.

The work of the world-famous writer was honoured with the International Stefan Heym Prize, awarded for the first time by the city of Chemnitz in 2008. (Photo) "A man of strong words whose biography touches me deeply," said Amos Oz, expressing his admiration for Stefan Heym. The parallels in both writers' biographies are unmistakable: expulsion due to Jewish origin, the critical examination of politics and social conflicts, the ambivalence in the view of Germany and in the confrontation with the homeland. Both Heym and Oz regarded the language in which they expressed themselves as their homeland.

Born Amos Klausner in 1939 into a family of scholars in Jerusalem, he witnessed the founding of the state of Israel. In 1954, he joined a kibbutz, gave up his European surname and called himself Oz, which means "strength" in Hebrew. He published his first stories as a student. Amos Oz's life's work now includes eleven novels, six volumes of short stories, nine volumes of essays and several children's books.