The winner of the German Non-Fiction Prize 2021 is Jürgen Kaube for his book “Hegels Welt” (Rowohlt Berlin).
Statement from the jury:
“In his biography of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Jürgen Kaube thoroughly dispenses with the genre of the heroic narrative. Both elegantly and with irony, he portrays the philosopher as a man who recognised and pondered the contradictions of the period of upheaval around 1800 even as he repeatedly failed to recognize their revolutionary potential – in terms of women’s demands for freedom, for example. For Kaube, intellectual history is cultural history, and Hegel’s strength was to expose himself wholeheartedly to all fields of knowledge and to doubt his own insights in the process. It is this engagement with a changing world that makes Hegel so inspiring for the present, in which unbiased thinking must stand up to false certainties, hostility to science and the exclusion of more vulnerable groups.”
The members of the jury for the German Non-Fiction Prize are: Dr Klaus Kowalke (“Lessing & Kompanie” bookstore), Tania Martini (die tageszeitung), Dr Jeanne Rubner (Bayerischer Rundfunk), Denis Scheck (ARD), Hilal Sezgin (independent author), Prof Dr Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin – Berlin Institute for Advanced Study) and Dr Kia Vahland (Süddeutsche Zeitung).
The following books were also nominated for the award: Heike Behrend, Menschwerdung eines Affen (Matthes & Seitz Berlin), Asal Dardan, Betrachtungen einer Barbarin (Hoffmann und Campe), Andreas Kossert, Flucht – Eine Menschheitsgeschichte (Siedler), Daniel Leese, Maos langer Schatten (C.H.Beck), Michael Maar, Die Schlange im Wolfspelz (Rowohlt), Christoph Möllers, Freiheitsgrade (Suhrkamp) and Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim, Die kleinste gemeinsame Wirklichkeit (Droemer Knaur).
The Stiftung Buchkultur und Leseförderung des Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (Foundation for Book Culture and the Promotion of Reading of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association) is awarding the German Non-Fiction Prize 2021 in recognition of the best non-fiction work of the year, an outstanding non-fiction book written in German that inspires social debate.
The Deutsche Bank Stiftung (Deutsche Bank Foundation) is the main sponsor of the German Non-Fiction Prize, which is also supported by the Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss (Foundation of the Humboldt Forum in the Berlin Palace). The radio station Deutschlandfunk Kultur is a media partner of the award, and the television network Deutsche Welle supports the German Non-Fiction Prize in its media activities both at home and abroad. Minister of State for Culture Monika Grütters is patron of the prize.