Speech OB 14.04.2008

on the occasion of the award ceremony of the International Stefan Heym Prize of the City of Chemnitz on 14 April 2008

The spoken word counts!

Dear Mr Amos Oz, dear Mrs Oz,
Dear Mrs Heym,
I warmly welcome His Excellency Yoram Ben-Zeev, Ambassador of the State of Israel,
Honourable Consuls General of the Republic of Poland and the Czech Republic,
Dear Mrs Unseld-Berkéwicz,
Honourable members of the Board of Trustees,
Honourable members of the German Bundestag, the Saxon State Parliament and the Chemnitz City Council,
Dear Mayors
Dear Dr Seifert
Dear members of the Jewish community
Honoured guests,

A few days ago, on 10 April, Stefan Heym would have celebrated his 95th birthday. Today we are awarding the International Stefan Heym Prize of the City of Chemnitz for the first time and are doing so to honour a great son of our city.

Stefan Heym's life's theme was the relationship between the individual and society, the tension between self-determination and state power. He sought and found it in the era of German fascism, in America in the 1940s and 1950s, he sought and found it in actually existing socialism. But perhaps it was also the other way round, perhaps it sought and found him. His reflections on freedom and responsibility, dictatorship and democracy repeatedly led him to the question of truth. To the question of how much truth there can be if it cannot withstand contradiction. Stefan Heym wanted this dialogue. He wanted confrontation. He wanted controversy. His works reflect the world for anyone who wants to see it without distortion.

Ladies and gentlemen,
I am delighted that you are all here this evening to multiply the message of the Stefan Heym Prize.

Dear Mr Oz,
It is a great pleasure and honour for me and for us that you have come to Chemnitz to accept the Stefan Heym Prize in person.

When the City Council decided to award the Stefan Heym Prize last July, we could not and did not want to know what decision the Board of Trustees would make. My heartfelt thanks go to the members of this committee, Prof Jutta Limbach as former President of the Goethe-Institut, Prof Dr Johano Strasser, the President of the P.E.N. Centre Germany, Johannes Jacob for their support.Centre Germany, Johannes Jacob for Bertelsmann Verlag, Dr Jörg Bilke for the International Society for Human Rights, Mayor Heidemarie Lüth, City Councillor Cornelia Knorr and City Councillor Horst Wehner.

I would like to thank you for your excellent and, incidentally, unanimous vote. You could not have made a better choice for the first prize winner to commemorate Stefan Heym. Both Stefan Heym and Amos Oz are equally critical observers and politically active citizens.

Ladies and gentlemen,
This was probably already the case in 1931, when the Chemnitz schoolboy Helmut Flieg contributed his critical poem about the deployment of German officers in the Chinese army to the "Volksstimme". This was followed by his relegation from grammar school and soon afterwards the emigration of the Jewish merchant's son from Kaßberg. From Prague, Stefan Heym, as he now calls himself, goes to Chicago to study and becomes a journalist.

He finally returns to Germany in the service of the US Army. In Chemnitz, he searches for traces of his childhood, his family, traces of familiarity. It is as Amos Oz says in his "Story of Love and Darkness": memories drive us. And they drive us. For a lifetime.

Stefan Heym stayed in the USA until 1952, when he could no longer and no longer wanted to live there. As a staunch anti-fascist, he moved to the GDR. But even here, his life's theme and leitmotif never left him. In his search for truth, he increasingly encounters contradictions. And - he seeks conflict. Among other things, this led to his expulsion from the Writers' Association in 1979.

Like so many others, Stefan Heym experienced the fall of communism as an event that changed the world from one day to the next - and yet did not signify the start of a new life for everyone. Stefan Heym remains critical and uncomfortable. His speech as President of the German Bundestag in 1994 is an eloquent testimony to this and at the same time an invitation to debate.

Ladies and Gentlemen
In 2001, Stefan Heym became an honorary citizen of the city of his birth. It is only in a united Germany that Lord Mayor Dr Peter Seifert and the city councillors have the opportunity to bestow this honour on Stefan Heym. I will never forget the ceremony and the meeting with him and his wife. I had the impression that the honorary citizenship really meant something to him. And perhaps - I hope so - it reconciled him with his home town. Dear Mrs Heym, I would like to thank you very much for remaining connected to our city.

Ladies and gentlemen,
An author who seeks the truth must be present. Not in his material, not in his characters - but in his view of the world. Incorruptible observation is the key that opens the door to realisation.

This is also the case with Amos Oz - without doubt one of the most outstanding writers of our time. In his works, a gift for observation and a feel for political culture merge with brilliant language. Layer by layer, Amos Oz strips away the obvious to find the essential. Like Stefan Heym, he often reflects the big world in miniature. He looks at relationships or families to show that political circumstances or social conflicts follow similar patterns.

"Hell and paradise can be found in every room," writes Amos Oz. "Behind every door. Under every marriage bedspread. It's like this: a little malice - and man prepares hell for man. A little compassion, a little generosity - and man prepares paradise for man."[1]

Ladies and gentlemen,
Stefan Heym and Amos Oz, they give us the realisation that is an absolute prerequisite for truth. Our past is part of our present identity. The confrontation with what was and what is by no means means the solution to all conflicts.

But literature helps us to endure what we see. At the same time, it sharpens our focus on those questions that remain the most crucial at all times and under all circumstances. These are the questions of morality and attitude, of integrity and responsibility, of courage and humanity.

Ladies and gentlemen,
Today, for the first time, we are awarding the International Stefan Heym Prize of the City of Chemnitz. We are doing this to honour a great son of our city. But we are also doing so in the knowledge that the values for which this award stands demand our attention time and again.

Thank you.