Journalist Christian Ultsch, head of the foreign affairs department of the "Presse", and German journalist and filmmaker Esther Schapira are the first winners of the new Arik Brauer Journalism Prize.
According to its own statement, the Viennese think tank analyses "the MENA region (Middle East North Africa) and its representation in the media in the service of qualitatively improving the discourse on this region". The founder of Mena-Watch is the entrepreneur Erwin Javor, who was a close friend of the universal artist Brauer, who died at the beginning of 2021, for many years, it said in a statement.
"The award winners live an attitude characterised by knowledge, decency and humanity towards all manifestations of anti-Semitism, which they express in their work," says the jury, which includes, among others. Brauer's daughter Timna Brauer, Danielle Spera, Director of the Jewish Museum Vienna, PULS 24 Editor-in-Chief Stefan Kaltenbrunner, "Standard" editor Oscar Bronner and Ednan Aslan, Professor of Islamic Religious Education at the Department of Islamic-Theological Studies at the University of Vienna.
The laureates will receive a ceramic sculpture still designed by Brauer himself for this purpose. The award ceremony is scheduled to take place in March 2022 in the former Stadttheater Walfischgasse.
