Man warned me about this speech. I take the liberty of holding them nonetheless. In targeted circulars to publishers and editors, an attempt was made to spread doubts about the person of the prizewinner. What was that? Did you want to intimidate, warn, manipulate those involved? A pattern of action that I’ve been familiar with since my school days, and I know that Ines Geipel, too, grew up in the same restricted area, in the same socialist camp.
Forgive me, but I see that as an honor and confirms my suspicion that I made the right choice. One thing has to be said: It’s not about success in competitive sports, but about literature. It could also be about sport, about the GDR sports system in all its harshness, about blue pills, abuse, dependencies, abortions, about a few hundred people or thousands, minors, adults, who were threatening their health with consequences that were still unforeseeable at the time knowingly or unknowingly sacrificing for a few short-term victories. We are not dealing with sport here, as an organization of human immaturity, as Elfriede Jelinek says in her drama “Ein Sportstück”, a metaphor for things under which “violence creeps up”. Luckily, no medal is awarded here for winning a competition, at most a prize for literary merit. And this in the name of an author, Erich Loest, whose work and attitude attracted the most severe persecution in the SED state, about which the books by the author, who is being honored here, have repeatedly reported from a historical perspective. The New Man, his formation under ideal conditions, and the horror of it is the stuff she works on – understanding what happened to the bodies under the disciplining grasp of the Force.