Viadrina Prize

Since 1999, the European University has awarded the Viadrina Prize to outstanding personalities and significant initiatives from all areas of social life for their commitment to understanding, reconciliation and cooperation between Germany and Poland. The Viadrina Prize stands for international understanding, peace and freedom in a common European house and thus for the values that form the foundation of the Viadrina, which was newly founded as a European University in 1991. The prize is awarded annually and is endowed with 5,000 euros.

The 22nd Viadrina Prize was awarded to the outstanding expert on German-Polish relations, historian and publicist Prof. Dr habil. Krzysztof Ruchniewicz. The director of the Willy Brandt Centre for German and European Studies in Wrocław is being honoured for his services to German-Polish relations.

This year's Encouragement Award was given to the project "Literary Translation in German-Polish Cultural Dialogue". As initiative of the Karl Dedecius Archive of the European University Viadrina, the project brings together German students of Polish studies and Polish students of German studies every two years since 2016.

The laureate 2023

Prof. Dr. habil. Krzysztof Ruchniewicz has been involved with German-Polish relations since his student years in Wrocław, Saarbrücken and Marburg. He wrote his Master's thesis on the joint German-Polish Textbook Commission; this was followed by a doctoral dissertation on the political relations between Berlin, Bonn and Warsaw in the period 1949 and 1958 and his doctorate on Polish efforts for German reparations. In 2002, Krzysztof Ruchniewicz was founding director of the Willy Brandt Centre for German and European Studies and has been its director almost continuously since then. He also holds the Chair of Contemporary History at the University of Wrocław.

Krzysztof Ruchniewicz is a recipient of the Cross of Merit of the Republic of Poland in Gold and the Verdienstkreuz am Bande of the Federal Republic of Germany.