Prague/Sulzbach-Rosenberg, Germany, Dec 13 (CTK) – Czech Culture Minister Daniel Herman and Bavarian politician Bernd Posselt were awarded for their contribution to Czech-German understanding in the Bavarian town of Sulzbach-Rosenberg on Monday, the Czech Culture Ministry has announced.
Posselt (Christian Social Union of Bavaria, CSU) has been the spokesman for the Sudeten-German Landsmannschaft for a long time.
Herman (Czech Christian Democrats, KDU-CSL) is the first Czech minister who took part in the Sudeten-German Landsmannschaft meeting. The event was organised in Nuremberg in May.
The annual prize, Kunstpreis zur deutsch-tschechischen Verstandigung, is awarded by Czech and German associations – the Adalbert Stifter Association (from Munich), Collegium Bohemicum (Usti nad Labem, north Bohemia), the Brucke/Most foundation (Dresden), Prager Literaturhaus deutschsprachiger Autoren (Prague), and Pro arte vivend (Berlin).
In connection with the prize, the ministry quotes Herman as saying that new impulses are needed to maintain the Czech-German neighbourly relations and suppress old prejudices.
“Absurd reviving of the totally unacceptable principle of collective guilt and rejection based on ethnicity is a sad evidence of the populism of those who deliberately arouse fear of a non-existent enemy,” Herman said.
It is necessary to defend the European project of peace and freedom against the threat of omnipresent populism and short-sighted national interests, he said.
Honorary prizes were awarded to writer Radek Friedrich, from Decin, north Bohemia, and Alice Scholze, from a Czech-German family association from Berlin.
The prize for Czech-German understanding has been awarded since 1994. Its winners include Czech writer Pavel Kohout, based in Vienna, former Czechoslovak foreign minister Jiri Dienstbier and former German president Richard von Weizsacker.
