Lukas Bärfuss wins prestigious Georg Büchner Prize
November 4, 2019
German's most esteemed literary prize has been awarded to the prodigious Swiss author, playright and essayist, who was praised for examining the "fundamental existential condition of modern life."
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The Georg Büchner Prize in 2019 was awarded to Swiss writer and playwright Lukas Bärfuss during a ceremony on November 2 in Darmstadt.
The prize, given by the German Academy of Language and Literature to a German-language author "who has made a significant contribution to contemporary German cultural life," is worth €50,000 ($56,000) and is considered the most important literary award in Germany.
Exploring the modern condition
"With Lukas Bärfuss, the German Academy of Language and Literature honors an outstanding narrator and playwright of contemporary German-language literature," stated the jury in its reasoning for the selection of the 47-year-old Swiss writer.
"With great stylistic assurance and a wealth of formal variations, his dramas and novels always find new and different ways to explore the fundamental existential condition of modern life," the jury statement continued.
10 reasons why Reclam Publishers' little yellow books are so popular
Widely available, slim and trim, and affordable, too: Reclam paperbacks have been around for more than 150 years, filling the shelves of German bookshops and libraries. Here's why Germany loves the small yellow books.
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They're on every German student's reading list
The stack is high: There are now some 3,500 titles in Reclam's Universal Library ("Universal-Bibliothek") series of literary classics, including many by famous German writers and artists (above). But let's not kid ourselves: Who honestly managed to read more than 100 during their studies?
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They're nice and small
Each German household probably holds more of these little books than meets the eye. They're so small that they easily disappear behind larger volumes.
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Some titles are bilingual
Along with the yellow booklets in German, there are the orange bilingual volumes, while the red ones are in a foreign language, and the the blue ones offer study guides to accompany the literary works.
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Their covers that show they've been loved
Scribbled and stained covers can be found on many well-loved, or at least well-used, Reclam volumes. It's more proof that these books didn't just sit on a shelf.
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They're witnesses of the past
Some authors' names might trigger nostalgia or chills, but they all have a home in the Reclam format.
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Documenting ideas
Reclam publishes more than just the classics of literature. Speeches, theories and other essays are also included in the series, such as this book of three speeches by contemporary German political activist Jan Philipp Reemtsma.
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They include must-reads
Reclam includes books that every student should read, including "The Diary of Anne Frank."
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They're a template for creativity
Scribble, doodle and scrawl: Whatever helps when a class is really boring. The notes of long ago can make for interesting reads on top of the book — literally.
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They inspired copycats
Penguin Classics were first created 80 year ago. Acclaimed graphic designer Willy Fleckhaus definitely drew on the original Reclam model for the covers he designed for German publisher Suhrkamp (above right).
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They're cheap!
If thick, expensive tomes can turn off prospective readers, the Reclam books' low cost added to their enduring popularity.
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Those are qualities that also characterize Bärfuss' essays, in which he fearlessly scrutinizes today's world while offering a curious and appreciative perspective.
Among the award-winning writer's best-known works are the novels One Hundred Days (2012), about the genocide in Rwanda; Koala (2014), the harrowing story of his brother's suicide; and the stage plays The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents (2003) and Oil (2009), about the global dependence on fossil fuel that premiered at the Deutsches Theater Berlin.
An illustrious legacy
The namesake for the Georg Büchner Prize is the dramatist and revolutionary who was born in the German state of Hesse, and whose most famous work, Woyzeck, was still unfinished when he died aged 23 in Zurich in 1837.
The first prize in Georg Büchner's honor was awarded in 1923, but has been bestowed by the Academy to an author writing in German every year since 1951. Former winners include German-language literary greats such as Erich Kästner(1957), Günter Grass (1965) and Thomas Bernhard (1979), while more recent recipients include Sibylle Lewitscharoff (2013), Jan Wagner (2017) and, last year, the writer Terézia Mora.
