Georg Büchner Prize
| Georg Büchner Prize | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Country | Germany |
| Presented by | Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung |
| Reward(s) | €50,000 |
| First awarded | 1923 |
| Official website | http://www.deutscheakademie.de |
The Georg Büchner Prize (German: Georg-Büchner-Preis) is—along with the Goethe Prize—the most important literary prize for the German language. The award is named after Georg Büchner, author of Woyzeck. The Georg Büchner Prize is awarded annually for authors "writing in the German language who have notably emerged through their oeuvre as essential contributors to the shaping of contemporary German cultural life". Similar prizes are the Miguel de Cervantes Prize for authors writing in the Spanish language, and the Camões Prize awarded to writers in the Portuguese language.
The Georg Büchner Prize was created in 1923 in memory of Georg Büchner and was only given to artists who came from or were closely tied to Büchner's home of Hesse. It was first awarded in 1923. Among the early recipients were mostly visual artists, poets, actors, and singers.
In 1951, the prize changed to a general literary prize, awarded annually by the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung. It goes to German language authors, and the annual speech by the recipient takes place in Darmstadt. Since 2002, the prize has been endowed with €50,000.
Four winners of the Georg Büchner Prize, Günter Grass (1965), Heinrich Böll (1967), Elias Canetti (1972), and Elfriede Jelinek (1998) were awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in subsequent years. The Georg Büchner Prize is frequently seen as an indicator for potential future Nobel Prize winners writing in the German language. Most recently, however, the Swedish Academy in Stockholm preceded the German Academy for Language and Literature in awarding a prolific writer from the German sprachraum. Herta Müller received the Nobel Prize in Literature but has not yet been awarded the Georg Büchner Prize. Other writers who were omitted but received the Nobel Prize in Literature were Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, and Nelly Sachs.
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