21 May 2019 press release

Exhibition marking the award of the Gutenberg Prize of the City of Leipzig to “Reporters Without Borders” // Exhibition opens at the award ceremony on Wednesday 29 May at 18:00 in the museum foyer of the German National Library in Leipzig

To mark the presentation of the Gutenberg Prize of the City of Leipzig to “Reporters Without Borders” for their initiative “Fonts for Freedom”, the German Museum of Books and Writing at the German National Library will be dedicating a small exhibition to the prize winner.

The initiative “Fonts for Freedom” reconstructs texts from daily newspapers that were banned and shut down and makes them available online free of charge for further use. In this way, “Reporters Without Borders” and its Hamburg-based agency Serviceplan are taking a stand against increasing restrictions on press freedom and freedom of opinion all over the world. Hundreds of journalists were again arrested and just as many media organisations censored or closed just last year. These included numerous newspapers – some of democracy's most precious assets.

The exhibition will feature examples of forbidden newspapers and the articles they contain, poster campaigns by “Fonts for Freedom” and film documentaries. “Reporters Without Borders” will be issuing a newspaper especially for the exhibition which explains the various campaigns carried out by “Fonts for Freedom” and places them in a historical context. Visitors can take this newspaper home with them and thus help spread the idea.

When Burkhardt Jung, Lord Mayor of the City of Leipzig, presents the Gutenberg Prize to the “Fonts for Freedom” initiative this year, it will be the first time in its sixty-year history that the Gutenberg Prize goes to a cooperative initiative rather than an individual. “Fonts for Freedom” interprets the millennium’s most important invention – the book printing press with movable letters developed by Johannes Gutenberg – in a contemporary manner. The initiative uses typography as an ambassador for freedom of expression, as the duplicated letter still stands for the dissemination and democratisation of information just as it did more than 550 years ago. The 2019 Gutenberg Prize will also commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Peaceful Revolution in Leipzig by focusing on the subject of freedom of opinion.

In terms of subject matter, the exhibition, which will be on display until the end of the year, links with the permanent exhibition on media history at the German Museum of Books and Writing, a central part of which is devoted to censorship. 20 biographies of censored books dating from the 16th century to the present day testify not least to the dual nature of censorship: firstly, as an – in extreme cases deadly – curtailment of press freedom and freedom of opinion by ideological hubris and autocratic monopolies on power, and secondly as a measure to preserve personal rights and protect young people. The exhibition therefore aims to inspire visitors to reflect on freedom of expression and discuss its importance for democracy.

Public award ceremony and exhibition opening: Wednesday 29 May 2019, 18:00

Programme

Welcome: Burkhard Jung (Lord Mayor of the City of Leipzig)
Laudatory speech: Prof. Dr. Karola Wille (Director of MDR)
Presentation of prize: Burkhard Jung
Speech of thanks: Representatives of Fonts for Freedom
Musical accompaniment: Wencke Wollny (saxophone, vocals), Yoann Thicé (guitar), Christian Dähne (bass)

Background

The book has shaped our culture and civilisation like no other medium. For centuries our knowledge about the world and its peoples has been stored in books. The task of the German Book and Writing Museum of the German National Library is to collect, exhibit and process evidence of book and media history. Founded in 1884 in Leipzig as the Deutsches Buchgewerbemuseum (German Book Trade Museum), it is the oldest museum in the world in the field of book culture, and also one of the most important with regard to the scope and quality of its holdings. The museum interlinks its holdings through national and international cooperative projects and feeds them into the widest possible range of academic disciplines.

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