Düsseldorf (dpa / lnw) – As a sign of solidarity with Ukraine, the Ukrainian poet, writer and translator Yuri Andruchowytsch has been awarded the renowned Heine Prize 2022 by the city of Düsseldorf. The prize, which is endowed with 50,000 euros, will be presented to Andrukhowytsch in a ceremony on December 13, on the occasion of Heinrich Heine’s 225th birthday, the city announced on Tuesday.
With Andruchowytsch, Düsseldorf is honoring “a determined advocate of European values who is committed to a free and independent Ukraine with close ties to Europe,” said Mayor Stephan Keller (CDU) with a view to Russia’s war of aggression against neighboring Ukraine. The award is a reminder to “continue to show solidarity with Ukraine and the Ukrainian people”.
Keller informed Andrukhowych about the award by telephone. “I feel honored by so much attention from Germany,” said the 62-year-old author. “Now I will visit the Frankfurt Book Fair as a Heine Prize winner.”
Andrukhovych was “one of the leading Ukrainian novelists, poets and essayists of our time,” the jury justified the selection. He sharply criticizes attacks by secret services, the military and the judiciary. The sense of irony and the grotesque characterized his work in the best Heine tradition. Andrukhovych is “passionately committed to the European idea and represents the identity of Ukraine as a cultural nation,” it said. “He reminds Europe that freedom and human rights are on the front lines of defense in Ukraine.”
Andrukhovych became known, among other things, for his essays in which he described the post-Soviet reality of Ukraine in a critical and ironic manner. Under the impression of the illegal annexation of the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula Crimea by Russia in 2014, in the same year he published the anthology “Euromaidan. What’s at stake in Ukraine».
The award-winning author has also translated poems by Rainer Maria Rilke, prose by Robert Walser and Boris L. Pasternak, and Shakespeare into Ukrainian. In 2014 he took over the Siegfried Unseld Professorship for Slavic Studies and Central European Literature at the Humboldt University in Berlin.
The Heine Prize, awarded every two years, is named after the poet Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), who was born in Düsseldorf. The winners include Carl Zuckmayer, Sebastian Haffner, Walter Jens, Max Frisch, Elfriede Jelinek, Amos Oz and Simone Veil.
