The writer Robert Menasse has obtained on Friday evening in the state theatre Mainz Carl-Zuckmayer-medal 2019. However, some of the approximately 900 invited guests from the Protest were not published to the ceremony. In the past few days, was a nationwide debate on whether one should distinguish an author as a “great teller of the present”, has worked in his 2017 published novel “The capital” is demonstrably false quotes and facts – and also in public discussions.

Markus Schug

correspondent of the Rhein-Main-Zeitung in Mainz.

F. A. Z.

in the Meantime, has apologized to the 64-year-old Austrian author, officially. In a statement, which he did on 7. January, together with the Rhineland-Palatinate Minister-President Malu Dreyer (SPD), published, acknowledged Menasse, to have made a mistake, but “not with the aim of deception”. There is a difference, the statement said, between the freedom of artistic expression, and enjoy Creating a writer in his fiction, and the responsibility that he had to be, if it issued in the political discourse.

CDU parliamentary leader Christian Baldauf and others in the Union was not enough; they described the ceremony in advance as a “serious mistake”. “If someone is willing to make a mistakes and also to admit, so I’m willing to acknowledge it,” said Dreyer in her speech, and praised the award winners whether his great services to the German language.