Stefan Heym Awards
An opportunity to get to know Stefan Heym better
The deadline for applications for this year’s International Stefan Heym Awards is 15 September. Marian Kretschmer, together with Gerald Richter, was awarded a grant by the International Stefan Heym Society in 2021 and 2023 for the graphic novel *The Seven Lives of Stefan Heym*. In this interview, the 43-year-old illustrator and art therapist explains why it is worth taking part in this call for entries.
How did you first come across Stefan Heym?
Eight years ago, I was working at the Monokel bookshop when a customer came in and asked what we had by Stefan Heym. And I had to say: ‘Who’s that?’ Afterwards, I looked him up on Wikipedia and felt ashamed that, as someone from Chemnitz who’d gone to school there, I’d never heard of him, even though I read a lot of literature myself. That was the impetus to do something to bring Stefan Heym to the attention of young people.
Which project did you submit for the International Stefan Heym Sponsorship Awards?
At the time, we felt a strong need to introduce Stefan Heym to schools and had been working on various workshops for schools. At the same time, I was working on the graphic novel. The two went hand in hand, because the feedback from the pupils helped us realise how the visual language and communication needed to be adapted. So, bit by bit, we put together a package and submitted it.
Why should someone with their own idea have the courage to apply for a Stefan Heym Scholarship?
I think the award gives you the opportunity to engage more deeply with Stefan Heym. And you realise quite quickly that there’s a lot you can apply to the present day. Take his poems, for example. We’re currently using them in schools. Young people connect with them straight away, even though the texts are 100 years old. But Stefan Heym uses language that still resonates today. The award gives you the chance to adapt this to a modern medium. And that’s why I’d actually recommend it to anyone: If you’re interested in a particular line from one of Stefan Heym’s texts, take it, adapt it into a new artistic medium and submit it to the award – to give yourself the chance to engage with it more deeply and ultimately share it with the world. It offers so much potential.
In your view, do you need to be a Heym expert to develop a project idea for the International Stefan Heym Awards?
If you’re interested and work out a project, this award gives you the chance to explore it in greater depth and develop it in a more complex way. So it’s not a prerequisite to have read three or four of his books. It’s an opportunity to engage with Stefan Heym and to be allowed to take the time to do so.
What can Stefan Heym still tell us today?
There are several aspects to this: from an artistic perspective, we can learn from Stefan Heym, as he wrote each book in a different style, with a different structure and using a different language. He was a magnificent artist, a master of language. Today’s authors often find themselves resorting time and again to the same kind of language, the same structure for their books. And that was different in every one of his books. So if you’ve read just one, you don’t really know who Stefan Heym is. The other aspect is that each of his books delves absolutely deeply into the intricacies and causal relationships within society. You learn so much about why it isn’t so easy simply to head off in a different direction, but rather where mechanisms correlate, where interdependencies exist, and where compulsive behaviour arises. Everything is interconnected. Every single one of his books features utterly complex language and research.
How has engaging with Stefan Heym changed you?
I’ve become even more aware of how quickly good literature – or critical literature, for that matter – is lost if it isn’t brought into the spotlight. I think it’s a great shame that we don’t read Stefan Heym in schools here in Chemnitz. After all, he has works that are easily accessible, which you can really read from Year 9 onwards. For example, *The Eyes of Reason*. What comes across very well in that book is: how does socialism work? But it does so through his language, which thrives on emotion. That was his great strength – emotions.
Applications can be submitted until 15 September
The City of Chemnitz is once again awarding the International Stefan Heym Sponsorship Prizes for project ideas in which young people engage in a distinctive way with the life, work and legacy of Stefan Heym, or – in the spirit of Heym – with literature, history and current affairs.
City of Chemnitz is once again awarding the International Stefan Heym Sponsorship Prizes. Whether it be a documentary, a play or a podcast – the format is open. In total, sponsorship prizes worth 20,000 euros
, to be shared amongst several prize-winners. Applications can be submitted until 15 September at www.chemnitz.de/heymfoerderpreise.