Heinrich Böll Foundation and City of Bremen cancel Award Ceremony of Hannah Arendt Prize to Masha Gessen

On December 13, 2023, the Heinrich Böll Foundation Berlin and the Heinrich Böll Foundation Bremen canceled the award ceremony of the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought to this year’s laureate Masha Gessen. Gessen, born in 1967 in Moscow as a descendant of Jewish Holocaust survivors, is a journalist and writer based in New York. The prize is awarded by the Bremen-based Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought and relies on a cooperation with the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the government of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, who jointly grant the annual prize money of €10,000.

The cause of the cancellation was an essay by Gessen published in the New Yorker on 9 December, in which they compare the situation in Gaza to that of Jewish ghettos in occupied Europe: “[...] Presumably, the more fitting term “ghetto” would have drawn fire for comparing the predicament of besieged Gazans to that of ghettoized Jews. It also would have given us the language to describe what is happening in Gaza now. The ghetto is being liquidated.”

In an open letter published on December 13, 2023, the German-Israeli Society Bremen/Unterweser demanded the suspension of the award to Gessen. Honoring Gessen, it wrote, would be “contrary to the resolute stance needed against growing anti-Semitism” and that Gessen’s thinking was “in clear contrast to the thinking of Hannah Arendt.” The Heinrich Böll Foundations stated similar reasons for their desire to cancel the award. Gessen, they wrote, implies “that Israel’s goal is to liquidate Gaza like a Nazi ghetto. This statement is not an offer for open discussion, and it does not help to understand the conflict in the Middle East. This statement is not acceptable to us and we reject it.” Previously the government of the City of Bremen had withdrawn from the award ceremony, meaning that the town hall was no longer available as a venue for the ceremony, which would have been attended by several hundred guests.

The Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought association said it regretted the cancellations and still stood behind awarding the prize to Gessen. Due to the lack of a suitable space, the association ended up holding the award ceremony in a private house with a very small number of guests.

On December 18, 2023, at short notice, a panel discussion with Masha Gessen and the board of the Heinrich Böll Foundation took place at the foundation’s offices in Berlin. There, Gessen emphasized that the invitation from the foundation had initially been intended as a private discussion. A public discussion was held instead at Gessen’s suggestion and Gessen thanked the foundation for making the public discussion possible. In this discussion, as well as in interviews, Gessen defended their comparison: “The biggest difference between Gaza and the Jewish ghettos in Nazi occupied Europe is that the Gazans are still alive and the world still has the opportunity to do something about it.” Gessen criticized the entire process leading to the cancellation of the award ceremony: “This was an attempt of silencing that failed. I’m glad it failed.” The case has attracted a great deal of international attention.