Karl Schlögel. Image: Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, Peter-Andreas Hassiepen
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
‘Empirical Historiography’ and ‘Personal Experience’
His voice “was one of the first to warn of Vladimir Putin’s aggressive expansionist policies and authoritarian-nationalist claims to power,” says the jurors’ statement issued today (July 29).
Karl Schlögel, the Bavarian-born author of Terror und Traum: Moskau 1937 (Terror and Dream, Hanser Verlag, 2008) and, most recently, American Matrix: Besichtigung einer Epoche (American Matrix: Examining an Epoch, Hanser, 2024), has been named the 2025 winner of the €25,000 (US$29,366) Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.
Today’s statement of rationale on the selection of Schlögel, as conveyed by the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels‘ Karin Schmidt-Friderichs, is a reminder of how timely and pertinent the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade can be: the news has reflected the accelerated international developments around Washington and its allies in their now-curtailed grace period for the Kremlin relative to its assault on Ukraine.
Schlögel is to be formally honored on October 19 in the annual Peace Prize ceremony at Frankfurt’s Paulskirche.
Schmidt-Friderichs, who is also chair of the Peace Prize board, has communicated the jury’s rationale to the press, saying, “In his distinguished body of work, German historian and essayist Karl Schlögel combines empirical historiography with personal experience.
Karin Schmidt-Friderichs
“As a scholar and flâneur, an archaeologist of modernity and a seismograph of social change, he explored the cities and landscapes of Central and Eastern Europe long before the fall of the Iron Curtain. Through his writing, Schlögel placed the cities of Kyiv, Odesa, Lviv, and Kharkiv on the mental map of his readers. He also repeatedly characterized Saint Petersburg and Moscow as European cities.
“His unique narrative style combines observation, insight, and feeling, a blend that allows him to effectively challenge existing prejudices while also awakening our curiosity.
“After Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Schlögel sharpened his focus on Ukraine, inviting us to join him in reflecting on Germany’s own blind spots regarding the region. His was one of the first voices to warn of Vladimir Putin’s aggressive expansionist policies and authoritarian-nationalist claims to power. Today, Schlögel continues to affirm Ukraine’s place in Europe, calling for its defense as essential to our shared future. His enduring message is both clear and urgent: Without a free Ukraine, there can be no peace in Europe.”
Travels to the Soviet Union
In its survey of Schlögel’s work, the award program notes an “unusual approach of incorporating his own experiences and observations into his writings, [which] was already evident in one of his first works, Moskau lesen (Reading Moscow, 1984).”
He would make his first trip to the Soviet Union in 1966, and was “on-hand in person for the Prague Spring.”
Born in 1948, Schlögel was “a professor of Eastern European history at the University of Konstanz. From 1994 up until he was granted emeritus status in 2013, he was a professor of Eastern European history at the Europa-Universität Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder). At that institution, he was instrumental in establishing the academic chair as well as in shaping the study of Eastern Europe as an interdisciplinary and cultural-historical subject.
“Schlögel,” writes the Peace Prize program, “is well-known for closely linking research and teaching as well as for raising awareness among students—especially by means of in-person excursions—for the many historical, cultural and political connections to Eastern Europe ranging from the history of cities and everyday cultures to the politics of memory and current geopolitical developments.
“Beyond his position as a professor, Schlögel is also active as a guest lecturer and speaker at universities abroad and regularly contributes his knowledge to public debate.”
Throughout his career, the program writes, “he has combined detailed observations of everyday life with a spatial approach to historiography, always seeking to enable new ways of recounting the cultural and contemporary history of Russia and Eastern Europe.”
The 2024 winner of the Peace Prize was the Polish-American journalist, historian, and essayist Anne Applebaum. Among many books, her most recent are Autocracy Inc.: The Dictators Who Want To Run the World and its predecessor, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism). She is a closely followed staff writer at The Atlantic magazine.
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