Petrarca-Preis was a European literary and translation award named after the

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

Francesco Petrarca Francesco Petrarca (; 20 July 1304 – 18/19 July 1374), commonly anglicized as Petrarch (), was a scholar and poet of early Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited ...

or Petrarch. Founded in 1975 by German art historian and publisher

Hubert Burda Hubert Burda (born 9 February 1940) is a German billionaire publisher. He is the owner, publisher and general partner of Hubert Burda Media, a global media company of more than 600 media products, including websites, print magazines and other br ...

, it was primarily designed for contemporary European poets, but some occasional non-Europeans appear in the list of laureates. The award was first distributed over a twenty-year period (1975–95) and included the categories Literature and Translation. Then it was followed for a decade (1999–2009) by a

Hermann-Lenz-Preis Hermann-Lenz-Preis was a literary prize of Germany 1999–2009. Recipients * 1999: Josef W. Janker * 2000: Johannes Kühn * 2001: Ralf Rothmann * 2002: Erich Wolfgang Skwara * 2003: Joseph Zoderer * 2004: Walter Kappacher * 2005: Franz W ...

and resumed in 2010. The first jury consisted of

fluxus Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...

participant

Bazon Brock Bazon Brock (born Jürgen Johannes Hermann Brock, 2 June 1936) is a German art theorist and critic, multi-media generalist and artist. He is considered a member of Fluxus. He was a professor of aesthetics at the Hochschule für bildende Künste ...

, poets Michael Krüger and

Nicolas Born Nicolas Born (31 December 1937 in Duisburg – 7 December 1979 in Lüchow-Dannenberg) was a German writer. Nicolas Born was – together with Rolf Dieter Brinkmann – one of the most important and most innovative German poets of his generatio ...

, and novelist

Peter Handke Peter Handke (; born 6 December 1942) is an Austrian novelist, playwright, translator, poet, film director, and screenwriter. He was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature "for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored t ...

. When the prize resumed in 2010, Peter Handke and Michael Krüger still were on the jury, together with the authors

Alfred Kolleritsch Alfred Kolleritsch (16 February 1931 – 29 May 2020) was an Austrian journalist, poet and philosopher. He was born in Eichfeld, Austria. He was the founder of the literary magazine '. He was the President of the , a cultural center in Graz ...

(himself awarded in 1978) and

Peter Hamm Peter Hamm (27 February 1937 – 22 July 2019) was a German poet, author, journalist, editor, and literary critic. He wrote several documentaries, including ones about Ingeborg Bachmann and Peter Handke. He wrote for the German weekly newsp ...

. "We want to support a national and regional culture in Europe", founder Hubert Burda initially said at the 2011 awards. An explicit goal was to watch out all over Europe for authors who gave a distinctive voice to their prevailing culture. The Petrarca-Preis consisted of €20,000, and it could be shared between several winners. The ceremony was usually held in places which Francesco Petrarch at some point visited.

Literature prize-winners and ceremony locations

* 1975

Rolf Dieter Brinkmann Rolf Dieter Brinkmann (16 April 1940 – 23 April 1975) was a German writer of poems, short stories, a novel, essays, letters, and diaries. Life and work Rolf Dieter Brinkmann is considered an important forerunner of the German so-called ''Pop-Li ...

(posthumously),

Mont Ventoux Mont Ventoux (; oc, Ventor, label= Provençal ) is a mountain in the Provence region of southern France, located some northeast of Carpentras, Vaucluse. On the north side, the mountain borders the department of Drôme. At , it is the highest ...

* 1976 Sarah Kirsch and Ernst Meister, Arquà Petrarca * 1977

Herbert Achternbusch Herbert Achternbusch ( Schild; 23 November 1938 – 10 January 2022) was a German film director, writer and painter. He began as a writer of avant-garde prose, such as the novel ''Die Alexanderschlacht'', before turning to low-budget films. He h ...

(who declined), Arquà Petrarca * 1978

Siena Siena ( , ; lat, Sena Iulia) is a city in Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the province of Siena. The city is historically linked to commercial and banking activities, having been a major banking center until the 13th and 14th centur ...

* 1979

Zbigniew Herbert Zbigniew Herbert (; 29 October 1924 – 28 July 1998) was a Polish poet, essayist, drama writer and moralist. He is one of the best known and the most translated post-war Polish writers. While he was first published in the 1950s (a volume title ...

Verona Verona ( , ; vec, Verona or ) is a city on the Adige River in Veneto, Italy, with 258,031 inhabitants. It is one of the seven provincial capitals of the region. It is the largest city municipality in the region and the second largest in nor ...

* 1980

Ludwig Hohl Ludwig Hohl (9 April 1904 – 3 November 1980) was a Swiss writer writing in the German language. Outside of literary mainstream, he spent most of his life in extreme poverty. He is still unknown to a wider public but has been praised by severa ...

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany Regions of Italy, region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilan ...

* 1981

Tomas Tranströmer Tomas Gösta Tranströmer (; 15 April 1931 – 26 March 2015) was a Swedish poet, psychologist and translator. His poems captured the long Swedish winters, the rhythm of the seasons and the palpable, atmospheric beauty of nature. Tranströmer's ...

Vicenza Vicenza ( , ; ) is a city in northeastern Italy. It is in the Veneto region at the northern base of the ''Monte Berico'', where it straddles the Bacchiglione River. Vicenza is approximately west of Venice and east of Milan. Vicenza is a thr ...

* 1982

Ilse Aichinger Ilse Aichinger (1 November 1921 – 11 November 2016) was an Austrian writer known for her accounts of her persecution by the Nazis because of her Jewish ancestry.

Sils Maria Sils im Engadin/Segl (german: Sils im Engadin; Romansh ), often also as ''Sils i.E./Segl'', is a municipality and village in the Maloja Region, Upper Engadine in the Swiss canton of the Grisons. It consists of two villages, Segl Maria (Romans ...

* 1983

Gerhard Meier Gerhard is Gerard, a name of Germanic origin and may refer to: Given name * Gerhard (bishop of Passau) (fl. 932–946), German prelate * Gerhard III, Count of Holstein-Rendsburg (1292–1340), German prince, regent of Denmark * Gerhard Barkhorn (19 ...

Vézelay Vézelay () is a commune in the department of Yonne in the north-central French region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté. It is a defensible hill town famous for Vézelay Abbey. The town and its 11th-century Romanesque Basilica of St Magdalene are de ...

* 1984 Gustav Januš, Avignon * 1987 Hermann Lenz,

Asolo Asolo () is a town and '' comune'' in the Veneto Region of northern Italy. It is known as "The Pearl of the province of Treviso", and also as "The City of a Hundred Horizons" for its mountain settings. History The town was originally a settlem ...

* 1988

Philippe Jaccottet Philippe Jaccottet (; 30 June 1925 – 24 February 2021) was a Swiss Francophone poet and translator. Life and work After completing his studies in Lausanne, he lived for several years in Paris. In 1953, he moved to the town of Grignan in ...

Trieste Trieste ( , ; sl, Trst ; german: Triest ) is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is the capital city, and largest city, of the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, one of two autonomous regions which are not subdivided into prov ...

* 1989 Jan Skácel,

Lucca Lucca ( , ) is a city and ''comune'' in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the Serchio River, in a fertile plain near the Ligurian Sea. The city has a population of about 89,000, while its province has a population of 383,957. Lucca is known as one ...

* 1990 Paul Wühr,

* 1991

John Berger John Peter Berger (; 5 November 1926 – 2 January 2017) was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet. His novel '' G.'' won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism '' Ways of Seeing'', written as an accompaniment to the ...

Piemonte it, Piemontese , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demographics1_title2 ...

* 1992

Michael Hamburger Michael Peter Leopold Hamburger (22 March 1924 – 7 June 2007) was a noted German-British translator, poet, critic, memoirist and academic. He was known in particular for his translations of Friedrich Hölderlin, Paul Celan, Gottfried Benn and ...

, Modena * 1993 Gennadij Ajgi,

Perugia Perugia (, , ; lat, Perusia) is the capital city of Umbria in central Italy, crossed by the River Tiber, and of the province of Perugia. The city is located about north of Rome and southeast of Florence. It covers a high hilltop and pa ...

* 1994 Helmut Färber,

Weimar Weimar is a city in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together with the neighbouri ...

* 1995 Les Murray,

Provence Provence (, , , , ; oc, Provença or ''Prouvènço'' , ) is a geographical region and historical province of southeastern France, which extends from the left bank of the lower Rhône to the west to the Italian border to the east; it is bor ...

* 2010 Pierre Michon and Erri De Luca, Salem Abbey * 2011

John Burnside John Burnside FRSL FRSE (born 19 March 1955) is a Scottish writer. He is one of only three poets (the others being Ted Hughes and Sean O'Brien) to have won both the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Poetry Prize for the same book (''Black C ...

and Florjan Lipuš,

Benediktbeuern Abbey Benediktbeuern Abbey (Kloster Benediktbeuern) is an institute of the Salesians of Don Bosco, originally a monastery of the Benedictine Order, in Benediktbeuern in Bavaria, near the Kochelsee, 64 km south-south-west of Munich. It is the oldes ...

* 2012

Miodrag Pavlović Miodrag Pavlović (Serbian Cyrillic: Миодраг Павловић; ; 28 November 1928 – 17 August 2014) was a Serbian poet, physician writer, critic and academic. Pavlović was twice nominated for the Nobel Literature Prize. Biography He gra ...

and

Kito Lorenc Kito Lorenc (4 March 1938 – 24 September 2017) was a German writer, lyric poet and translator. He was a grandson of the writer and politician Jakub Lorenc-Zalěski. Lorenc attended the Sorbian boarding high school in Cottbus from 1952 to 1956 ...

Marbach am Neckar Marbach am Neckar is a town about 20 kilometres north of Stuttgart. It belongs to the district of Ludwigsburg, the Stuttgart region and the European metropolitan region of Stuttgart. Marbach is known as the birthplace of Friedrich Schiller, to ...

* 2013

Adonis In Greek mythology, Adonis, ; derived from the Canaanite word ''ʼadōn'', meaning "lord". R. S. P. Beekes, ''Etymological Dictionary of Greek'', Brill, 2009, p. 23. was the mortal lover of the goddess Aphrodite. One day, Adonis was gored by ...

and Robin Robertson, München * 2014 Franz Mon and

Tomas Venclova Tomas Venclova (born 11 September 1937) is a Lithuanian poet, prose writer, scholar, philologist and translator of literature. He is one of the five founding members of the Lithuanian Helsinki Group. In 1977, following his dissident activities, ...

Bayerisches Nationalmuseum The Bavarian National Museum (german: Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, links=no) in Munich is one of the most important museums of decorative arts in Europe and one of the list of largest art museums in the world , largest art museums in Germany. S ...

, München

Translator Award

* 1987 Hanno Helbling * 1988 Georg Rudolf Lind * 1989 Felix Philipp Ingold * 1990 Fabjan Hafner * 1991

Ilma Rakusa Ilma Rakusa (born 2 January 1946) is a Swiss writer and translator. She translates French, Russian, Serbo-Croatian and Hungarian into German. Biography Ilma Rakusa was born in 1946 in Rimavská Sobota, Slovakia to a Slovenian father and a Hunga ...

* 1993

Hanns Grössel Hanns Grössel (18 April 1932, in Leipzig – 1 August 2012, in Cologne) was a German literary translator and broadcasting journalist. Biography He translated from Swedish, Danish, and French. He was also well known from his activities at the We ...

* 1994 Elisabeth Edl and Wolfgang Matz * 1995 Verena Reichel

References

External links

* {{Petrarch, state=collapsed Translation awards German literary awards Petrarch

Literature prize-winners and ceremony locations

Translator Award

References

Further reading

External links