The eternal critic
Posted on Oktober 26, 2021
„The eternal critic“
Feature in der Deutschen Welle
DW | 05.10.2021
German singer Wolf Biermann shows solidarity with Belarusian activists
The 84-year-old German singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann is giving his 2020 OVID Prize to Belarusian activist Maria Kolesnikova.
He tells DW why.
On October 5, singer-songwriter, poet and former East German dissident, Wolf Biermann, will be presented with the OVID Prize for his life’s work as a poet at the German National Library in Frankfurt..
The 84-year-old poet and former dissident has announced that he will pass on the prize awarded by the PEN Center of German-Speaking Writers Abroad „without thinking twice“ to Belarusian opposition activist Maria Kolesnikova, who has been imprisoned since 2020.
Kolesnikova is one of the best-known faces of the Belarusian protest movement and was sentenced to 11 years in a prison camp in Minsk in early September. Her lawyer Lyudmila Kazak will therefore receive the award on behalf of the opposition politician.
The sentence was handed down almost a year after Kolesnikova’s arrest during protests against President Alexander Lukashenko. She was found guilty of attempting to illegally seize power.
