It started in Romania. School photo of 2009 Nobel prize for literature Herta Müller (AFP)

Nobel prize for dissidence

On 8 October, the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Herta Müller, a Romanian born German writer whose novels focus on the dark days of modern European history. The press in Germany and Romania welcomes the recognition of a writer who has done much to elucidate contemporary conflicts.

Published on 9 October 2009 at 16:19
It started in Romania. School photo of 2009 Nobel prize for literature Herta Müller (AFP)

Reporting on Thursday's award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Tilman Spreckelsen hails "a great day for German literature." He explains that the work of German-Romanian writer Herta Müller carefully "documents the impact of state oppression in the lives of its victims — and this is a significant aspect of the award announced in Stockholm." Recognition for Müller "is also an acknowledgement of the fact that art and ethics are two sides of the same coin, and a tribute to a diaspora culture which she has so eloquently sought to preserve."

For Süddeutsche Zeitung in Munich, Stockholm has once again singled out a writer whose work traverses two worlds. In reading Müller, we encounter "the pre-war geography of old Europe, which subsists in fragments held together by a shared culture."

A Germanised Romanian, a Romanianised German

As România Libera points out, "the new laureate was born in Banat," western Romania, where she grew up in the historically German speaking town of Nitchidorf. In the columns of the Bucharest daily, writer and journalist Ovidiu Pecican asserts that Müller's greatest merit "is her focus on the perspective of a community which has all but disappeared" — most of the Romanian German minority left the country after 1989, and "its very different experience of history" may be lost "now that it is being absorbed by the German nation."

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Müller began her writing career in very unfavourable circumstances, which did not improve until, as Adevarul notes, Ceausescu sold her "to the West for 8,000 Deutsche marks." This proved to be a blessing as the daily explains: "What is extraordinary is the fact that this proved to be a stroke of good luck for Frau Müller. When she became one of the large number of Germans and Jews that were sold by Romania in the 1980s, she was able to take advantage of the situation to recount her firsthand experience of of the corrosive power of the totalitarian state, which had banned her books and made her a target for harassment by the Securitate." In Romania, many people say "that we gave a Nobel prize winner to Germany," remarks Adevarul, " but this is untrue. "We handed over a writer who in all probability would have been forced to express herself in platitudes if she had remained in Romania." Now we have Herta Müller, an author who has developed the distinctive voice of "a German Romanian or a Romanian German." In noting this cross-cultural dimension, Spiegel-Online suggests that the Nobel award may revive "a concept of Central Europe, which has largely been destroyed by the tragedy of Yugoslavia and the enlargement of the EU: the idea that identity is not dependent on citizenship of a nation state, but on cultural ties".

A prize for historical truth

Tageszeitungnotes that this latest award, which comes in the wake of two other Nobel prizes won by Günter Grass in 1999 and Elfriede Jelinek in 2004, has made Herta Müller the third German language writer to win a Nobel prize in just 10 years. Notwithstanding this, Tageszeitung does not consider the prize to be an acknowledgement of German literature, but a recognition of Müller's "uncompromising language and determination to document historical truth."

The Berlin daily also believes that the prize should encourage "support for books that explore ongoing conflicts in the literature of other cultures." In particular, TAZ argues that more should be done to promote the Chinese literature, featured at the next Frankfurt Book, that is subject to censorship. "The award of the only existing prize for world literature to Herta Müller is a testament to the fact Europe is now beginning to pay serious attention to historical conflicts that shaped its past. At the same time, it should be careful not to ignore conflicts that take place beyond its borders," concludes TAZ.

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