Is it possible to award a peace prize in times of war? In any case, it is a challenge when two personalities are honoured with the International Peace Prize on Sunday in Dresden's Semperoper. Because it is again at war in Europe, only a few hundred kilometers from Dresden. And hardly anything seems more absurd in view of the intention with which the association "Friends of Dresden" has been donating this prize since 2010: From the memory of the horror that returned to Dresden with all its might at the end of the Second World War, a powerful signal is to be sent to the world to work for peace.
Stefan Locke
Correspondent for Saxony and Thuringia based in Dresden.
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"Dresden teaches through its symbol, on the one hand, that we must always remember the victims," Mikhail Gorbachev said when he was the first to receive the Peace Prize from the hands of former FDP Federal Minister of the Interior Gerhart Baum in 2010. "On the other hand, it teaches that the destruction was the result of irresponsible policies. The symbol of the prize is that we always have to oppose such a policy." Baum was born and raised in Dresden and experienced the destruction of the city on 13 February 1945 up close. On Sunday, now 90 years old, he urged against abandoning Ukraine to its fate. "It's an epochal break! We believe we can continue to live in normality, but that's not possible!"
Only a few months ago, Baum, together with former Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, filed a criminal complaint with the Federal Prosecutor General for war crimes and crimes against humanity, which is directed against Putin as well as against the Russian war commanders and soldiers in Ukraine. After 1945, the world came to its senses – unfortunately only briefly – and created the United Nations, says Baum, who also uses the stage in Dresden for a fiery appeal against injustice. Their human rights charter and the "Never again!" must also be enforced in Ukraine. In view of the crimes, he therefore does not understand at all the accusation that the supporters of Ukraine would fall into bellicism. "How else would Hitler have been defeated than by force?"
Those who remain neutral help the oppressor
At the same time, Baum, who will also receive the jury's honorary prize on Sunday for his multifaceted commitment, is resisting attempts to break with Russia forever. "It is arrogance to deny the Russians the ability to freedom," Baum said. "There is the other Russia, just as there was the other Germany."
After all, not resigning oneself to normality is also something like the motto of the two international prize winners honored on Sunday: the New York architect Daniel Libeskind and the Dutch climate lawyer Roger Cox. The latter had already received the prize in 2022, which could not be awarded in person due to the pandemic. In 2021, Cox won a groundbreaking ruling for climate protection in The Hague: It obliged the oil company Shell to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and has since been the basis for more than 2000,<> climate lawsuits worldwide, including before the Federal Constitutional Court. With his persistence, he has shown that corporations and states are not above the law, says Fridays for Future activist Helena Marschall in her laudation. Not acting now would violate human rights because climate change is fueling wars, Cox said in his acceptance speech.
Daniel Libeskind, on the other hand, repeatedly deals directly with war. He is honored "for his extraordinary artistic contributions to the culture of remembrance and admonishment," according to the statement. Like hardly any other architect, he created an appropriate architectural framework for remembering the victims of the Holocaust, war and terror. "Libeskind's approach leaves no room for ignorance and relativization." The prizewinner, who created the Jewish Museum in Berlin and the Imperial War Museum in Manchester and transformed the Bundeswehr Museum of Military History in Dresden into a place of discussion of the cultural history of violence, makes this clear in his acceptance speech. "Silence and watching are the real enemy of peace," says Libeskind. Those who remain neutral always help the oppressor, never the victim. "If we want to achieve peace, we need an open society in which war, fanaticism and violence have no place."
Only two years ago, Libeskind had designed a labyrinthine space for the exhibition "Dreams of Freedom - Romanticism in Russia and Germany", a joint show of the Moscow Tretyakov Gallery and the Dresden State Art Collections, which was shown in both Moscow and Dresden, which also embodied the longing for a life in freedom. But all this seems further away today than ever; the director of the Tretyakov Gallery, Zelfira Tregulova, was recently fired by Putin, part of the Russian team now works in Dresden.
In view of this, one might get the idea that art and culture, award ceremonies and exchange will ultimately remain ineffective. But this is not the case, says Saxony's Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer, who was in Moscow at the time and was later harshly criticized for it, at the beginning of the event. The exhibition was not intended to convince a dictator of freedom, but above all to give people encouragement, just as people in the GDR once received encouragement from the old Federal Republic. "Talking to each other and meeting each other is all much more difficult than just remaining silent," says Kretschmer. "But it's the only chance that the hatred won't continue to grow."