Heike Geißler Receives the Klopstock Prize for 2025
News07.07.2025
Author and translator Heike Geißler has been awarded this year’s Klopstock Prize for New Literature. The honour comes with a cash prize of €12,000 and is awarded in recognition of her literary oeuvre.
Minister of Culture Rainer Robra congratulated the winner, stating: »Heike Geißler is an outstanding voice that can be heard far beyond the German literary scene. With her sensitive observations of our present, she explores the condition and particularities of Germany as a whole from an East German perspective, searching for phenomena that incite despair and combatting these in her writing. Viewing her work as a whole, we find vital, critical, and poetic reflections on our time. I warmly congratulate Heike Geißler on this award.«
In their public remarks, the jury stated that Geißler »writes tirades against the destroyers of the world, against the rightward shift visible in so many places, against the enemies of democracy, against those who shirk responsibility, and expresses her discontent with the contemporary world of labour. She does so poetically and with a quiet irony that she combines with sensitivity and vulnerability, but often also with anger and an acknowledgment of powerlessness. In her works, Heike Geißler collects stories of comfort and solidarity and “searches for niches beyond despair where hope flashes up.«
The Klopstock Prize for New Literature has been awarded annually since 2015 and is the most prestigious literary award in the state of Saxony-Anhalt. Previous winners include Alexander Kluge, Marion Poschmann, Clemens Meyer, Ann Cotten, and Angela Steidele.
The award ceremony will take place on 16 October 2025.
Minister of Culture Rainer Robra congratulated the winner, stating: »Heike Geißler is an outstanding voice that can be heard far beyond the German literary scene. With her sensitive observations of our present, she explores the condition and particularities of Germany as a whole from an East German perspective, searching for phenomena that incite despair and combatting these in her writing. Viewing her work as a whole, we find vital, critical, and poetic reflections on our time. I warmly congratulate Heike Geißler on this award.«
In their public remarks, the jury stated that Geißler »writes tirades against the destroyers of the world, against the rightward shift visible in so many places, against the enemies of democracy, against those who shirk responsibility, and expresses her discontent with the contemporary world of labour. She does so poetically and with a quiet irony that she combines with sensitivity and vulnerability, but often also with anger and an acknowledgment of powerlessness. In her works, Heike Geißler collects stories of comfort and solidarity and “searches for niches beyond despair where hope flashes up.«
The Klopstock Prize for New Literature has been awarded annually since 2015 and is the most prestigious literary award in the state of Saxony-Anhalt. Previous winners include Alexander Kluge, Marion Poschmann, Clemens Meyer, Ann Cotten, and Angela Steidele.
The award ceremony will take place on 16 October 2025.