I received the Büchner Prize in 1970, when the so-called Student Revolution of 1968, having subsided as a merely romantic and thus totally unsuccessful dilettantish revolt, had already entered history as an unfit attempt at a revolution, alas. The frivolousness of this protest had finally led to a result that was the opposite of what was intended and thus an intellectual catastrophe and a sad awakening. The people pushing this movement with one eye on the French did not, as they intended, bring back to Germany the good, the best, the spirit that feared no consequences, they only drove it out for a long time with their dilettantism which had nothing revolutionary about it but was merely a fashion stolen from the French, as we can now see. The general attitudes now reigning in Germany are obviously more depressing than they were before the events of 1968. It was no movement in the sense of Büchner’s and his gang’s movement, only a perverse game with the intellectual boredom that has been a tradition in Germany for hundreds of years. The Büchner Prize is linked with a name I had conjured only with the deepest respect for decades. For my work in directing, at the end of my studies at the Mozarteum I chose, without needing much reflection, alongside Kleist’s The Broken Pitcher and Thomas Wolfe’s Mannerhouse, Büchner’s Leonce and Lena. But because I’ve never been able to be very articulate about any of the things I’ve loved most in my life, I’ve also almost never said anything about Büchner. The speech that the Germany Academy required of me for being awarded the Büchner Prize had to go against this inarticulacy and so it never took shape. On the contrary, I was certain that I had no right to express myself in any way about Büchner on the podium in Darmstadt, indeed, I was certain that the name Büchner should not even cross my lips if possible, and in this I was successful, for I only said a few sentences in Darmstadt and these had nothing to do with Büchner. We are not allowed to keep talking endlessly about those we consider great and to hitch our own pitiful existence and inadequacies to these great ones with all our efforts and our clamor. It is customary that people when they get a Kant plaque or a Dürer Prize give long speeches about Kant or Dürer, spinning dull threads that extend from the great ones to themselves and squeezing their brains over the audience. This way of proceeding doesn’t appeal to me. And so I only said a few sentences in Darmstadt which had nothing to do with Büchner, though everything to do with me. Finally I had no need to explain Büchner, who needs no explaining, at most I needed to make a short statement about myself and my relationship to my surrounding world, from the center of my own world which is also, of course, for as long as I live, the center of the world itself for me, and must be so, if what I say is going to be true. I’m not reciting a prayer, I thought, I’m taking a standpoint which can only be my standpoint, when I speak. In short, I spoke few sentences. The listeners thought that what I said was an introduction to my speech, but it was the whole thing. I gave a short bow and saw that my audience wasn’t pleased with me. But I hadn’t come to Darmstadt to make people happy, but only to collect the prize, which came with ten thousand marks and with which Büchner had nothing to do, since he knew nothing about it himself, having died so many decades before there was any idea of funding a Büchner Prize. The so-called German Academy of Language and Poetry had everything to do with the Büchner Prize, while Georg Büchner himself had nothing. And I thanked the German Academy of Language and Poetry for the prize, but in truth I was only thanking them for the prize money, for when I went to Darmstadt I no longer had any relationship to the so-called honor that such a prize was supposed to signify, this honor and all other honors had already become suspect to me. But I had no cause to share my views with the Academy, I packed my bag and went to Darmstadt with my aunt because I wanted to spoil myself and my aunt with a beautiful trip through Germany after a long barren period at home in the country. The gentlemen of the Academy couldn’t have been friendlier and I had several pleasant conversations with them which contained nothing dangerous, for I didn’t want anything to disrupt my trip through Germany. I had to take the prize ceremony upon myself as a curiosity and Werner Heisenberg, who was being honored in the same ceremony with a prize for scientific writing, had also said to me more than once how curious the ceremony was, what the famous critic from the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Joachim Kaiser, who was also getting a prize then, thought, I can’t say, he was inscrutable. After the distribution of the prizes, when I said to Joachim Kaiser, who was sitting next to me in the front row, that my prize certificate was a third larger and thus also heavier than his, embodying the different relevant weights of the prizes, he made a face. But I have to say that afterward in a nearby cellar restaurant he impressed me with his knowledge of musicology, in the face of such astonishingly concentrated richness I had nothing to contribute. The city of Darmstadt gave me a lunch, to which some of my friends also came, I was allowed to provide names and they were all invited. During lunch when my aunt told her neighbor at the table, Minister Storz, that it wasn’t only Büchner who had his birthday that day, it was hers too, she was seventy-six, one of the gentlemen of the city got to his feet and went out. Somewhat later he returned carrying a bouquet of seventy-six roses. Here I have to say that the main reason I went to Darmstadt was to make a beautiful birthday for my aunt, for she was born, like Georg Büchner, on October eighteenth. Of course it wasn’t the only reason but it was the main reason. At the end of the meal my aunt and I signed our names in the Golden Book of Darmstadt. The newspapers covered the tripartite prize, albeit from different perspectives and with wildly different resources, in ways that pretty much matched my own opinions. The articles are there to be read. The jury of the German Academy, from which I have since resigned, because they elected me a member without my knowledge, and I couldn’t defend this, is answerable for my being voted the winner of the Büchner Prize, not me.