The Böll Foundation refused to participate in the presentation of the Hannah Arendt Prize to Masha Hesse

The offices of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Berlin and Bremen decided not to attend the ceremony of awarding the Hannah Arendt Prize for political thought to journalist Masha Hessen. This was announced by the founders of the award. The handover was supposed to take place on December 15.

The administration of the town hall in the city of Bremen also withdrew its permission to use the upper hall of the town hall for the ceremony. The Bremen Senate and the Bell Foundation finance the prize from their own funds.

Initially, the German-Israeli Society in Bremen called for the cancellation of the award ceremony and withdrawal of the award. In an open letter to the sponsors of the prize, it is said: “The statements in Hessen’s article entitled “In the Shadows of the Holocaust” in The New Yorker make it clear that this honor will be given to a person whose thinking is in clear contrast to that of Hannah Arendt. Such an honor would contradict the necessary in this essay, Masha Hessen downplays the threat posed by organizations calling for a political, economic, and cultural boycott of Israel because it is allegedly a “colonial state.” However, this boycott movement paves the way for Hamas terrorists everywhere , who staged a terrorist attack on October 7, presented themselves as liberation fighters or even recognized themselves as heroes.”

The German-Israeli community also emphasizes its indignation at the comparison of the Gaza Strip with “a Jewish ghetto in an Eastern European country occupied by Nazi Germany.”

The Deputy Prime Minister of the state of Bremen, Bjorn Fekker, condemned Hesse’s statements, calling them outrageous and noting that they should not be “given a stage”. The politician emphasized that “against this background, the event cannot, as previously planned, be held in the town hall.” He also called on the founders to refuse to present the award and said that he would not attend the event if it was held. The German media also subjected Hessen’s essay to harsh criticism, emphasizing its unscientific eclecticism.

Despite the criticism and cancellation of the ceremony, the prize will be awarded at 11 a.m. on Saturday, December 16 in a “close circle”, inform the founders of the award. In the publication, they note that the Hannah Arendt Prize “represents an open culture of dispute, the admission of various opposing opinions and tolerance for them, unpleasant points of view, new principles of understanding and public debates that are conducted on the basis of deep knowledge.”

• In August, the international jury chose Masha Hessen as a candidate for the award, emphasizing that she “belongs to the most courageous chroniclers of time.” Her books and essays, as well as public speeches, “open up new perspectives on the accelerated world in accelerated change,” argued the jury.
• The Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought was established in 1994 and is awarded to people who contribute to public political discussion in the tradition of this German philosopher. The prize amount is 10,000 euros.