Hannah Arendt Prize
The Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought (German: Hannah-Arendt-Preis für politisches Denken) is a prize awarded to individuals representing the tradition of political theorist Hannah Arendt, especially in regard to totalitarianism.[1] It was instituted by the German Heinrich Böll Foundation (affiliated with the Alliance 90/The Greens) and the government of Bremen in 1994,[2] and is awarded by an international jury.[3] The prize money is €10,000.[4][5]
Controversy[edit]
In 2023, the German-Israeli Society Bremen chapter chair Hermann Kuhn wrote an open letter calling for a suspension of Masha Gessen's prize out of objection to their essay "In the Shadow of the Holocaust" in The New Yorker. Gessen compared the Blockade of the Gaza Strip to Jewish ghettos established by Nazi Germany, stating “the ghetto is being liquidated” in the context of the 2023 Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. The Heinrich Böll Foundation initially announced it would not sponsor the award, then later announced that the award would be presented in a smaller ceremony.[13][14]
In response to criticisms, Gessen said "Hannah Arendt wouldn’t have gotten the Hannah Arendt prize if you applied those kinds of criteria to it," and referenced Arendt's frequent comparisons of Israeli policies and ideologies to Nazi Germany. In The New Yorker essay they quoted Arendt's 1948 letter that compared Menachem Begin's Herut party to the Nazis.[13]