The artist and initiator of the Stolpersteine, Gunter Demnig, will receive the Benedikt Prize of Mönchengladbach. The ceremony will take place on Friday, April 29, 2022, at Haus Erholung in Mönchengladbach. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the event had to be postponed several times. The laudatory speech will be delivered by former NRW Minister-President Armin Laschet.
The Board of Trustees of the Benedikt Prize of Mönchengladbach has chosen the 74-year-old Gunter Demnig because, with his Stolpersteine project, he has created a large-scale memorial and monument of remembrance that is nevertheless implemented discreetly and in a site-specific manner, says Helmut Linnenbrink, Chairman of the association “Benedikt Prize of Mönchengladbach”. “With each stone, Gunter Demnig sends out, in a lasting way, the Christian, Western message of human dignity, mutual appreciation and tolerance, as well as non-violence—and at the same time the message of ‘resist the beginnings’ in the face of developments that were thought to have been overcome. His work is exemplary for all of us,” the Board of Trustees states in its reasoning.
Since the early 1990s, Gunter Demnig, who now lives in Hesse, has laid more than 75,000 stones in 1,265 German municipalities as well as in 24 countries. The Stolpersteine have a brass plaque on the top. It bears the names of the Jewish and other residents who once lived there and who became victims of Nazi tyranny. This is linked to the call not to forget and to act with constant vigilance and responsibility. They are addressed to all generations, but increasingly to those who did not experience the Nazi era themselves.
The awarding of the Benedikt Prize honours Demnig’s artistic work, as he continues—75 years after the end of the Second World War—to remind people of the atrocities of the Nazi dictatorship. That former North Rhine-Westphalia Minister-President Armin Laschet will deliver the laudatory speech, Linnenbrink explains, demonstrates on the one hand recognition of Gunter Demnig’s work and on the other confirms the significance of the award ceremony. On the day of the award ceremony, Gunter Demnig will lay 17 new Stolpersteine at six locations in Mönchengladbach.
