(ffm) Cultural Affairs Director Ina Hartwig inaugurated Bergen's new town clerk at the opening of the Berger Market on Friday, August 30. This year, the writer and poet Anja Kampmann will receive the prize of 20,000 euros and the right to live in the Town Writer's House for one year. At the same time, the previous town clerk Clemens Meyer says goodbye to the citizens.
"Free artistic writing and an office do not actually go together. There is one exception; that of the town clerk of Bergen, one of the most important literary prizes in Germany. In the vita of a writer or, as this year, a female writer, it occupies a prominent place," says head of culture Ina Hartwig.
This year's town writer, Anja Kampmann, was born in Hamburg in 1983; she has lived in Leipzig since studying at the German Literature Institute. In 2016, her well-received poetry collection "Proben von Stein und Licht" (Samples of Stone and Light) was published, and then in 2018 her first novel "Wie hoch die Wasser steigen" (How High the Waters Rise). Head of the Department of Culture Ina Hartwig expressly welcomes the choice as Bergen's 46th town writer: "I value Anja Kampmann as one of the most interesting up-and-coming German-language authors. I expressly welcome the fact that a writer who is still at the beginning of her artistic career is being awarded the Town Writer's Prize this year. We will certainly read and hear a lot more from her, even after this year here in Bergen."
The literature prize "Town Writer of Bergen" was created more than 45 years ago to bring the growing endangerment of the cultural asset, the German language, into public awareness and to counteract it. "Literature as a folk festival" is the motto of the annual inauguration in the marquee on the Berger market square. This year, photographer and actor Hanns Zischler will give the keynote speech.
The prize is awarded by a jury that includes both professional and citizen jurors. Since the prize was founded in 1974 by Franz Josef Schneider, numerous greats of contemporary German-language literature have been town clerks of Bergen - Wolfgang Koeppen, Eva Demski, Peter Kurzeck, Herta Müller, Peter Härtling and Ulrich Peltzer - to name just a few. They all accepted the key to the town writer's house "An der Oberpforte" and many of them took the opportunity to live and write in Bergen-Enkheim for a year.
