Embattled playwright aids Serb enclave

Austrian playwright and poet Peter Handke has turned over his entire Alternate Heinrich Heine prize of over 50,000 Euros ($65,000) to the embattled enclave of Serbian people living in rightist-ruled and NATO-occupied Kosovo.

Peter Handke, center, accepts Alternate Heine prize. Photo: Gabriele Senft

Anyone who has paid attention to Handke’s career path in the past year might wonder how he was in a position to do this. The outspoken Handke had opposed NATO’s war on Yugoslavia and German imperialism’s excuses for subverting and destroying that multinational country in the Balkans.

In March 2006, at a time when he was about to receive the official Heinrich Heine Prize from the Dusseldorf City Council, Handke was in Belgrade speaking at the memorial service for the late Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. The Yugoslav leader had died in prison in The Hague, where he was fighting charges of alleged war crimes but had not been convicted.

When they heard that Handke was speaking in Belgrade, Dusseldorf City Council members tried to stop the prize. Handke withdrew before the council could take action.

Next, a Handke play was going to be performed in Paris. The French ruling class put pressure on the theater company, forcing the play’s cancellation.

The German anti-war movement and especially theater people active in it came to the rescue. They created an Alternate Heinrich Heine Prize, funded by donations, many coming from progressives in the arts. They collected the funds that Handke, was pleased to turn over to the Serbian enclave, which many describe as a “ghetto.” Rightist Albanian organizations that have been running Kosovo since the NATO invasion have persecuted the Serb community and driven many people out of the province.