They've announced that Peter Stamm will be awarded the Friedrich-Hölderlin-Preis.
No, not the biennial €10,000 Friedrich-Hölderlin-Preis awarded by 'the university and university city Tübingen', but rather the annual €20,000 Friedrich-Hölderlin-Preis awarded by the city of Bad Homburg -- because, of course, you can never have enough Friedrich-Hölderlin-Preise .....
(Hey, I love Hölderlin as much as anyone -- the onion-paper Insel paperback edition of his poems is one of the few dozen in my I'll-take-this-everywhere esential library pile -- but surely a fundamental rule governing the naming of prizes is: don't name your prize exactly the same as someone else already did.)
The Bad Homburg winners-list is also a bit more impressive (also: longer), with winners including Sarah Kirsch, Friederike Mayröcker, Ernst Jandl, and Durs Grünbein. Still, Tübingen can boast, among others, Uwe Kolbe and Marcel Beyer; not bad, either way.
Several Stamm titles are under review at the complete review:
The Bad Homburg winners-list is also a bit more impressive (also: longer), with winners including Sarah Kirsch, Friederike Mayröcker, Ernst Jandl, and Durs Grünbein. Still, Tübingen can boast, among others, Uwe Kolbe and Marcel Beyer; not bad, either way.
Several Stamm titles are under review at the complete review: