Vladimir Putin Denied the Quadriga Prize
Personalities Holding the Prize
Werkstatt Deutchland, the organization from Berlin which awards, since 2003, the annual prize Quadriga, sponsored by Netzwerk Quadriga gGmbH, acknowledging each year four people for their contribution to pioneering spirit in economy, politics, or culture, reversed on Saturday the decision to award the prestigious prize to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
The change of heart comes in the middle of severe criticism from German political and cultural figures who said that Putin does not qualify as a candidate because of the way human rights are observed in Russia.
The award committee wanted to reward the Russian PM for the contribution to “stability through the interaction between prosperity, economics, and identity” of Russia, and for the way he boosted economic relations between Russia and Germany.
As a result of the decision to award Putin the prize, several Quadriga members withdrew from the board, some of them considering it a “scandalous” decision, others saying that there were difference of opinion in assessing Putin’s contribution to the welfare of Russia.
Danish artist Ollafur Elliason, and former president of the Czech Republic announced that if Putin received the prize, they would return their own prizes. Elliason already returned it.
As a consequence the board decided to cancel the award for 2011, no one receiving the prize this year. The other three nominees for this year were Mexican foreign minister Patricia Espinoza, Turkish-born author Betul Durmaz, and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.
Putin was supposed to receive the Quadriga on October 3, the Day of German Union, marking the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of the two German states.
Vladimir Putin
Putin served in East Germany as an intelligence officer for five years until the reunification.
Quadriga has 20 members of the board, some of them being international personalities such as Serbian president Boris Tadic.
Michael Gorbachev, Vaclav Havel, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Helmut Kohl, Shimon Peres, Hamid Karzai, Queen Silvia of Sweden, Boris Tadic, Jose Manuel Barosso, and many others receive the prize since 2003.
