Christina Morino is pictured in Hamburg, where she has received the €25,000 German Nonfiction Prize 2024. Image: Börsenverein
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
‘What It Actually Means To Live in a Democracy’
Announced this evening (June 11) in Hamburg, Christina Morina has won the 2024 German Nonfiction Prize for her book Tausend Aufbrüche: Die Deutschen und ihre Demokratie seit den 1980er Jahren, published in September by Siedler, one of the 45 imprints of Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe.
The title of the book can be translated as A Thousand Departures: The Germans and Their Democracy Since the 1980s, and Morina’s success is said to lie in her examination of the special circumstances of Germany’s East and West constructs in light of how a nationalist resurgence in the West is contributing support to the rise of right-wing populism.
It’s hard to miss the timeliness of this selection, of course, announced just two days after Sunday’s conclusion to the European Union parliamentary elections in which Germany’s right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) won a record number of votes “in a sharp rebuke to chancellor Olaf Scholz’s governing three-party coalition in Germany and a sign of the rightward political shift across the continent,” as Sarah Maslin Nir and Christopher F. Schuetze have written from Berlin at The New York Times.
The jury’s statement of rationale for the selection of Morina’s book takes this directly into account: “Democracies are in crisis all over the world, there is widespread agreement on that. But the question of what it actually means to live in a democracy often fades into the background.
“Christina Morina uses previously little-noticed sources to show how differently the understanding of democracy has developed in East and West Germany since the 1980s.
“Her methodically sophisticated and eye-opening contemporary historical analysis based on letters, petitions, and leaflets gives citizens of the GDR and the FRG a voice. With this book, Morina provides surprising and necessary impulses for current social discussions. Her book takes a lot of risks without polarizing: democracy is a process, not a state.”
That jury started with 225 books this year, and Morina receives the €25,000 (US$26,854) winner’s purse, each of her seven fellow shortlistees getting €2,500 (US$2,686).
In a statement from Karin Schmidt-Friderichs at the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, Germany’s publishers and booksellers association, she says, “The more information we have, the more important it becomes to link it in a classifying way.
“This makes texts that are well-researched, clever- and thought-through to the end all the more important, clarifying and explaining connections and placing current events in the larger context.
“The nonfiction books shortlisted here are multifaceted and inspiring. They stimulate and arouse curiosity. They give us the chance to train critical thinking—an essential tool with which we can meaningfully help shape the future.”
Chistina Morina
The jury this year has comprised:
- Sibylle Anderl (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)
- Julika Griem (Cultural Studies Institute Essen)
- Michael Hagner (ETH Zurich)
- Stefan Koldehoff, chair (Deutschlandfunk)
- Michael Lemling (Lehmkuhl Bookstore)
- Patricia Rahemipour (Institute for Museum Research, Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation)
- Katrin Vohland (Natural History Museum Vienna)
The German Nonfiction Prize 2024 Shortlist
Image: Christof Jacob
Repeating the 2024 competition’s shortlist:
- Jens Beckert, Verkaufte Zukunft: Warum der Kampf gegen den Klimawandel zu scheitern droht (Suhrkamp, March 2024)
- Sebastian Conrad, Die Königin: Nofretetes globale Karriere (Propyläen, February 2024)
- Ruth Hoffmann, Das deutsche Alibi: Mythos ‘Stauffenberg-Attentat’ – wie der 20. Juli 1944 verklärt und politisch instrumentalisiert wird (Goldmann, April 2024)
- Roman Köster, Müll: Eine schmutzige Geschichte der Menschheit (CH Beck, October 2023)
- Christina Morina, Tausend Aufbrüche: Die Deutschen und ihre Demokratie seit den 1980er Jahren (Siedler, September 2023)
- Frauke Rostalski, Die vulnerable Gesellschaft: Die neue Verletzlichkeit als Herausforderung der Freiheit (CH Beck, March 2024)
- Marcus Willaschek, Kant: Die Revolution des Denkens (CH Beck, August 2023)
- Moshe Zimmermann, Niemals Frieden? Israel am Scheideweg (Propyläen, February 2024)
The main sponsor of the award is the Deutsche Bank Foundation, and it also has support from the City of Hamburg, the ZEIT Foundation Ebelin, and Gerd Bucerius.
More from Publishing Perspectives on the German Nonfiction Prize is here, and more on publishing and book awards in general is here. More on the German market is here, and more on nonfiction is here.
