German Foundation Withdraws From Awarding Jewish Journalist Hannah Arendt Prize Over New Yorker Essay
Masha Gessen, Russian-American journalist, speaks at the Leipzig Book Fair in 2019. (Photo by: Jan Woitas/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images)
The Heinrich Böll Foundation, aligned with Germany’s Green Party, has abruptly withdrawn from awarding the prestigious Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought to Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen.
The foundation’s decision, made in concert with the Bremen Senate, stems from Gessen’s recent New Yorker essay, titled In the Shadow of the Holocaust.
Gessen’s piece, published on December 9th, boldly critiques Germany’s policies towards Israel, including a scathing review of the Bundestag’s BDS resolution that brands the Israel boycott movement as anti-Semitic.
The journalist also raises the German crackdown on pro-Palestinian activism and freedom of expression within Germany’s cultural sphere. This suppression has led to the cancellation of various cultural events, including museum exhibitions, book awards, and artistic commissions.
The essay notably draws a stark parallel between the current plight of Gazans and the Jews confined in Nazi-era ghettos in Eastern Europe. Gessen graphically describes Gaza as a “hyperdensely populated, impoverished, walled-in compound” like those seen under Nazi German occupation. The journalist’s vivid portrayal of the ongoing Israeli onslaught in Gaza, highlighting the daily perils and death toll, including children, stirred backlash as well as praise.
The Bremen branch of the German-Israeli Society (DIG) made clear that it vehemently opposed Gessen’s views on Gaza in a pointed open letter. The DIG argued that awarding Gessen, a Jewish writer with a personal familial history intertwined with the Holocaust, would be a direct contradiction to the imperative fight against rising anti-Semitism.
The DIG’s call to suspend the prize, named after the renowned political theorist Hannah Arendt, itself has been critiqued as clashing with Arendt’s legacy as an activist against authoritarianism.
According to German newspaper Die Zeit, the prize presentation, originally set for next Friday in Bremen, will now occur in a different setting next Saturday without the participation of The Heinrich Böll Foundation — which has been instrumental in sponsoring the Hannah Arendt Prize since its inception in 1994.
