22 January 2021

Akademie der Künste awards the Berlin Art Prize - Jubilee Endowment 1848/1948
Annett Gröschner awarded the Berlin Art Prize – Grand Prize 2021

The writer and journalist Annett Gröschner is the winner of the Berlin Art Prize – Grand Prize 2021. The Akademie der Künste awards the prize, endowed with 15,000 euros in rotation among its six sections on behalf of the state of Berlin. The Berlin Art Prize awarded through the Literature Section is referred to as the “Fontane Prize”. The jury consists of Akademie members Ulrich Peltzer and Monika Rinck together with the literature critic Wiebke Porombka. The format of this year's awards ceremony on 18 March shall be announced at a later date.

“Whether she is exploring Berlin’s waterways or the city’s women’s movement in East and West, or Berlin during the age of cholera and the circumstances surrounding Hegel’s death, Line IV of the Berlin underground or the garden allotments of Parzelle Paradies – Annett Gröschner is an untiring chronicler of the city, its changes and, of course, its inhabitants. She is a flaneur and a walking city archive at the same time, blending literary, sociological and historical approaches in her texts. We are dealing here with descriptions that are dense in the best sense of the word. Her literary eye has a philanthropic precision, which shows the city and everything that moves within it in greater clarity, complexity and contrast,” writes Monika Rinck in the Jury Statement.

In addition to the Berlin Art Prize – Grand Prize, the six Berlin Art Prizes, endowed with 5,000 euros each, will also be awarded on 18 March. These prizes go to the Indian concept artist Sajan Mani (Visual Arts Section), the architecture firm HARQUITECTES in Barcelona (Architecture Section), the Slovenian composer and musician Petra Strahovnik (Music Section), the German writer Lea Schneider (Literature Section), the Swiss actress Gina Haller (Performing Arts Section) and the German multimedia artist Susann Maria Hempel (Film and Media Arts Section).

The Berlin Art Prize - Jubilee Foundation 1848/1948 was founded by the Berlin Senate in 1948 in memory of the March Revolution of 1848. It has been awarded by the Akademie der Künste on behalf of the State of Berlin since 1971. Recent winners of the Berlin Art Prize – Grand Prize include Younghi Pagh-Paan (2020), Renée Gailhoustet (2019) and Thomas Demand (2018).

Short Biography Annett Gröschner
Annett Gröschner was born in 1964 in Magdeburg; she studied German language and literature in Berlin and Paris and now works as an author, journalist, lecturer and performer. She has lived in Berlin since 1983. From 2009 to 2012 she taught as a lecturer for special assignments at the Institute for Literary Writing and Literature Studies at the University of Hildesheim, and from 2009 to 2017 worked as guest professor for cultural journalism at the Berlin University of the Arts. Since 1994 she has been involved in numerous research, book and exhibition projects, including with the photographer Arwed Messmer. Her most recent publications are Berliner*Stuben. Palimpseste und Geschichten (2020), in which the author examines the rapid transformations that are taking place in the capital city Berlin, its Prenzlauer Berg district as well as in the surrounding countryside of Brandenburg. She was a co-founder and editor of numerous journalistic formats, and worked as a historian for the Prenzlauer Berg Museum from 1992 to 1996. Since 2012, Annett Gröschner has also appeared as guest performer with the performance group She She Pop.

Publications (selection): Moskauer Eis (2000), Hier beginnt die Zukunft, hier steigen wir aus. Unterwegs in der Berliner Verkehrsgesellschaft (2002), Walpurgistag (2011), Mit der Linie 4 um die Welt (2012), Die Städtesammlerin. Mit der Linie 4 an die entlegensten Orte der Welt (2017), Berolinas zornige Töchter (2018), Berliner Bürger*stuben. Palimpseste und Geschichten (2020)
Book and exhibition projects with Arwed Messmer (selection): Kontrakt 903. Erinnerung an eine strahlende Zukunft (2003), 2011 “Aus anderer Sicht. Die frühe Berliner Mauer”, 2012 “Fruchtstraße am 27. März 1952”, 2016 “Inventarisierung der Macht. Die Berliner Mauer aus anderer Sicht”
Awards (selection): 2012 Brandenburg Lotto Literature Award, writer-in-residence in Helsinki, 2013 fellowship from the Deutsche Akademie Rom Casa Baldi in Olevano Romano, Italy, as well as fellowship at Künstlerhaus Edenkoben, 2014 writer-in-residence in Rotterdam, 2016 Shortlist Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation Photobook Award, Special Jury Prize for Inventarisierung der Macht (together with Arwed Messmer), 2017 Berlin Art Prize from the Akademie der Künste Berlin in the Literature Section