Zuckmayer Receives Heine Prize

The Heinrich Heine Prize was awarded yesterday to Swiss author Carl Zuckmayer. The Award, presented by Federal President Gustav Heinemann, concluded the year-long celebrations which marked the 175th anniversary of the Jewish poet’s birth. Zuckmayer, a novelist mainly known for his book “Captain From Kopenick,” was one of the most outspoken critics of Hitler’s regime. Born of a Catholic father and a Jewish mother, he emigrated in the thirties to America. After the war, he settled in Switzerland and now has Swiss nationality.

Zuckmayer, a close personal friend of Heinemann, could not attend the ceremony due to illness. The ceremony took place in Dusseldorf where the Heinrich Heine Society has renewed its seven-year campaign to have the university renamed after the poet. The university authorities have refused to do so up till now claiming that Dusseldorf is a scientific university and Heine was not a scientist.

In his presentation speech Heinemann charged, however, that those who refused to rename Dusseldorf University had “reasons which they did not care to admit.” The President added that even in his lifetime “men of learning disliked the poet because he had held a mirror up to them and their self-satisfied vanity.”