Posted on 06/26/2006 11:04:21 AM PDT by Bokababe
Peter Handke has once again shocked the German public but this time in such a way that not even the most extreme do not dare criticize him for it. He has given up the alternative Heinrich Heine award that the actors and intellectuals of Berlin wished to bestow upon him in favor of the Serbs of Kosovo, who live "surrounded by barbed wire and tanks".
www.novosti.co.yu Vecernje Novosti daily, Belgrade
June 24, 2006 By D. Sekulic, June 23, 2006
Peter Handke has once again shocked the German public but this time in such a way that not even the most extreme do not dare criticize him for it. He has given up the alternative Heinrich Heine award that the actors and intellectuals of Berlin wished to bestow upon him in favor of the Serbs of Kosovo, who live "surrounded by barbed wire and tanks".
The Berlin Ensemble, headed by the also frequently controversial Klaus Peymann, the famous former head of the Vienna Burgtheater, recently organized donations with the help of numerous actors to award Handke an alternative Heinrich Heine award in the amount of 50,000 euros. The highly prestigious German language award was awarded to Peter Handke by an expert jury in Dusseldorf but the city council refused to accept its decision, stating quite literally that the award could not go to a writer who is of pro-Serb orientation!
The case provoked spirited discussion and many concluded that it represented an instance of brutal political censure of literature. Local politicians are judging one of the greatest living writers in the German language, warned eminent intellectuals, among them some, like Nobel laureate Gunther Grass who at one time advocated the bombing of Serbia.
At the same time Handke informed Peymann and his friends that he is renouncing the alternative award as well because, as he had previously stated, he did not wish his work to be the subject of meddling by local politicians. The money that they collect should be sent to the Serb enclaves in Kosovo and Metohija to people who are living under impossible conditions thanks to the supporters of "freedom" imposed upon them by NATO bombs.
Grass dismisses jury
In Dusseldorf it has now been openly admitted that the decision really was of a political nature and that the Heinrich Heine award allegedly has a clearly political character. In response to this, Grass, who is highly influential, has sent a request that in the future the city council be stripped of the right to approve or reject the decision of the expert jury.
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Related article:
Disputed Author Handke Awarded German Literary Prize
DEUTSCE WELLE 25.05.2006
Großansict des Bildes mit der Bildunterscrift: Austrian writer Peter Handke is controversial because of his stance on Serbia
Controversial Austrian playwright and novelist Peter Handke was awarded the city of Düseldorf's Heine Prize for literature.
The Heine Prize, endowed for 50,000 euros ($64,000), is one of the three highest-paying literature prizes in Germany. The jury said Handke -- like Heinric Heine, the German poet after whom the prize is named -- obstinately follows the way to an "open truth." He puts forth his own poetic world view, in contrast to broader public opinion, they said. The prize will be awared on Dec. 13.
Handke wrote the groundbreaking experimental play "Offending the Audience" and the novel "The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick", but may be best know for writing the novel "Wings of Desire", whic was turned into a film by Wim Wenders.
Pro-Serbian stance
He is controversial because of his pro-Serbian stance during the Balkan wars, and his support for the Serbian regime.
Recently, Frenc national theatre Comédie-Française removed the play "Voyage to the Sonorous Land or the Art of Asking" from its 2007 season lineup, after Handke spoke at the burial of former Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic in Marc.
Handke, who lives in France, said in an esay in the Frenc newspaper Libération: "Let's stop laying the masacre . on the backs of the Serbian military and paramilitary. And listen -- at last -- to the survivors of the Muslim masacres in numerous Serbian villages around Srebrenica."
'Glad' aceptance
Last year, Handke's publisher, Suhrkamp Verlag, said the author would categorically refuse any more literature prizes; in Paris, however, Handke said he would "gladly" acept the Heine Prize.
Up to now, winners of the Heine Prize have included Walter Jens, Günter Kunert, Max Frisc, Wolf Biermann, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Elfriede Jelinek und Robert Gernhardt.
Tudjman was never an Ustasha. Once again, your ignorance of history has been noted.
"Za Dom Spremni", eh?
This is just the first site that came up on Tudjman in a yahoo search, and it is one of the more flattering ones: http://www.slate.com/id/64411/
Can't argue with an Ustasha supporter any more than you can argue with any Nazi -- theideology and the person become indivisible.
This whole thread makes me glad I grew up in the USA and not the Balkans. Slobbo was a thug from a part of the world where there were thugs and cretins on all sides. None of them are worth defending and I'm sure Slobbo is sharing a pit in Hell along with Tudjman and others. If Dole had won in '96 he probably would have bombed the crap out of Belgrade, too. We killed plenty of "Innocent" civilians in Germany and Japan; I don't hear German and Japanese Freepers complaining about that.
P.S. BTW Happy 4th of July from a country that only had one Civil War in 230 years : )
Possibly because that was before they were born PLUS they have to admit the cause was a just one.
Slick Willie's campaign to appease the Muslims by bombing the Christians was never "just." Many of the Serb Freepers that you mock had family living under Clinton's bombs.
No, I was speaking of Quislings who live under the cowardly red-and-white checkerboard of the Ustashi.
The FR Serbs can vouch for me.
Any takers? Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?
"Tudjman was a fervent Red, and after the war he rose through military and party ranks, eventually becoming the general in charge of party discipline. In 1961, at the height of his career, he quit to immerse himself in Croat history. Soon he was a dissident professor, and he served a term in prison in the early '70s for opposing Tito's dictatorship. Tudjman's brave stand against communism would be admirable except that he offered an equally bad ideology in its place: ruthless Croat nationalism."Walks like an Ustashi, talks like an Ustashi...it's an Ustashi, probably getting buggered in that part of Hell reserved for Ustashi, one layer under the Nazis.
Tudjman was not an Ustasha. Why do you insist on mischaracterizations? It's intellectually dishonest.
The Red and White Sahovnica predates the Ustashe by 1,000 years. Get your facts straight.
Secondly, Croatian nationalism does not equate to Ustashism.
Are you always this intellectually dishonest?
Sorry, but he's a hero who saved his nation from communism
Croatians have got a lot of cleaning up to do:
Wiesenthal Center Calls for Prosecution of Croatian Nazi War Criminals Ivo Rojnica and Milivoj Ašner at Zagreb Conference on Anti-Semitism
http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/apps/nl/content.asp?c=fwLYKnN8LzH&b=312458&content_id={A07C5CCE-50A4-4B77-A1C1-97CADCED9AA5}¬oc=1
Me too, WVRebel! Makes me feel damn lucky that my father and mother's family had the good sense to get the hell out of there when they did, so I could be born here!
Slobbo was a thug from a part of the world where there were thugs and cretins on all sides. None of them are worth defending and I'm sure Slobbo is sharing a pit in Hell along with Tudjman and others
Agreed -- long may they "roast"!.
"If Dole had won in '96 he probably would have bombed the crap out of Belgrade, too."
Probably, given the amount of campaign money that the Albanians were throwing around back then --for both sides! Doesn't make it right.
"We killed plenty of "Innocent" civilians in Germany and Japan; I don't hear German and Japanese Freepers complaining about that".
Yes, but even after WWII and the horrible atrocities committed back then by Germany and Japan, we still didn't start carving away pieces of their countries and giving it to others, as we have here. We didn't muzzle them, cripple their economies and humiliate them for over 15 years! Quite the opposite -- we helped those countries rebuild themselves -- something that we aren't doing for Serbia even though Slobo has been bye-bye for a long time now. We are instead, sowing anger and bitterness for a group of people who have never wronged us. And it is just plain stupid.
That was 1958. We're talking about the 1980s and 1990s.
non-sequitir
That was 1958. We're talking about the 1980s and 1990s.
He also put into place a multiparty democracy, not very communist, and elevated the Roman Catholic Church to a prominent position, not very communist, and he was also twice imprisoned by the communists......your ignorance of the history of the region has been noted.
There were absolutely NO heros in this war. None.....The entire Balkan Campaign from start to finish, was a travisty. It was built on partial truth and a lot of fabrications as the Muslims under my country's support, stirred up the trouble...the Serbs dumbly fell into the trap and responded heavy handed, but no where near the numbers, mass murders and so forth that the Clinton Administration lied about. The Muslims provoked much of what happened and the Serbs were blamed....the Serbian paramilitaries killed POW's, and did some bad things.......
No, NO country was good there not one...and there were no hero's what-so-ever.........
ping
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