28 August 2024
Speech on the occasion of the Goethe Medal Award 2024
- Check against delivery -
I am delighted that today we are honouring three strong women with the Goethe Medal for their services to the German language and international cultural exchange: Claudia Cabrera from Mexico, Iskra Geshoska from North Macedonia and Carmen Romero Quero from Chile. All three work quietly, but quite forcefully make an impact in their own societies and far beyond. With their cultural work, they nourish hope for a better world, for peaceful, tolerant, and creative coexistence in challenging times. Considering today’s oppressive political crises and social divisions, this work is essential for survival. And I’ve made “hope” – hope in the power of culture – the motto of my greeting today.
I am delighted that, as in 2017, from a whole array of deserving candidates the jury selected three women as particularly worthy of the award! Until 1989, there were only eight women among the large assemblage of awardees, just three per cent of all medal recipients. Since then, their share has risen slowly but steadily to a total of one third. I, for one, am hopeful that the Goethe Medal has become more “feminine,” as is evident at today’s award ceremony.
It’s true: The world situation is depressing. And it’s become even more depressing since last year’s awarding of the Goethe Medal. The unrelenting harshness of the war in Ukraine is now in its third year and there is no end in sight. Since the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel in October last year, the Middle East has also been in flames, with countless civilian casualties and endless suffering, especially for women and children. Here too, given the irreconcilability of the opponents and their cynical political calculations, a peaceful solution seems to be moving further and further from reach. The war in Sudan also continues to drive hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.
A look at Europe doesn’t necessarily make us more confident, for example, when we look at Georgia, where numerous creative artists are demonstrating against the government and especially the culture minister, who wants to restrict civil liberties and restructure the cultural sector in a right-wing nationalist way. Something similar is happening in Slovakia, Hungary, and several other countries. The results of the European elections and the forecasts for the upcoming state elections here in Thuringia, Saxony, and Brandenburg are equally alarming evidence of the advance of radical right-wing parties, which are attracting many citizens with their anti-democratic attitudes and backward-looking promises. Expressions of racism, anti-Semitism, and hostility towards Muslims, as well as Islamist fundamentalist calls for terrorism, are heard time and again. Irreconcilable polarisation, with hateful slogans being shouted, make it almost impossible for us to listen to each other.
The situation is also bleak, or at least precarious, in the countries from which this year’s awardees come. In North Macedonia, a right-wing nationalist party took over the government a few months ago; rampant cronyism and corruption as well as the constant new hurdles to EU accession are causing frustration. And the state’s cultural policy aims above all to seal off a Macedonian identity against everything foreign and leaves little room for an independent scene.
The rule of law and democracy prevail in Chile, but a large social divide, unequal educational opportunities, and generational conflicts polarise society. Drafts of a new constitution that would create more social justice – as demanded in mass social protests – have failed for the time being. And even fifty years after the end of the Pinochet dictatorship, public reappraisal of human rights violations is still faltering.
Mexico is struggling with an even more drastic gap between rich and poor, with drug-related crime and corruption, and numerous human rights violations. The country has one of the highest murder rates in the world; it is deadly for journalists, women, and environmental activists. In October, the first female president – the candidate of a centre-left populist party – will take office. But whether she will be able to pacify the bitter cultural battle between conservatives and left-wing populists is more than questionable.
All in all, it’s an outlook that seems to give little cause for hope. And yet in the USA we are currently witnessing how Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are changing the mood and – like Barack Obama sixteen years ago – declaring a case for hope. “Hope is making a comeback,” was the slogan at the Democratic convention. Our awardees are also important examples of people whose commitment makes a big difference in their countries. In the run-up to today’s ceremony, I asked them what gives them hope. Their answers form a veritable trilogy of the hope that cultural work can evoke.
Iskra Geshoska sees no reason for hope in North Macedonia with its desolate state cultural policy, which hinders critical dialogue and curtails freedom. I asked her why she doesn’t leave the country despite this. “Because I feel responsible for society and the community,” she replied. “I am convinced that things can only be changed through persistent commitment. Culture and artistic production, especially the independent cultural sector, have the power to intervene politically and change the social landscape. [...] Motivating young artists and creatives to establish independent platforms through alternative, self-organised learning and action: that is my personal motivation to stay and work in North Macedonia.”
Solidarity networks of creative artists who create spaces of resistance in a corrupt and authoritarian society: this is the hope-giving power of Iskra Geshoska’s cultural work. She is concerned with protective spaces in which cultural criticism can be practised and utopias of other forms of coexistence can be nurtured.
Carmen Romero also draws her hope from the new forms of community that cultural work can enable. In her work, it is theatre that exemplifies a model of free, solidary togetherness. It is where social, ethnic, and religious boundaries are overcome and at the same time the richness of cultural differences and traditional roots are respected. “Theatre is a nation,” she wrote to me, “and I celebrate belonging to this nation because it is the perfect utopia of what the world could be. A community that resonates with each other, where neither religion nor social differences separate us. We can breathe in the same space without having to kill each other. I come from a country with deep roots that we were not aware of until art took it upon itself to show them to me. I believe in the regenerative power of the earth and listen to the voices of our Indigenous people to calm our minds and return us to the universe we belong to. I believe in the freedom of peoples and in democracy.”
As a translator, Claudia Cabrera pursues an initially more solitary activity than the theatre-maker Romero. Her networks with other people and cultures are conveyed through the literary works that need to be understood, interpreted, and transported into another language. But as a cultural manager, she also makes literature resonate in personal encounters of readings and workshops and inspires her audience with new perspectives on the world. “What can give us hope in times when so many bad things are happening?” she asks and answers, “I draw hope from the beauty that still exists in the world despite everything. The beauty of nature, but also that of art: be it Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony or Mexican murals. Because true beauty is rebellious and gives us courage – even and especially in dark times. I, as a translator, am privileged. Because my work consists of translating the beauty of literature from one language into another.”
Cultural work that creates protective spaces and resistant networks; cultural work as a lived utopia of free togetherness and crossing borders; and beauty as a source of strength and courage: these are three ideas that can give us hope in the coming days and months.
I would like to wish the awardees the strength to continue to nurture their hopes and to realise them together with others. Congratulations! And if the networks of the Goethe-Institut and the awarding of the Goethe Medal can support your work, that would make me very happy!
And now I wish us a thought-provoking, but hopeful ceremony! Our awardees are certainly beacons of hope!