Jubilee year 2023
Learn more about the 375th anniversary of the Peace of Westphalia.
The Peace Prize
Every two years, Osnabrück awards the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize.
Erich-Maria-Remarque-peace-prize"We would like this year's Remarque Peace Prize to be understood as a sign of hope: the logic of war should not have the last word. The last word must be the language of humanity, which also unites people of hostile states. The violence of war must not silence the language of literature and art," says the chair of the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize jury, Prof. Dr. Susanne Menzel-Riedl, President of the University of Osnabrück.
"That is why we hoped to invite a writer from Russia and an artist from Ukraine to Osnabrück to honor them with the Remarque Peace Prize and the special prize," adds the jury's vice chair, Osnabrück Mayor Katharina Pötter.
"We are pleased that the Russian writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya will accept the Peace Prize and the Ukrainian draftsman Sergiy Maidukov the Special Prize, but at the same time we have to accept that as long as Russia's war of aggression on Ukraine has not ended, neither of them will be able to take a podium," Menzel-Riedl and Pötter explain. "Therefore, we will present the award to Lyudmila Yevgenyevna Ulitskaya and Sergiy Maidukov on different dates."
Every two years since 1991, the city of Osnabrück has awarded the Peace Prize named after Osnabrück-born writer Erich Maria Remarque. This year, the award will be presented for the 16th time.
The Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize, endowed with 25,000 euros, goes to the Russian writer Lyudmila Yevgenyevna Ulitskaya, who has been living in exile in Berlin since March 2022. She is considered one of Russia's most important contemporary writers. She expresses her critical attitude towards the then Soviet and now Russian regime in novels and stories that not only reflect the Russian tragedy of the 20th century, a century of tyranny and genocide. She also speaks out against Putin's current war policy and was one of the signatories of an open letter, calling the war against Ukraine a "disgrace", a "man's madness". Ulitskaya is considered the "voice of another Russia" and her books have been banned in Russia since February 2023.
On the news of the awarding of the Remarque Peace Prize to her, she wrote back:
"Receiving the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize is a great honor for me as a Russian author. When I learned that the prize had been awarded to me, I reached for Remarque once again and, just as in my youth, could hardly tear myself away from it.
I thank the jury for the honor bestowed upon me. I turned eighty a few days ago, and this award is the best birthday present I could ever have dreamed of. Thank you so much."
The awarding of the main prize to Lyudmila Ulitzkaya will take place on Thursday, June 22, 2023, which is also the 125th birthday of Erich Maria Remarque. To mark the occasion, the ceremony will be integrated into a large evening event in the OsnabrückHalle, at which the Dutch band "De Kift", for example, will play. The laudatory speech will be given by Prof. Dr. Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, member of the jury and director of the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism in Berlin. The public is cordially invited to attend this event.
Admission is free - with prior registration.
Ukrainian cartoonist Sergiy Maidukov will be awarded this year's special prize. Since the beginning of the war against Ukraine, his illustrations depicting the everyday life of war in Kyiv and other cities in Ukraine have been printed in various newspapers around the world, including ZEITmagazin, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. As a volunteer, he visited Irpin and Butscha shortly after their liberation, as well as other besieged cities, and recorded what he experienced and saw in his drawings. An exhibition will make some of his illustrations available to the public.
He said it was an honor for him to be awarded, but asked for understanding that he could not come. Since leaving Ukraine for cultural events is not possible at the moment, he will come to Osnabrück at another time to receive the award. Moreover, Sergiy Maidukov does not want to attend the central award ceremony also for personal reasons: "Taking care of my psychics, I avoid hard feelings these times, I have enough of a Russian presence in my life so far, so I would come just another day than the Ceremony. I would be honored to come and to meet you and the team live and say thank you live" [Taking care of my psychics, I avoid hard feelings these times. I have enough Russian presence in my life so far, so I would just come on a different day than the ceremony. I would be honored to come and meet you and the team live and say thank you live].
The Editorial Director of ZEITmagazin, Christoph Amend, will also be present at the presentation of the award to Sergiy Maidukov and will have a conversation with him about his experiences and his illustrations, which will be presented in an exhibition.
*February 21, 1943 in Davlekanovo, Bashkiria.
Lyudmila Yevgenyevna Ulitskaya is a Russian writer who combines the Russian and Jewish narrative traditions with modern storytelling. She studied biology with a degree in genetics and worked as a geneticist at the Academy Institute in Moscow from 1967, but was dismissed for illegally copying and distributing samizdat literature. She then worked for two years at the Jewish Chamber Music Theater as a literary consultant before establishing herself as a freelance writer and publicist. In 1983, her first collection of stories was published by the State Children's Book Publishing House. With the publication of Sonetschka (1992), Lyudmila Ulitskaya was discovered as a prose writer; in the same year, her first short story was also published in Germany, where her work was made known to a wider audience, especially in television programs by Elke Heidenreich. Lyudmila Ulitskaya's books have been translated into 17 languages.
In 2012, she was involved in the protests against President Putin. In 2014, she lamented the "unprecedented manipulation" of the public by propaganda, whose lies broke all records. On April 28, 2016, she was the victim of a Zelyonka attack, carried out by members of the "National Liberation Movement." Ulitskaya commented that these "poor, unfortunate and manipulated idiots" were in the service of the Kremlin.
In February 2022, she signed an appeal by several dozen Russian artists and writers calling the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces a "disgrace" and demanding an immediate end to the fighting.
Ulitskaya is praised as an incorruptible writer. In a haunting way, she brings together the Russian and Jewish narrative traditions with modern storytelling, according to the citation for the Austrian State Prize for European Literature, which is awarded annually for the complete literary works of a European author.
Ulitzkaja has been in Berlin since early March 2022.
Sergiy Maidukov (born 1981) is one of the most famous illustrators of Ukraine. He has stayed in Kyiv and draws from there what he sees and experiences these days. Already in March 2022 he began to publish illustrations regularly in the column "Diary from Kyiv" of ZEITmagazin.
He captured the first scenes of the war right after the invasion began: "My anxiety levels were so high, I had to calm down somehow, and I was alone. So I took my iPad and did what I always do: draw," he tells ZEITmagazin in an interview. Maidukov is the only one of his family to stay in Kyiv. "First, because I love Kyiv, and second, because I want to resist," the illustrator says. "I would give anything to live in a free and democratic Ukraine - anything except my life."
He visited the cities of Irpin and Butcha shortly after their liberation, as well as the city and oblast of Kharkiv during the siege in the summer of 2022, Bachmut (including the front line) at the end of September, Izium, as well as other cities and towns, recording what he experienced in his drawings.
He has been working as an illustrator since 2011 and has since worked with various magazines and foreign media such as The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times and others. His clients include Google, Adobe, British Royal Dance Academy, Kyiv Central Department Store and other major brands.
Maidukov is a prolific artist, completing more than 120 illustrations in a year. He draws all the time because he believes quantity becomes quality. His fast pace, great appetite for work and unique style have made him a valuable illustrator.
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