1999 Nobel Prize for Literature: Part of Award goes to Roma Foundation

The author who wrote one of Germany’s most famous post-war novels has finally been awarded the 1999 Nobel Prize for Literature. Günter Grass is perhaps best known for his novel The Tin Drum (1959), set in the city of Gdansk just before and during W.W. II, when it was still called Danzig. The book became a cinematic success two decades later. The theme of much of Grass’ work is the legacy of the Nazi period and the collective responsibility that Germany still carries for Nazi atrocities.

Günter Grass was born in Danzig in 1927. In Germany today, he is almost as well known for his political views as he is for his writing. An outspoken critic of German reunification, he describes himself as a humanist who is “allergic to all ideologies.” In December 1999, when Grass accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature at the formal ceremony in Stockholm, he announced his plans to give part of his prize money to a charity he runs for gypsies. The following excerpt is translated from an article by Günter Grass which was first published in Die Woche, a German weekly.

Viktoria Hertling

Günter Grass: Until this point, I have, as it were, merely supported the creation of foundations in my own discipline—writing and drawing. From now on, however, I intend to get more deeply involved in a way that has often provoked outrage and annoyance: to affirm an author’s right, as an ordinary citizen, to interfere in politics and act according to his conscience.

Let me announce, then, the inauguration of the Roma Foundation and its annual award, the Otto Pankok Prize.

Why, you may ask, “the Roma”—more commonly know throughout history as the “gypsies”? Because, with the sole exception of the Jews, it is the Roma—including the Sinti of Germany—who have above all others suffered constant persecution and discrimination. In Nazi Germany they were victims of an extermination program. And injustice toward them continues today.

While the whole world has finally been made aware of the genocide of the Jews, the fact that the Roma and Sinti were victims of the same criminal and racist Nazi policies is virtually unknown. […]

Our country’s chilly attitude toward all foreigners bears particularly heavily on the Roma. Even though they are German citizens, the Sinti, who have lived here for several generations, feel despised and isolated. […]

Speaking personally, I owe my discovery of the despised “creative restlessness” of the gypsies to one of my teachers. Otto Pankok, designer and wood engraver, gave me and others the chance to enter into and begin to understand the beauty of gypsy life, which has triumphed over endless persecution. […]

At the end of the 1940s and early 1950s, gypsies—young and old—came and went in the workshops of Otto Pankok and in those of his students. They gave life to our woodblocks; they had the gift of carving. We students were in no way superior to them. It was through Pankok’s wood engravings and charcoal sketches that the Roma revealed themselves to us. Even in Pankok’s “Passion of Christ,” we perceive the passion of the gypsies. Pankok lived with them; he felt an affinity toward them. For me, he was an exemplary teacher. That’s why the Roma Foundation’s award will be in his name: the Otto Pankok Prize.