Stuttgart Peace Prize
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Stuttgart Peace Prize
The Stuttgart Peace Prize (German: Stuttgarter Friedenspreis) is an annual award of 5000 Euros made by the non governmental organization Die AnStifter ("The Instigators") to people or projects involved "in a special way for peace, justice and world solidarity". Voting is open to all who have won either the Foundation or the instigators Stuttgart Peace Prize in the year in question, those who have made a donation before the election or are supporting members. Each voter has three votes, and may give a proposal per vote or distribute their votes over existing proposals.
Sl | Name | Country | Flag | Year | Awarded For |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
23 | Seebrücke Baden-Württemberg | Germany | 2023 | involved "in a special way for peace, justice and world solidarity". | |
22 | Reporters Without Borders | Germany | 2022 | involved "in a special way for peace, justice and world solidarity". | |
21 | Maria Kalesnikava | Belarus | 2021 | involved "in a special way for peace, justice and world solidarity". | |
20 | Julian Assange | Australia | 2020 | involved "in a special way for peace, justice and world solidarity". | |
19 | Sea-Watch | Germany | 2019 | involved "in a special way for peace, justice and world solidarity". | |
18 | X González | Italy | 2018 | involved "in a special way for peace, justice and world solidarity". | |
17 | Asl? Erdo?an | Turkey | 2017 | involved "in a special way for peace, justice and world solidarity". | |
16 | Jürgen Grässlin | Germany | 2016 | involved "in a special way for peace, justice and world solidarity". | |
15 | Giusi Nicolini | Italy | 2015 | involved "in a special way for peace, justice and world solidarity". | |
14 | Edward Snowden | United States | 2014 | involved "in a special way for peace, justice and world solidarity". | |
13 | Enrico Pieri | Italy | 2013 | involved "in a special way for peace, justice and world solidarity". | |
12 | Enio Mancini | Italy | 2013 | involved "in a special way for peace, justice and world solidarity". | |
11 | Aktion Aufschrei | Germany | 2012 | involved "in a special way for peace, justice and world solidarity". | |
10 | Fatuma Abdulkadir Adan | Kenya | 2011 | involved "in a special way for peace, justice and world solidarity". | |
9 | Werner Baumgarten | Germany | 2010 | involved "in a special way for peace, justice and world solidarity". | |
8 | Árpád Pusztai | South Africa | 2009 | involved "in a special way for peace, justice and world solidarity". | |
7 | Susan Bardócz | Germany | 2009 | involved "in a special way for peace, justice and world solidarity". | |
6 | POEMA | Germany/Brazil | 2008 | involved "in a special way for peace, justice and world solidarity". | |
5 | Agustín Aguayo | United States | 2007 | involved "in a special way for peace, justice and world solidarity". | |
4 | Wolfram Hülsemann | Germany | 2006 | involved "in a special way for peace, justice and world solidarity". | |
3 | Giuliana Sgrena | Italy | 2005 | involved "in a special way for peace, justice and world solidarity". | |
2 | Lama Tarayra | Palestine | 2004 | involved "in a special way for peace, justice and world solidarity". | |
1 | Committee for Basic Liberties and Democracy | Germany | 2003 | involved "in a special way for peace, justice and world solidarity". |
Stuttgart Peace Prize Laureates (2030 ~ 2021)
![](https://livinghumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Seebrucke-Baden-Wurttemberg.jpg)
Seebrücke Baden-Württemberg
Stuttgart Peace Prize 2023
The Seebrücke is a political movement, supported primarily by individuals from civil society. With demonstrations and protest actions, they are fighting for a solidarity-based and human rights-based migration policy: away from isolation and
towards freedom of movement for all people, for a Europe of solidarity, inalienable human rights and the right to asylum. “Precisely because this open and solidarity-based Europe - given the political majority and the political debate that has shifted far to the right - will not become a reality tomorrow or the day after, we must fight for global freedom of movement and equal rights for all people and take the path there step by step .” The terrible news continues: thousands of people die in shipwrecks in the Mediterranean every year. In camps like Kara-Tepe, Samos and Lipa, tens of thousands live in untenable conditions. The “Safe Harbor Baden-Württemberg” campaign has currently been initiated together with the Refugee Council.
![](https://livinghumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Reporters-Without-Borders.jpg)
Reporters Without Borders
Stuttgart Peace Prize 2022
Reporters Without Borders document violations of press and freedom of information worldwide and alert the public when journalists
and their employees are in danger. They are committed to greater
security and better protection for media professionals, especially in
crisis areas. Reporters Without Borders fight online and offline against censorship, against the use and export of censorship software and against
restrictive media laws. The German section has been active from Berlin since 1994. The Reporters Without Borders association is part of the international organization Reporters sans frontières, founded in 1985.
![](https://livinghumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Maria-Kalesnikava.jpg)
Maria Kalesnikava
Stuttgart Peace Prize 2021
Until 2020, she lived in Stuttgart for twelve years, where, among other things, she worked as project manager of the Artemp Festival. She then returned to Belarus as campaign manager for the opposition presidential candidate Babariko. After his arrest and the escape of candidate Tikhanovskaya, Maria Kalesnikava became the leading face of the opposition in Belarus. The secret police tried to forcibly deport them to Ukraine. Maria, however, tore up her passport at the border and was then imprisoned in a special prison in Minsk (in September 2020). She faces up to twelve years in prison for “attempting to seize power” and founding a “terrorist organization.” Kalesnikava is a key figure in the protests against Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus authoritarianly for 26 years.
Stuttgart Peace Prize Laureates (2020 ~ 2011)
![](https://livinghumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Julian-Assange.jpg)
Julian Assange
Stuttgart Peace Prize 2020
Julian Paul Assange receives the Stuttgart Peace Prize 2020 from the Instigators, endowed with 5,000 EU. This is what the members of the citizens' project Die AnStifter decided in the second round of voting. Since 2003, Die AnStifter has been awarding the Stuttgart Peace Prize to people and projects who are particularly committed to “peace, justice and solidarity”. The Citizen Project's Peace Prize will be awarded on December 6, 2020 in the Stuttgart Theaterhaus.
Annette Ohme-Reinicke, the chairwoman of the Stuttgart AnStifter, said about the election of Julian Paul Assange: “Freedom of information and the press is a right that was once fought for against tyrants and despots. Since the first declaration of human rights in 1789, it has been one of the inalienable foundations of a democratic society in Europe. The harsh repression against Julian Assange was also directed against the realization of comprehensive political information for all people. By awarding the Peace Prize to Julian Paul Assange, the instigators are sending a signal not only to protect but also to enforce the right to unconditional freedom of information and the press.
![](https://livinghumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Sea-Watch.jpg)
Sea-Watch
Stuttgart Peace Prize 2019
Julian Paul Assange receives the Stuttgart Peace Prize 2020 from the Instigators, endowed with 5,000 EU. This is what the members of the citizens' project Die AnStifter decided in the second round of voting. Since 2003, Die AnStifter has been awarding the Stuttgart Peace Prize to people and projects who are particularly committed to “peace, justice and solidarity”. The Citizen Project's Peace Prize will be awarded on December 6, 2020 in the Stuttgart Theaterhaus.
Annette Ohme-Reinicke, the chairwoman of the Stuttgart AnStifter, said about the election of Julian Paul Assange: “Freedom of information and the press is a right that was once fought for against tyrants and despots. Since the first declaration of human rights in 1789, it has been one of the inalienable foundations of a democratic society in Europe. The harsh repression against Julian Assange was also directed against the realization of comprehensive political information for all people. By awarding the Peace Prize to Julian Paul Assange, the instigators are sending a signal not only to protect but also to enforce the right to unconditional freedom of information and the press.
![](https://livinghumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/X-Gonzalez.jpg)
X González
Stuttgart Peace Prize 2018
Emma González was not even 20 years old when she accidentally survived Nikolas Cruz's school shooting in Parkland, North America, earlier this year; 17 people die and 15 people are injured.
At a memorial event shortly after this event, Emma González gives a speech in which she says, among other things: When the President tells me to my face that this was a terrible tragedy (…) and that nothing can be done, then I tell him that He received $30 million from the National Rifle Association (NRA) for this stance.
The spontaneous indignation over the often deadly interrelationship between weapons manufacturers on the one hand and politicians from the Republican Party on the other quickly gave rise to a movement: Emma González and other classmates founded the organization Never Again MSD, which advocates for greater control of firearm ownership with stricter gun laws and... advocates against the NRA's political influence in the United States.
For Annette Ohme-Reinicke, chairwoman of the AnStifter, Emma González and the organization Never Again MSD are an important part of North American civil society that successfully defends itself against racism, xenophobia and the state-tolerated arms trade.
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Aslı Erdoğan
Stuttgart Peace Prize 2017
The Turkish author and physicist Aslı Erdoğan (born March 8, 1967 in Istanbul) receives the AnStifter Stuttgart Peace Prize 2017, worth 5,000 EU. Every year since 2003, the AnStifter has been awarding the prize to people who are committed to “peace, justice and solidarity” in a special way. “The Peace Prize to Aslı Erdoğan also sets an example against any attacks on public expression and freedom of the press. This doesn't 'only' affect Turkey. Journalists around the world are increasingly being discriminated against, imprisoned or even murdered in order to suppress independent public opinion. Our support goes out to these journalists and all others who are being harassed for speaking out publicly against authoritarian governments,” said Dr. Annette Ohme-Reinicke, chairwoman of the Stuttgart Citizens Project.
Aslı Erdoğan, the great Turkish novelist and opposition figure, has become a symbolic figure for freedom of expression and the extent of Turkish arbitrary rule. Because of her columns in the pro-Kurdish newspaper Özgür Gündem, Aslı Erdoğan was imprisoned after the failed military coup in Turkey in August 2016 and held for four and a half months in Istanbul's Bakırköy women's prison. Her weapon is language; she courageously and desperately calls things by their names: arbitrariness and oppression, violence, torture, guilt. Erdoğan's poetic language is political and unambiguous.
“You always have to keep the belief alive within yourself that you can change the world, at least the world within ourselves. Because otherwise why should we live, why should we write?” she says. Your appeal to the German public not to forget the writers thrown into prison by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's regime should also be heard at the G-20 summit in Hamburg.
![](https://livinghumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Jurgen-Grasslin.jpg)
Jürgen Grässlin
Stuttgart Peace Prize 2016
In 2016, the AnStifter Stuttgart Peace Prize went to Jürgen Grässlin, a teacher and peace activist from Freiburg, who was honored for his commitment to the arms industry, arms exports and the Bundeswehr.
The award ceremony took place on Saturday, December 10, 2016, in the Stuttgart Theaterhaus.
![](https://livinghumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Edward-Snowden.jpg)
Edward Snowden
Stuttgart Peace Prize 2014
The AnStifter Stuttgart Peace Prize in 2014 goes to the whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Laudation for “Edward Snowden”
by Ines Pohl, editor-in-chief of the taz
Ladies and Gentlemen
“ We only have the rights that we protect”.
This sentence comes from an interview in The Nation newspaper with... Edward Snowden.
Dear instigators, dear instigators!
Thank you for your invitation to honor a man here in Stuttgart who has given us all a new perspective on the machinations of the secret services that threaten our freedom and privacy. At the moment I can hardly imagine a better place in Germany to honor the currently best-known instigator of resistance against the productions of power - no more fitting place than your city, dear instigators: Stuttgart.
Stuttgart, the city that still takes its protest to the streets today - against a swanky train station that many people don't want. Here, peaceful demonstrations have repeatedly been met with completely disproportionate police violence. Unfortunately.
The price of freedom is high. Everywhere, in every country in the world. In dictatorships, of course, it is incomparably higher than in democracies. But now we also know that in the United States, the country that was so close to us Germans for many historical reasons as the promised land of the free, home of the brave - that there is an insidious surveillance state in the USA with the help of its secret services who exploited the fear of its citizens after 9/11 in order to establish control mechanisms that one would sometimes prefer to think of as science fiction...
It's about tangible economic interests, for example from telephone companies, but not only. And these are imperialist strategies of great consequence.
We only know all this because Edward Snowden was willing to walk the rocky path of the whistleblower .
Who is this man that the United States wants to try as a traitor? “ I go by Ed,” is how he introduces himself in conversations. And he says about himself: “I am an indoor cat, a computer guy. I don't go out and play football and stuff – that's not me. I want to think, I want to build, I want to talk, I want to create.”
“I have a bed for Ed,” read posters that many in Germany hung in their windows when it was discussed whether Germany could grant Edward Snowden asylum. Many citizens would have been happy to give him asylum. And he seems so honest too! A secret service man you can trust...since he got out. Because of his exit.
“ There's definitely a deep state. “Trust me, I’ve been there,” says Snowden. So in the USA there is a state within the state in which the secret services and the military rule and not the elected representatives of democracy. Snowden published the evidence.
As an IT security technician and system administrator, Our Ed had access to all documents of the inner circle, the core area of the National Secret Agency , which obviously aims for comprehensive, seamless surveillance of all citizens - and is already practicing it to a frightening extent.
Dear instigators, dear people of Stuttgart – I personally have a lot in common with the United States. I studied there, my wife is American - and I have always loved this country for its amazing opportunities and its courage to stand up for the rights and freedoms of the individual. Also against the state. Also against state interests. And now: the end of the North American flagpole should be the end of freedom? The end of privacy?
That will depend on us. From us as global citizens. Perhaps the resistance to the surveillance strategies of the US empire has just begun - beginning to draw circles that go far beyond the small group of Internet freaks and nerds who are at home in the world of the Internet with all its technical sophistications and possibilities .
When we celebrate Edward Snowden today as a fighter for freedom, we are also honoring four other people without whom his publications about the surveillance world in which we have long been living would not have been possible. Resistance and rebellion against injustice and oppression ultimately always requires both: the courage of the individual to stand up, refuse the dictates of the powerful and then - teamwork. Another achievement of democratic ideals that hardly any other country has promoted and advanced as much as the USA.
The team behind Ed Snowden will also go down in history:
Bradley Chelsea Manning , the US soldier turned woman who, while still a man, exposed some of the US Army's war crimes against Iraqi civilians and was only able to do so because she had access to secret film footage and documents. Manning, in turn, could not have done this without the technical and strategic help of Julian Assange , the founder of Wikileaks. Laura Poitras , the journalist and documentary filmmaker, was the first person to understand how explosive these e-mails were from Citizenfour (Ed Snowden's code name), to whom she is now making her third film about the machinations of the American military and secret services dedicated. She documented his path, their path together, on film and thus created a very loving and fair memorial to him - as a political activist and as a personality who impresses with his confident honesty and straightforwardness. And finally there was and is Glenn Greenwald , the Guardian journalist, who determined the timing and choreography of the journalistic processing of Snowden's secret documents with the utmost precision and professionalism.
These four, these four citizens, with their preparatory work, their support and their know-how, made the enormous journalistic impact of Edward Snowden's revelations possible in the first place.
Ladies and Gentlemen – Chelsea Manning is in prison; Julian Assange has been living locked up in the Ecuadorian embassy for two years; Edward Snowden is stuck in Russia; Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald will probably never be able to take unsupervised steps again in their lives . Peter Maas wrote a wonderful portrait of Laura Poitras for the New York Times magazine, the final sentence of which I would like to read to you here: “The greatest paradox, of course,” writes Peter Maas, “is that all of her efforts and efforts “Understanding and uncovering state surveillance have now probably condemned them to this same surveillance for the rest of their lives.”
Laura Poitras herself said in an interview with Peter Maas: “Our lives will never be the same again. I don't know if I'll ever be able to live somewhere again and feel like I have any kind of privacy. This could just be irreversible and completely over.”
This, ladies and gentlemen, of course applies even more to Edward Snowden, the secret service embezzler himself. But I would like to raise awareness of these four other musketeers of the investigation, together with the honor for Snowden, because of their incredibly successful choreography of the journalistic disclosure scandals deserves the highest respect and honor. And I believe this is very much in the spirit of our hero of the day:
“ It’s not about me, it’s not about my personality ,” says Edward Snowden in Poitra’s documentary “Citizenfour .” “It's about the thing, about what is about to be taken away from us - intellectual freedom. The freedom to think what we want. Uncensored and in a protected privacy.”
In order to truly protect this freedom, we need teamwork at the highest level. The new media and the global Internet with its Janus head of grandiose freedom and the infamous control by the state, military and business corporations have massively changed our perception of the world in recent years.
Uncovering the dark sides of this new world - for this we all deserve thanks to Edward Snowden and his colleagues.
Whistleblowers are more than just classic informants. Edward Snowden went public fully aware of the planned criminal prosecution for his betrayal of secrets. He's risking his life. His freedom of movement. His private life. And why? For reasons of conscience, for love of freedom.
But Edward Snowden also confronts us all with a fundamental question that is as old as the world, but which today shows itself under different circumstances, in a different form, in the dangers of highly modern technology:
How far do we go ourselves – for the truth?
What price are we willing to pay for spoken, demonstrated truths that might land us on the list of so-called traitors?
Personally, I also ask myself: What new responsibility lies ahead for me, for us as journalists - in times of surveillance and the transparency demanded by everyone? In London, the Guardian office was turned upside down - in antiquated old school intelligence logic, they insisted on smashing the hard drives... as if copy media didn't exist! But precisely because we as journalists enjoy greater protection in the name of press freedom than many others, we also have a great duty and responsibility to support courageous people like Edward Snowden with our journalistic knowledge and the entire strength of our media.
Dear instigators, I would like to address another paradox:
You are giving Edward Snowden a peace prize today. You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned the word " freedom" yet, yes, but not once the word " peace" in my nod to Snowden's undoubted contributions to public enlightenment.
As a journalist, I have to say: Even if Snowden caused a disaster for the NSA... the scandalous revelations were ultimately, like all other attacks by "enemies", very quickly integrated into the system. Shit happens . For a secret service there can be – by definition – no taboos and no moral barriers. A secret service operates in and with the logic of war. Even in peacetime.
Yes! Edward Snowden deserves every peace prize in the world because he made it clear to us that we have not lived in peace for a long time. Yes! We in Germany are still protected from the war in our own country. But our peace and the peace in the USA is a false peace - bought with many wars in other countries, on other continents.
The freedom that we still enjoy in Europe today is always protected by the willingness of a few to put their own freedom and even their lives at risk.
Let me close with a quote from another rebel for a free America.
Do you still remember Janis Joplin?
“ Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose…”
Ladies and gentlemen, we are all indebted to Edward Snowden and his four citizens - indebted to keep kicking ourselves in the ass and taking our responsibility for a real peace and freedom that again deserves the name . In our thinking and in our actions.
Further revelations are in preparation. The film Citizenfour ends with this announcement . So there are even more whistleblowers - people who have taken an example from the courageous uprising against inhumane practices that Edward Snowden led.
Dear instigators, you too repeatedly remind us of human rights and the indivisible value of our freedom. It's nice that you, of all people, are now handing over the Stuttgart Peace Prize to Edward Snowden, who has inspired so many people around the world - and incited rebellion.
Edward – thank you so much for this reminder of that actually
Something that is self-evident and unfortunately no longer self-evident in our times. But does it ever? Our times may just present different dangers. Knowing these dangers as precisely as possible is the prerequisite for resistant action.
It’s true: “We only have the rights that we protect”.
Thank you, Mr Snowden!
And may you live in peace again… one day.
![](https://livinghumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Enrico-Pieri.jpg)
Enrico Pieri
Stuttgart Peace Prize 2013
The AnStifter Stuttgart Peace Prize went to Enio Mancini and Enrico Pieri in 2013. The two survivors of the Nazi massacre in Sant' Anna di Stazzema, Italy, have been campaigning for years for the legal investigation of the crime and for international understanding.
Laudation for “Enio Mancini and Enrico Pieri”
By Giuliana Sgrena
I am extremely happy and feel very honored to have been given the task of giving the laudatory speech for the Stuttgart Peace Prize of the Instigators, which this year goes to Enrico Pieri and Enio Mancini, two survivors of the mass murder in Sant'Anna di Stazzema, on behalf of all survivors and the families of the victims.
I took on this task because the topic of memory work preoccupies me very much, not to say it even imprisons me. I come from an area of Italy that became known through the Partisan Republic of Ossola in Piedmont and I am the daughter of a partisan who was also intensively involved in remembrance work and spoke a lot about it. My big concern is the indifference, the platitudes and the attempts to distort history, which say that all people make mistakes and that everyone is the same. Sant'Anna, Marzabotto and the Ardeatine Caves were the most cruel massacres committed by the Nazi fascists against the Italian civilian population.
This Peace Prize has an extremely important symbolic meaning, not only because it is awarded by a German association, but because it is the result of an intense relationship that has developed between the instigators and the survivors or the entire population of Sant'Anna. It is also important because it is awarded in connection with an event that reopened many wounds that will never heal: namely the death of the former SS man Erich Priebke, who lived to be 100 years old but never lived up to it claimed responsibility for the deaths of 335 civilians on March 23, 1944 at the Ardeatine Caves in Rome.
Furthermore, Stuttgart is the seat of the public prosecutor's office, which has ordered the cessation of prosecution against the still living SS men who were responsible for the massacre of 560 civilians, including many women and children. But Italy also inexplicably waited 60 years to legally address the massacres and Germany did not even recognize the verdicts. Perhaps the action of the instigators could now open up other avenues for justice to be served, to achieve what Enio Mancini and Enrico Pieri have been fighting for for decades.
This would be a justice that, after 70 years, could only be a kind of moral reparation, but which would serve as a reminder to future generations to whom we owe the duty of truth. This would be an important form of “reparation” for the victims, namely knowing who their executioners were and being able to pass on this knowledge. “We don’t want revenge, we want justice,” Enrico Pieri and Enio Mancini have repeatedly emphasized. A justice that should also benefit future generations. Enrico Pieri and Enio Mancini are united by the fact of being survivors of the same massacre, albeit in different forms, and having kept alive the memory of what happened. They have never tired of bearing witness to it, even with all the pain that may come with it.
On that August 12, 1944, the Germans reached Sant'Anna di Stazzema, a village in the Apuan Alps in the province of Lucca, before 7 a.m. Normally there were around 400 residents living in the village's individual hamlets, but these were joined by hundreds of evacuated refugees from the city. The German soldiers, accompanied by some local fascists, approached the village from four different directions to prevent any escape of the residents. Enrico Pieri was 10 years old at the time. He and his family were taken to the house next door, to the Pierottis, where everyone was murdered. He was able to save himself, along with two daughters of the Pierotti family. Grazia, one of the two girls, showed him a storage room under the stairs where they could hide. When they were forced to leave the house because a fire had broken out, they hid under a pile of bean straw. When the situation calmed down in the afternoon, they were able to escape to a neighboring village. An uncle then looked after Enrico, who was the only one in his family to survive.
Enio Mancini, on the other hand, was 6 years old at the time. He had stayed at home with his family while his father had gone out with other men, assuming that the German soldiers were only looking for men. He couldn't imagine that everyone would be a target this time. The residents of the hamlet were first herded together in front of the church, then separated. Enio and his family members, after initially hiding among the trees, came across a young soldier who allowed them to escape while he shot into the air to give his superiors the impression that he had carried out orders.
It was only a few years ago that Enio learned the name of the man who saved his and his family's life. One more reason to make a distinction - which is often not made - between Germans and Nazi fascists, warns Enio, who, like Enrico, has many friends in Germany.
Enrico Pieri and Enio Mancini witness horrific horror, a horror that cannot be forgotten, even if one initially thinks that “forgetting could have a therapeutic effect,” as Mancini says. But a better therapeutic effect - even if it constantly brings up painful memories - is achieved by bearing witness, by remembering to counteract forgetting.
This path includes different stages of grief that are necessary to make the trauma bearable, this paradoxical “feeling of guilt” for having survived. And Mancini remembers how important it was at the time to secure the remains of those who had been buried in mass graves in order to transfer them to the ossuary, which was built in 1948. This was followed by the construction of the “Museum of Resistance”, whose director Enio Mancini was from 1991 to 2006. The museum completed the work of the Association of Martyrs of Sant'Anna di Stazzema (founded in 1971), “to maintain the historical, civic and moral values that can be derived from the events of August 12th”. The chairman of this association is now Enrico Pieri.
Enrico Pieri took a different path, with a longer detour. In the 1960s he emigrated to Switzerland, to the canton of Bern, where Germany is very close, also because of the language. But the rejection of everything German remained. And he could have felt vindicated in this, because to the tragedy of Sant'Anna were added the humiliations that many Italian emigrants had to endure (which, adds Enrico, I often see reflected in the behavior that we see today towards migrants day). “Instead, the idea matured in me,” he emphasizes, “that we need a political project that unites the peoples of Europe and with which we can overcome the tragedy of the Second World War.”
And when he has to choose whether his son should learn French or German at school, he chooses German. The idea of a united Europe overcomes the taboo of a hostile Germany.
Nevertheless, when he returned to Italy in 1992 and was asked whether he wanted to take part in the construction of the Museum of Sant'Anna, he initially refused. “Because talking about my experiences brought back that pain every time. But then I came to the realization that the young people should hear these stories from those of us who lived them, in order to get to know them and not repeat those mistakes,” emphasizes Enrico Pieri, who has been tirelessly active since then.
The massacre of Sant'Anna di Stazzema was long and culpably forgotten by the Italian state authorities. But at the beginning of the 1990s the situation changed; the constant commitment of the survivors set the institutions in motion: the national peace park was set up, and at the same time German musicians renovated the peace organ. All these symbols have become the destination of numerous visitors, not only Italians.
Over the years, the insight has enabled us to see that the horrors of war can serve to build a peaceful world, to overcome resentment and hatred, and to promote the building of relationships between our peoples, both of whom have been victims of their torturers Here as there, the sympathies of the masses undoubtedly lay with the German and Italian fascists.
Remembering the horrors of the past is the only means to overcome these horrors because, as Primo Levi emphasizes: “Always remember that if it happened once, it can happen again”. And the barbarization of our civil societies is a warning signal.
Enio Mancini writes at the end of his book: “What I have seen makes me want to outlaw war with all my might, as stated in Article 11 of the Italian Constitution. This Article 11 is often circumvented thoughtlessly and under pretext, by splitting hairs and for the interests of international politics. War can never be humane, but is always the opposite. No more hate, destruction and death. Never again war!"
![](https://livinghumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Enio-Mancini.jpg)
Enio Mancini
Stuttgart Peace Prize 2013
The AnStifter Stuttgart Peace Prize went to Enio Mancini and Enrico Pieri in 2013. The two survivors of the Nazi massacre in Sant' Anna di Stazzema, Italy, have been campaigning for years for the legal investigation of the crime and for international understanding.
Laudation for “Enio Mancini and Enrico Pieri”
By Giuliana Sgrena
I am extremely happy and feel very honored to have been given the task of giving the laudatory speech for the Stuttgart Peace Prize of the Instigators, which this year goes to Enrico Pieri and Enio Mancini, two survivors of the mass murder in Sant'Anna di Stazzema, on behalf of all survivors and the families of the victims.
I took on this task because the topic of memory work preoccupies me very much, not to say it even imprisons me. I come from an area of Italy that became known through the Partisan Republic of Ossola in Piedmont and I am the daughter of a partisan who was also intensively involved in remembrance work and spoke a lot about it. My big concern is the indifference, the platitudes and the attempts to distort history, which say that all people make mistakes and that everyone is the same. Sant'Anna, Marzabotto and the Ardeatine Caves were the most cruel massacres committed by the Nazi fascists against the Italian civilian population.
This Peace Prize has an extremely important symbolic meaning, not only because it is awarded by a German association, but because it is the result of an intense relationship that has developed between the instigators and the survivors or the entire population of Sant'Anna. It is also important because it is awarded in connection with an event that reopened many wounds that will never heal: namely the death of the former SS man Erich Priebke, who lived to be 100 years old but never lived up to it claimed responsibility for the deaths of 335 civilians on March 23, 1944 at the Ardeatine Caves in Rome.
Furthermore, Stuttgart is the seat of the public prosecutor's office, which has ordered the cessation of prosecution against the still living SS men who were responsible for the massacre of 560 civilians, including many women and children. But Italy also inexplicably waited 60 years to legally address the massacres and Germany did not even recognize the verdicts. Perhaps the action of the instigators could now open up other avenues for justice to be served, to achieve what Enio Mancini and Enrico Pieri have been fighting for for decades.
This would be a justice that, after 70 years, could only be a kind of moral reparation, but which would serve as a reminder to future generations to whom we owe the duty of truth. This would be an important form of “reparation” for the victims, namely knowing who their executioners were and being able to pass on this knowledge. “We don’t want revenge, we want justice,” Enrico Pieri and Enio Mancini have repeatedly emphasized. A justice that should also benefit future generations. Enrico Pieri and Enio Mancini are united by the fact of being survivors of the same massacre, albeit in different forms, and having kept alive the memory of what happened. They have never tired of bearing witness to it, even with all the pain that may come with it.
On that August 12, 1944, the Germans reached Sant'Anna di Stazzema, a village in the Apuan Alps in the province of Lucca, before 7 a.m. Normally there were around 400 residents living in the village's individual hamlets, but these were joined by hundreds of evacuated refugees from the city. The German soldiers, accompanied by some local fascists, approached the village from four different directions to prevent any escape of the residents. Enrico Pieri was 10 years old at the time. He and his family were taken to the house next door, to the Pierottis, where everyone was murdered. He was able to save himself, along with two daughters of the Pierotti family. Grazia, one of the two girls, showed him a storage room under the stairs where they could hide. When they were forced to leave the house because a fire had broken out, they hid under a pile of bean straw. When the situation calmed down in the afternoon, they were able to escape to a neighboring village. An uncle then looked after Enrico, who was the only one in his family to survive.
Enio Mancini, on the other hand, was 6 years old at the time. He had stayed at home with his family while his father had gone out with other men, assuming that the German soldiers were only looking for men. He couldn't imagine that everyone would be a target this time. The residents of the hamlet were first herded together in front of the church, then separated. Enio and his family members, after initially hiding among the trees, came across a young soldier who allowed them to escape while he shot into the air to give his superiors the impression that he had carried out orders.
It was only a few years ago that Enio learned the name of the man who saved his and his family's life. One more reason to make a distinction - which is often not made - between Germans and Nazi fascists, warns Enio, who, like Enrico, has many friends in Germany.
Enrico Pieri and Enio Mancini witness horrific horror, a horror that cannot be forgotten, even if one initially thinks that “forgetting could have a therapeutic effect,” as Mancini says. But a better therapeutic effect - even if it constantly brings up painful memories - is achieved by bearing witness, by remembering to counteract forgetting.
This path includes different stages of grief that are necessary to make the trauma bearable, this paradoxical “feeling of guilt” for having survived. And Mancini remembers how important it was at the time to secure the remains of those who had been buried in mass graves in order to transfer them to the ossuary, which was built in 1948. This was followed by the construction of the “Museum of Resistance”, whose director Enio Mancini was from 1991 to 2006. The museum completed the work of the Association of Martyrs of Sant'Anna di Stazzema (founded in 1971), “to maintain the historical, civic and moral values that can be derived from the events of August 12th”. The chairman of this association is now Enrico Pieri.
Enrico Pieri took a different path, with a longer detour. In the 1960s he emigrated to Switzerland, to the canton of Bern, where Germany is very close, also because of the language. But the rejection of everything German remained. And he could have felt vindicated in this, because to the tragedy of Sant'Anna were added the humiliations that many Italian emigrants had to endure (which, adds Enrico, I often see reflected in the behavior that we see today towards migrants day). “Instead, the idea matured in me,” he emphasizes, “that we need a political project that unites the peoples of Europe and with which we can overcome the tragedy of the Second World War.”
And when he has to choose whether his son should learn French or German at school, he chooses German. The idea of a united Europe overcomes the taboo of a hostile Germany.
Nevertheless, when he returned to Italy in 1992 and was asked whether he wanted to take part in the construction of the Museum of Sant'Anna, he initially refused. “Because talking about my experiences brought back that pain every time. But then I came to the realization that the young people should hear these stories from those of us who lived them, in order to get to know them and not repeat those mistakes,” emphasizes Enrico Pieri, who has been tirelessly active since then.
The massacre of Sant'Anna di Stazzema was long and culpably forgotten by the Italian state authorities. But at the beginning of the 1990s the situation changed; the constant commitment of the survivors set the institutions in motion: the national peace park was set up, and at the same time German musicians renovated the peace organ. All these symbols have become the destination of numerous visitors, not only Italians.
Over the years, the insight has enabled us to see that the horrors of war can serve to build a peaceful world, to overcome resentment and hatred, and to promote the building of relationships between our peoples, both of whom have been victims of their torturers Here as there, the sympathies of the masses undoubtedly lay with the German and Italian fascists.
Remembering the horrors of the past is the only means to overcome these horrors because, as Primo Levi emphasizes: “Always remember that if it happened once, it can happen again”. And the barbarization of our civil societies is a warning signal.
Enio Mancini writes at the end of his book: “What I have seen makes me want to outlaw war with all my might, as stated in Article 11 of the Italian Constitution. This Article 11 is often circumvented thoughtlessly and under pretext, by splitting hairs and for the interests of international politics. War can never be humane, but is always the opposite. No more hate, destruction and death. Never again war!"