Dresden Chamisso Literature Prize for Dana von Suffrin

The Munich-based author Dana von Suffrin has been awarded the 2025 Dresden Chamisso Prize. She dedicates her literary work to the history of Jews and anti-Semitism in Central Europe, the jury said, explaining its choice. With her family novels "Otto" (2019) and "Nochmal von vorne" (2024), she "brings the experience of the Shoah and migration, the questions of guilt, including those of the survivors, but also the harassment of Jews after 1945 in communist Romania into German-language literature". With their humor, the texts are "in the tradition of an international Jewish narrative that never forgets the horrors of history".

Von Suffrin was born in 1985 into a Jewish-German family and lives as a freelance author in her home town. Her two novels tell of father-daughter and sibling relationships, of Jewish-German marriages, of the burden of the past, of arguments and speechlessness in the family, but also of persistent love. She also published a radio play and edited an anthology of contemporary Jewish stories in 2024.

The award, endowed with 5,000 euros, has been associated with the Dresden garden city of Hellerau as a "laboratory" of international modernism and a poetry lectureship since 2019. The prize, named after the French poet Adelbert von Chamisso (1781-1838), is awarded annually by an alliance of business and civil society. It recognizes important contributions to contemporary literature by authors who, after a personal change of language and culture, provide new literary answers to the changes in a globalized world. This year's award ceremony is scheduled for May 16.