Book fair finale: international lawyer Philippe Sands receives Peace Prize tomorrow
At the close of the Frankfurt Book Fair, the French-British jurist will be honoured in St. Paul's Church. Mirjam Zadoff gives the laudation; ARD broadcasts live.
Archive image · Photo: Otterbox2015 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
The Frankfurt Book Fair ends on Sunday with its traditional highlight: the award of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. This year's laureate is French-British international lawyer and author Philippe Sands. Das Erste will broadcast the ceremony at Frankfurt's St. Paul's Church live from 10:45 a.m. The prize carries 25,000 euros and has been awarded since 1950.
Sands, born in London in 1960, teaches international law at University College London and is a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. As a human rights lawyer he works at the International Court of Justice in The Hague and has advocated for Palestinians and the Rohingya, among others. Together with other jurists, he developed the offence of "ecocide".
Sebastian Guggolz, head of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association and chair of the prize's board of trustees, said, according to dpa, that Sands stands up "for justice, peace and the steadfast defence of international law". As a descendant of Holocaust survivors, he shows "how this law came into being", Guggolz said. The laudation will be given by historian Mirjam Zadoff, director of the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism. Sands himself will give an acceptance speech.