President Frank-Walter Steinmeier to give speech honouring Amartya Sen
The Börsenverein is delighted to announce that German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier will deliver the official speech honouring Amartya Sen, this year’s recipient of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. The award ceremony will take place in the context of the Frankfurt Book Fair on Sunday 18 October 2020 at 10:45 am at the Church of St. Paul in Frankfurt. The event will also be broadcast live on German television (ARD).
Frank-Walter Steinmeier was born in Detmold in 1956 and has served as the 12th President of the Federal Republic of Germany since March 2017. He received his doctorate in public law and political science in 1991 and was named head of the Federal Chancellery in 1999. From 2005 to 2009, he held the office of Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs and, starting in 2007, was also Vice-Chancellor of Germany. Two years after that, he was voted into the Bundestag via direct mandate and elected chairman of the SPD parliamentary group. From 2013, he acted once again as Foreign Affairs Minister until his election to the office of Federal President in 2017.
Throughout his career, Steinmeier has continually fostered a robust dialogue between politics and culture. For example, as a long-time passionate reader, he has remained very much connected to literature and the arts in his role as German president. His key overall concerns include securing liberal democracy, fortifying democratic and social cohesion and strengthening international cooperation. In his role as Federal President, he is also the patron of the “Vorlesewettbewerb des Deutschen Buchhandels”, the nationwide reading competition for young people launched by the German Publishers and Booksellers Association.
Steinmeier has received several awards for his work to date, including the Ignatz Bubis Prize, the European Prize for Political Culture and the Willy Brandt Prize.