{"id":183,"date":"2006-05-31T03:08:00","date_gmt":"2006-05-31T11:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=183"},"modified":"2006-05-31T03:08:00","modified_gmt":"2006-05-31T11:08:00","slug":"the-ongoing-saga-of-handkes-heine-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/the-ongoing-saga-of-handkes-heine-prize\/","title":{"rendered":"The ongoing saga of Handke's Heine Prize"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So now they took the prize away from Handke. The city councellors of D\u00fcsseldorf decided to save their cultural-political butts & play it pc. Here a few links to the current installment of the Heine-Handke \u201cscandal,\u201d via those nice people at signandsite<\/a>:<\/div>\n

<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

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Heinrich Heine Prize for Peter Handke revoked<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

After being selected as this year\u2019s winner of the coveted Heinrich Heine Prize<\/a> of the City of D\u00fcsseldorf (more here<\/a> and here<\/a>), Austrian author<\/a> Peter Handke<\/b> has now been told he will not receive the award after all. After heated public criticism, the D\u00fcsseldorf City Council has announced it will revoke the prize<\/b>.<\/p>\n

Writing in Die Tageszeitung<\/b>, Gerrit Bartels roundly criticises<\/a> the decision to revoke the prize, saying that the \u201ceternal Peter Handke reflex<\/b>\u201d had led to things being handled in a slipshod way. \u201cCertainly, Handke\u2019s stubbornness and his statements on Milosevic\u2019s behalf are amply disconcerting. But one should also try to understand why Handke has consistently got so carried away and stuck in his ideas. Maybe then you can at least see what he\u2019s trying to get at. In the best democratic tradition people have to be able to<\/b> accept<\/b> that someone like Peter Handke should win the Heinrich Heine Prize.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also in Die Tageszeitung<\/b>, Wiglaf Droste writes<\/a>: \u201cOf course it\u2019s possible that Peter Handke has got a screw loose<\/b>. If you go on a search for the truth, you can also get lost along the way. But anyone that believes they automatically have truth on their side just because they belong to the overwhelming majority should not be listened to in the first place. A writer has every right <\/b>to his own view of the world. Telling him to be more media-friendly is tantamount to seeking to abolish the writing profession<\/b>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thomas Steinfeld, head of the literary desk at the S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung<\/b> (where Peter Handke\u2019s call for \u201cJustice for Serbia\u201d launched the heated debate around Handke\u2019s support for Serbia and Milosovic), reacts angrily<\/a> to the decision by the D\u00fcsseldorf City Council: \u201cThat<\/b>\u2018s not how things are done<\/b>. The mayor of D\u00fcsseldorf <\/b>can\u2019t ring up Peter Handke and say he\u2019ll get the Heinrich Heine Prize this year, if just a few days later the City Council says no, on second thoughts he won\u2019t win it after all. That\u2019s not how things are done. The former historian, museum director and now politician Christoph St\u00f6lzl<\/b> can\u2019t be member of a literary jury and then \u2013 as soon as a democratic decision meets with public criticism \u2013 go around saying the person who won wasn\u2019t his man. That\u2019s not how things are done. And now all manner of politicians<\/b> are piping up and calling the decision \u2018a poor choice\u2019, \u2018unthinkable\u2019 and \u2018insensitive\u2019, while leaving no one in any doubt that they\u2019ve never read anything Peter Handke has written on the subject. That\u2019s not how things are done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tilman Krause of Die Welt<\/b> however applauds<\/a> the intervention of the Dusseldorf city council: \u201cWhat luck that at least the policitians in this country have some sense!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Handke himself has now joined the debate in a short article entitled \u201cWhat I did not say\u201d in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung<\/b>: \u201cI have never denied or played down<\/b>, not to speak of sanctioned, any of the massacres in Yugoslavia from 1991 \u2013 1995.\u201d Handke continues that although he is often criticised for having one of the characters in his play \u201cDie Fahrt im Einbaum\u201d (the voyage in the dugout) defend the Serbs, \u201cthe truth is that in the play (page 65), one figure says: \u2018You know it was we who protected you from the Asian hordes<\/b> for centuries. And without us you\u2019d still be eating with your fingers<\/b>. Who was it that introduced the knife and fork to the Western world?\u2019 But: is it necessary to point out that this is a parody? or that this minor character\u2019s name is \u2018Irrer<\/b>\u2018 (Madman)?\u201d<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So now they took the prize away from Handke. The city councellors of D\u00fcsseldorf decided to save their cultural-political butts & play it pc. Here a few links to the current installment of the...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}