The Roswitha Prize (german: Roswitha-Preis) is the oldest
German language
German ( ) is a West Germanic language mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Italian province of South Tyrol. It is als ...
prize for literature that is given solely to women.
The Roswitha-Medal has been given almost yearly since 1973 by the city of
Bad Gandersheim
Bad Gandersheim ( Eastphalian: ''Ganderssen'') is a town in southern Lower Saxony, Germany, located in the district of Northeim. , it had a population of 9,492.
Bad Gandersheim has many half-timbered houses and is located on the German Timber-F ...
.
In 1998 it received its modern designation along with an endowment of €5,500. It is named for
Roswitha of Gandersheim
Hrotsvitha (c. 935–973) was a secular canoness who wrote drama and Christian poetry under the Ottonian dynasty. She was born in Bad Gandersheim to Saxon nobles and entered Gandersheim Abbey as a canoness. She is considered the first female writ ...
, a 10th-century
Benedictine
, image = Medalla San Benito.PNG
, caption = Design on the obverse side of the Saint Benedict Medal
, abbreviation = OSB
, formation =
, motto = (English: 'Pray and Work')
, found ...
nun who is considered the first female German
playwright
A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays.
Etymology
The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word "wright" is an archaic English ...
Hilde Domin
Hilde Domin (27 July 1912 – 22 February 2006) is the pseudonym of Hilde Palm (née Löwenstein), a German lyric poet and writer. She was among the most important German-language poets of her time.
Biography
Domin was born in 1909 in Cologne as ...
*1975
Ilse Aichinger
Ilse Aichinger (1 November 1921 – 11 November 2016) was an Austrian writer known for her accounts of her persecution by the Nazis because of her Jewish ancestry.
*1976
Elisabeth Borchers
Elisabeth Borchers (27 February 1926 – 25 September 2013) was a German writer and poet.
Life
Borchers was born in Homberg in 1926 and lived during World War II in Alsace. She wrote fiction and poetry and plays. She also wrote for children and ...
Elfriede Jelinek
Elfriede Jelinek (; born 20 October 1946) is an Austrian playwright and novelist. She is one of the most decorated authors writing in German today and was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature for her "musical flow of voices and counter-vo ...
*1979
Luise Rinser
Luise Rinser (30 April 1911 – 17 March 2002) was a German writer, best known for her novels and short stories.
Early life and education
Luise Rinser was born on 30 April 1911 in Pitzling, a constituent community of Landsberg am Lech, in Upper B ...
*1980
Rose Ausländer
Rose Ausländer (born Rosalie Beatrice Scherzer; May 11, 1901 – January 3, 1988) was a Jewish poet writing in German and English. Born in Czernowitz in the Bukovina, she lived through its tumultuous history of belonging to the Austria-Hungary, A ...
Friederike Mayröcker
Friederike Mayröcker (20 December 1924 – 4 June 2021) was an Austrian writer of poetry and prose, audio plays, children's books and dramatic texts. She experimented with language, and was regarded as an avantgarde poet, and as one of the lea ...
*1983
Sarah Kirsch
Sarah Kirsch (; 16 April 1935 – 5 May 2013) was a German poet.
Biography
Sarah Kirsch was originally born Ingrid Bernstein in Limlingerode, Prussian Saxony but had changed her first name to Sarah in order to protest against her father's a ...
Irmtraud Morgner
Irmtraud Morgner, (22 August 19336 May 1990), was a German writer, best known for works of magical realism concerned predominantly with the role of gender in East German society.
Life
Irmtraud Morgner was born in 1933 in Chemnitz, the daughter ...
*1986
Ulla Hahn
Ulla Hahn is a German poet and novelist.
Partial bibliography
Poetry collections
* ''Herz über Kopf'' (1981),
* ''Spielende'' (1983),
* ''Unerhörte Nähe'' (1988),
* ''Freudenfeuer'' (1989),
* ''Liebesgedichte'' (1993),
* ''Epikurs ...
Gerlind Reinshagen
Gerlind Reinshagen (4 May 1926 – 9 June 2019) was a German writer.
Biography
The daughter of Ekkehard and Friedel Technau, she was born in Königsberg and studied pharmacy and art. She wrote children's books, novels, poetry and radio plays bef ...
*1989
Helga M. Novak
Helga M. Novak (pseudonym for Maria Karlsdottir; 8 September 1935 – 24 December 2013) was a German-Icelandic writer.
Novak was born in Berlin. She grew up in East Germany, studied journalism and philosophy at the University of Leipzig. She resi ...
*1990
Herta Müller
Herta Müller (; born 17 August 1953) is a Romanian-born German novelist, poet, essayist and recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Nițchidorf (german: Nitzkydorf, link=no), Timiș County in Romania, her native language is ...
Christa Reinig
Christa Reinig (6 August 1926, Berlin – 30 September 2008, Munich) was a German poet, fiction and non-fiction writer, and dramatist. She began her career in the Soviet occupation zone which became East Berlin, was banned there, after publish ...
*1994
Monika Maron
Monika Maron (born 3 June 1941 in Berlin) is a German author, formerly of the German Democratic Republic.
Biography
She moved in 1951 from West to East Berlin with her stepfather, Karl Maron, the GDR Minister of the Interior. She studied theatr ...
Birgit Vanderbeke
Birgit Vanderbeke (8 August 1956 – 24 December 2021) was a German writer.
Biography
Born in Dahme, East Germany, Vanderbeke grew up in Frankfurt am Main, Hesse, after her family moved to West Germany in 1961.
Vanderbeke studied Law, Germanic ...
Erika Fuchs
Erika Fuchs, née Petri (7 December 1906 in Rostock – 22 April 2005 in Munich), was a German translator. She is largely known in Germany due to her translations of American Disney comics, especially Carl Barks' stories about Duckburg and its i ...
Antje Rávic Strubel
Antje is a female name. It is a Low German and Dutch diminutive form of Anna. Once a very common name in the northern part of the Netherlands, its popularity has steadily declined since 1900.Angelika Klüssendorf
*2005 Julia Franck
*2006 Ruth Klüger
*2007
Felicitas Hoppe
Felicitas Hoppe (born 22 December 1960) is a German writer. She received the Georg Büchner Prize in 2012.
Biography
Early years
Felicitas Hoppe was born in Hamelin, Lower Saxony, and grew up there. After her Abitur she studied literature, ...
*2008
Cornelia Funke
Cornelia Maria Funke () (born 10 December 1958) is a German author of children's fiction. Born in Dorsten, North Rhine-Westphalia, she began her career as a social worker before becoming a book illustrator. She began writing novels in the late 1 ...
*2009 No Award
*2010
Anna Katharina Hahn
Anna Katharina Hahn is a German author.
Life and works
Anna Katharina Hahn was born in Ruit ( Ostfildern), a small town short distance to the south-east of Stuttgart.
She attended secondary school in nearby Stuttgart. Hahn won her first liter ...
*2011
Olga Martynova
Olga Martynova (born in 1962 in Dudinka, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia) is a Russian-German writer. She writes poems in Russian, and prose and essays in German.
Olga Martynova grew up in Leningrad where she studied Russian literature and language and ...
*2012
Elke Erb
Elke Erb (born 18 February 1938) is a German author-poet based in Berlin. She has also worked as a literary editor and translator.
Biography Family provenance and early years
Elke Erb was born at Scherbach (today part of Rheinbach) in the hill ...
*2013
Ulrike Draesner
Ulrike Draesner (born 1962 in Munich) is a German author. She was awarded the 2016 Nicolas Born Prize.
Life and work
The daughter of an architect, Draesner grew up in Munich, Germany. She received a Bavarian State scholarship for the best perform ...
*2014
Gertrud Leutenegger
Gertrud Leutenegger (born 1948) is a German-speaking Swiss poet, novelist, playwright and theatre director.Böttcher, Kurt, et al., eds., ''Lexikon deutschsprachiger Schriftsteller 20. Jahrhundert.'' Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1993, p. 476.
...
Terézia Mora
Terézia Mora (; born 5 February 1971) is a Hungarian writer, screenwriter and translator.
Early life and education
Terézia Mora was born in Sopron, Hungary, to a family with German roots and grew up bilingual. She moved to Germany after th ...
Emine Sevgi Özdamar
Emine Sevgi Özdamar (born 10 August 1946) is a writer, director, and actress of Turkish origin who resides in Germany and has resided there for many years. Özdamar's art is unique in that it is influenced by her life experiences, which straddl ...
*2022
See also
*
German literature
German literature () comprises those literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Switzerland and Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, South Tyrol in Italy and to a l ...
List of literary awards
This list of literary awards from around the world is an index to articles about notable literary awards.
International awards
All nationalities & multiple languages eligible (in chronological order)
* Nobel Prize in Literature – since 1901 ...
*
List of poetry awards
Major international awards
* Golden Wreath of Struga Poetry Evenings
* Bridges of Struga (for a debuting author at Struga Poetry Evenings)
* Griffin Poetry Prize (The international prize)
* International Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medici ...
*
List of years in literature
This article gives a chronological list of years in literature (descending order), with notable publications listed with their respective years and a small selection of notable events. The time covered in individual years covers Renaissance, Baro ...
*
List of years in poetry
This article gives a chronological list of years in poetry (descending order). These pages supplement the List of years in literature pages with a focus on events in the history of poetry.
21st century in poetry
2020s
* 2023 in poetry
* 2022 ...