19 February 2019

The Akademie der Künste awards the Heinrich Mann Prize 2019 to Danilo Scholz

The Akademie der Künste is awarding the Heinrich Mann Prize 2019 to historian of ideas, author and translator Danilo Scholz. This decision was made by the jurors Steffen Martus, Gustav Seibt and last year's winner, Christian Bommarius. The prize for essay writing, endowed with 8,000 euros, shall be presented at the Akademie building at Pariser Platz on 27 March 2019.

The reasoning of the jury stated that: "Danilo Scholz is an intellectual who is as knowledgeable as he is light-footed and humorous, who enriches the public debate with conceptual clarity and brilliant nuances of wording. Scholz is a European spirit, his multilingualism, his international experience and not least his familiarity with the French scene make him, as an intermediary and polemicist, a worthy successor to Heinrich Mann in the struggle against German provincialisms. The way he combines science and feature articles and uses different media and channels reveals a new intellectual role."

Danilo Scholz was born in 1984, studied the history of political ideas at Cambridge as well as history and philosophy at the École normale supérieure in Paris. His work on Alexandre Kojève's relationship to German philosophy was awarded the Raymond Aron Prize in 2011 and the Marc Bloch Prize in 2013. In his doctoral thesis at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales he examined theories of the state and criticism of the state in French thinking. He is currently a Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow at the European University Institute of Florence and is working on a book about the philosopher Alexandre Kojève (1902-1968), which will be published by C.H. Beck.
Publications, essays and reviews on current affairs, theory, Europe, film, literature and life in Merkur, taz, FAZ, cargo, Zeit online, on Facebook and the editBlog. Edited the Euro Trash (2016) series with Svenja Bromberg and Birthe Mühlhoff at Merve.

Recent award winners include Christian Bommarius (2018), Gisela von Wysocki (2017) and Gunnar Decker (2016). The award ceremony will take place on Wednesday, 27 March, Heinrich Mann's birthday, at 7 pm at the Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz 4 (laudation Adam Tooze).