Petrarca-Preis was a European literary and translation award named after the

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

Francesco Petrarca Francis Petrarch (; 20 July 1304 – 19 July 1374; ; modern ), born Francesco di Petracco, was a scholar from Arezzo and poet of the early Italian Renaissance, as well as one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's let ...

or Petrarch. Founded in 1975 by German art historian and publisher

Hubert Burda Hubert Burda (born 9 February 1940) is a German billionaire publisher. He is the owner, publisher and general partner of Hubert Burda Media, a global media company of more than 600 media products, including websites, print magazines and other ...

, it was primarily designed for contemporary European poets, but some occasional non-Europeans appear in the list of laureates. The award was first distributed over a twenty-year period (1975–95) and included the categories Literature and Translation. Then it was followed for a decade (1999–2009) by a

Hermann-Lenz-Preis Hermann-Lenz-Preis was a literary prize of Germany from 1999 to 2009. The award for German-language poetry is named after the writer Hermann Lenz, who died 1998. The prize money was €15.000 donated by publisher Hubert Burda. Successor is the Pe ...

and resumed in 2010. The first jury consisted of

fluxus Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers, and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental performance art, art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finishe ...

participant Bazon Brock, poets Michael Krüger and Nicolas Born, and novelist

Peter Handke Peter Handke (; born 6 December 1942) is an Austrians, Austrian novelist, playwright, translator, poet, film director, and screenwriter. He was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature "for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has ...

. When the prize resumed in 2010, Peter Handke and Michael Krüger still were on the jury, together with the authors Alfred Kolleritsch (himself awarded in 1978) and

Peter Hamm Peter Hamm (27 February 1937 – 22 July 2019) was a German poet, author, journalist, editor, and literary critic. He wrote several documentaries, including ones about Ingeborg Bachmann and Peter Handke. He wrote for the German weekly newspapers ...

. "We want to support a national and regional culture in Europe", founder Hubert Burda initially said at the 2011 awards. An explicit goal was to watch out all over Europe for authors who gave a distinctive voice to their prevailing culture. The Petrarca-Preis consisted of €20,000, and it could be shared between several winners. The ceremony was usually held in places which Francesco Petrarch at some point visited.

Literature prize-winners and ceremony locations

* 1975 Rolf Dieter Brinkmann (posthumously),

Mont Ventoux Mont Ventoux (; ) is a mountain in the Provence region of southern France, located some northeast of Carpentras, Vaucluse. On the north side, the mountain borders the department of Drôme. At , it is the highest mountain in the region and h ...

* 1976 Sarah Kirsch and Ernst Meister,

Arquà Petrarca Arquà Petrarca () is a town and municipality (''comune'') in northeastern Italy, in the Veneto region, in the province of Padua. As of 2007 the estimated population of Arquà Petrarca was 1,835. It is one of I Borghi più belli d'Italia ("The mos ...

* 1977

Herbert Achternbusch Herbert Achternbusch ( Schild; 23 November 1938 – 10 January 2022) was a German film director, writer and painter. He began as a writer of avant-garde prose, such as the novel ''Die Alexanderschlacht'', before turning to low-budget films. He h ...

(who declined),

* 1978 Alfred Kolleritsch,

Siena Siena ( , ; traditionally spelled Sienna in English; ) is a city in Tuscany, in central Italy, and the capital of the province of Siena. It is the twelfth most populated city in the region by number of inhabitants, with a population of 52,991 ...

* 1979 Zbigniew Herbert,

Verona Verona ( ; ; or ) is a city on the Adige, River Adige in Veneto, Italy, with 255,131 inhabitants. It is one of the seven provincial capitals of the region, and is the largest city Comune, municipality in the region and in Northeast Italy, nor ...

* 1980 Ludwig Hohl,

Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...

* 1981

Tomas Tranströmer Tomas Gösta Tranströmer (; 15 April 1931 – 26 March 2015) was a Swedish poet, psychologist and translator. His poems captured the long winters in Sweden, the rhythm of the seasons and the palpable, atmospheric beauty of nature. Tranströmer' ...

Vicenza Vicenza ( , ; or , archaically ) is a city in northeastern Italy. It is in the Veneto region, at the northern base of the Monte Berico, where it straddles the Bacchiglione, River Bacchiglione. Vicenza is approximately west of Venice and e ...

* 1982 Ilse Aichinger, Sils Maria * 1983 Gerhard Meier,

Vézelay Vézelay () is a Communes of France, commune in the Departments of France, department of Yonne in the north-central French region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté. It is a defensible hill town famous for Vézelay Abbey. The town and its 11th-century Ro ...

* 1984

Gustav Januš Gustav, Gustaf or Gustave may refer to: *Gustav (name), a male given name of Old Swedish origin Art, entertainment, and media * ''Primeval'' (film), a 2007 American horror film * ''Gustav'' (film series), a Hungarian series of animated short cart ...

Avignon Avignon (, , ; or , ; ) is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Vaucluse department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region of southeastern France. Located on the left bank of the river Rhône, the Communes of France, commune had a ...

* 1987

Hermann Lenz Hermann Karl Lenz (26 February 1913 – 12 May 1998) was a German writer of poetry, stories, and novels. A major part of his work is a series of nine semi-autobiographical novels centring on his alter ego "Eugen Rapp", a cycle that is also know ...

Asolo Asolo () is a town and ''comune'' in the Veneto, Veneto Region of northern Italy. It is known as "The Pearl of the province of Treviso", and also as "The City of a Hundred Horizons" for its mountain settings. It is one of I Borghi più belli d'It ...

* 1988

Philippe Jaccottet Philippe Jaccottet (; 30 June 1925 – 24 February 2021) was a Swiss Francophone poet and translator. Life and work After completing his studies in Lausanne, he lived for several years in Paris. In 1953, he moved to the town of Grignan in ...

Trieste Trieste ( , ; ) is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is the capital and largest city of the Regions of Italy#Autonomous regions with special statute, autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, as well as of the Province of Trieste, ...

* 1989

Jan Skácel Jan Skácel (7 February 1922 – 7 November 1989) was a Czechoslovakia, Czech poet of Moravians (ethnic group), Moravian origin, widely acclaimed as one of the best poets who had been writing in Czech language, Czech. Biography Skácel was born ...

Lucca Città di Lucca ( ; ) is a city and ''comune'' in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the Serchio River, in a fertile plain near the Ligurian Sea. The city has a population of about 89,000, while its Province of Lucca, province has a population of 383,9 ...

* 1990

Paul Wühr Paul Wühr (10 July 1927 – 12 July 2016) was a German experimental author. Wühr lived by Lake Trasimeno in Umbria, Italy and wrote for the publisher Hanser-Verlag. Selected works Novels * '' Gegenmünchen'', 1970 * ''Das falsche Buch'', ...

* 1991

John Berger John Peter Berger ( ; 5 November 1926 – 2 January 2017) was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet. His novel '' G.'' won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism '' Ways of Seeing'', written as an accompaniment to t ...

Piemonte Piedmont ( ; ; ) is one of the 20 regions of Italy, located in the Northwest of the country. It borders the Liguria region to the south, the Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna regions to the east, and the Aosta Valley region to the northwest. Pied ...

* 1992

Michael Hamburger Michael Peter Leopold Hamburger (22 March 1924 – 7 June 2007) was a noted German-British translator, poet, critic, memoirist and academic. He was known in particular for his translations of Friedrich Hölderlin, Paul Celan, Gottfried Benn and ...

Modena Modena (, ; ; ; ; ) is a city and ''comune'' (municipality) on the south side of the Po Valley, in the Province of Modena, in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy. It has 184,739 inhabitants as of 2025. A town, and seat of an archbis ...

* 1993 Gennadij Ajgi,

Perugia Perugia ( , ; ; ) is the capital city of Umbria in central Italy, crossed by the River Tiber. The city is located about north of Rome and southeast of Florence. It covers a high hilltop and part of the valleys around the area. It has 162,467 ...

* 1994 Helmut Färber,

Weimar Weimar is a city in the state (Germany), German state of Thuringia, in Central Germany (cultural area), Central Germany between Erfurt to the west and Jena to the east, southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together w ...

* 1995 Les Murray,

Provence Provence is a geographical region and historical province of southeastern France, which stretches from the left bank of the lower Rhône to the west to the France–Italy border, Italian border to the east; it is bordered by the Mediterrane ...

* 2010

Pierre Michon Pierre Michon (born 28 March 1945 in Châtelus-le-Marcheix, Creuse) is a French writer. His first novel, ''Small Lives'' (1984), is widely regarded as a genuine masterpiece in contemporary French literature. He has won several prizes for ''Smal ...

and

Erri De Luca Enrico "Erri" De Luca (born 20 May 1950, Naples) is an Italian novelist, translator and poet. He has been recognized by critic Giorgio De Rienzo of ''Corriere della Sera'' as "the writer of the decade". He is also known for his opposition to the ...

Salem Abbey Salem Abbey () was a very prominent Cistercian monastery at Salem in the district of Bodensee, about ten miles from Konstanz in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The buildings are now owned by the State of Baden-Württemberg and are open for tours a ...

* 2011

John Burnside John Burnside (19 March 1955 – 29 May 2024) was a Scottish writer. He was one of four poets (with Ted Hughes, Sean O'Brien and Jason Allen-Paisant) to have won the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Poetry Prize for a single book – in th ...

and

Florjan Lipuš Florjan Lipuš (born 4 May 1937 in Lobnig above Bad Eisenkappel, Austria) is a Carinthian Slovene writer and translator. Since 1985 he has been a corresponding member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Awards * 2004: Prešeren Aw ...

Benediktbeuern Abbey Benediktbeuern Abbey (Kloster Benediktbeuern) is an institute of the Salesians of Don Bosco, originally a monastery of the Benedictine Order, in Benediktbeuern in Bavaria, near the Kochelsee, 64 km south-south-west of Munich. It is the olde ...

* 2012

Miodrag Pavlović Miodrag Pavlović (Serbian Cyrillic: Миодраг Павловић; ; 28 November 1928 – 17 August 2014) was a Serbian poet, physician writer, critic and academic. Pavlović was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Biography H ...

and

Kito Lorenc Kito Lorenc (4 March 1938 – 24 September 2017) was a Sorbian writer, lyric poet and translator. He was a grandson of the writer and politician Jakub Lorenc-Zalěski. Lorenc attended the Sorbian boarding high school in Cottbus from 1952 to 1956 ...

Marbach am Neckar Marbach am Neckar (, ) is a town about 20 kilometres north of Stuttgart. It belongs to the district of Ludwigsburg, the Stuttgart region and the European metropolitan region of Stuttgart. Marbach is known as the birthplace of Friedrich Schiller ...

* 2013

Adonis In Greek mythology, Adonis (; ) was the mortal lover of the goddesses Aphrodite and Persephone. He was considered to be the ideal of male beauty in classical antiquity. The myth goes that Adonis was gored by a wild boar during a hunting trip ...

and

Robin Robertson Robin Robertson (born in 1955) is a Scottish poet. Biography Robertson was brought up on the north-east coast of Scotland, but has spent most of his professional life in London. After working as an editor at Penguin Books and Secker and War ...

München Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

* 2014 Franz Mon and Tomas Venclova,

Bayerisches Nationalmuseum The Bavarian National Museum () in Munich is one of the most important museums of decorative arts in Europe and List of largest art museums, one of the largest art museums in Germany. Since the beginning the collection has been divided into two ...

Translator Award

* 1987 Hanno Helbling * 1988 Georg Rudolf Lind * 1989 Felix Philipp Ingold * 1990 Fabjan Hafner * 1991 Ilma Rakusa * 1993 Hanns Grössel * 1994 Elisabeth Edl and Wolfgang Matz * 1995 Verena Reichel

References

External links

* {{Petrarch, state=collapsed Translation awards German literary awards Petrarch

Literature prize-winners and ceremony locations

Translator Award

References

Further reading

External links