Read My Prizes: An Accounting for Free Online

there was some murmuring, and Canetti landed under the table. I can still hear this phrase
but he’s also a Jew
although I can’t remember who at the table said it. But even today I often hear the phrase, it came from some really sinister quarter, even if I don’t know who said it. This phrase nipped any further debate over my proposal to award Canetti the prize right in the bud. I preferred to take no further part in the discussions and just sat silently at the table. But time was passing quickly and although an endless series of appalling names had been proposed in the meantime, all of which I could only associate with prattling dilettantism, no prizewinner had surfaced yet. The gentlemen were looking at the clock and the smell of the evening’s roast was already seeping through the double doors. So the table simply
had
to come to a decision. To my utter amazement one of the gentlemen, again I no longer remember who, regardless of a vote, suddenly pulled a book by Hildesheimer out of the mound of books on the table, and as he was already getting to his feet to leave the lunch, said in a disconcertinglynaïve tone:
So let’s take Hildesheimer, let’s take Hildesheimer
, and Hildesheimer was the one name that had not been uttered in all the hours of discussion. Now suddenly the name Hildesheimer had been uttered and they all shifted in their chairs and were relieved and agreed about Hildesheimer and within a matter of minutes Hildesheimer was voted the new winner of the Bremen prize. Who Hildesheimer really was, not one of them seemed to know. In a moment the news had been passed to the press that after a more-than-two-hour meeting, Hildesheimer was the new prizewinner. The gentlemen stood up and went out into the dining room. The Jew Hildesheimer had won the prize. For me
that
was the point of the prize. I’ve never been able to keep quiet about it.

The Julius Campe Prize
    In nineteen sixty-four the Julius Campe Prize, which the Hamburg publishers Hoffmann und Campe had funded in honor of Heine’s publisher Julius Campe, was split three ways and the prize money of fifteen thousand marks went to Gisela Elsner, Hubert Fichte, and me. It was the first time I was singled out for my work as a writer and above all I was enchanted that the distinction came from Hamburg and is indissolubly linked with Heinrich Heine’s first publisher, for Julius Campe was the first publisher of
The Harz Journey
and a whole series of the best of all the poems that a German poet has ever written. Julius Campe was not of course unknown to me, I had read Brienitzer’s biography of him. Intruth the Julius Campe Prize of nineteen sixty-four was not awarded at all because the jury couldn’t agree on any one writer and the three equal shares of the prize money were described as so-called Work Stipendiums, but from that moment on, because I had such a stipendium in mind, this didn’t hinder me at all from thinking and saying that I’d received the Julius Campe Prize. I was very proud and probably for the only time in my life unequivocally happy to the bottom of my heart about an honor that came in this news from Hamburg and I tried to spread it around as fast as possible. I was living with my aunt in Vienna and I walked through the First District across the Graben and along the Kärtnerstrasse and across the Kohlmarkt and through the Volksgarten and I thought everyone who met me knew of my happiness at having won the Julius Campe Prize. When I sat down at a table differently from before, I held the newspapers in my hand differently from before, and secretly I wondered to myself why everybody in the street hadn’t remarked on it to me. And anyone who failed to ask me about it was enlightened by me about my having just won the Julius Campe Prize and I explained who Julius Campe was, which nobody in Vienna knew, and who Heinrich Heine was, for not a lot of people in Viennaknew that either, and what an exceptional honor it was. It’s an enormous