Peace Prize Of The German Book Trade Goes To Anne Applebaum
Polish-American historian Anne Applebaum is the designated recipient of the 2024 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. The Penguin Random House author is being honored for her in-depth analyses of authoritarian power. The prestigious prize will be presented on October 20 at the Church of St. Paul in Frankfurt am Main. Anne Applebaum’s works are published by Penguin Random House in Germany, the U.S., the U.K., Canada, and Spain.
The Board of Trustees of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade has chosen the Polish-American historian Anne Applebaum to be the recipient of this year’s Peace Prize. Her works are published by Penguin Random House imprints in Germany (Siedler), the U.S. (Doubleday), the U.K. (Allen Lane), Canada (Signal), and Spain (Debate).
The Statement of the Jury reads: “With her profound analyses of communist and post-communist systems in the Soviet Union and Russia, this Polish-American historian and journalist broadens our horizon and thereby reveals the mechanisms by which authoritarians grab hold of power and maintain their control. She also records and presents several witness testimonies that allow us to comprehend these mechanisms and gain further insight into them ourselves. Applebaum’s research into the interplay between economy and democracy, as well as her work on the effects of disinformation and propaganda on democratic societies, sheds light on how fragile these societies can be – especially when democracies are eroded from within by the electoral success of autocrats. At a time when democratic values and achievements are increasingly being caricatured and attacked, her work embodies an eminent and indispensable contribution to the preservation of democracy and peace.”
The American historian, author and journalist Anne Elizabeth Applebaum counts among the world’s most important chroniclers of autocratic systems of government. She is a leading expert in eastern European history and was one of the first to warn of Vladimir Putin’s potentially violent expansionist policies. Applebaum has consistently garnered considerable international attention for her work, in particular for “Gulag (2003)”, “Iron Curtain” (2012), “Red Famine” (2019) and “Twilight of Democracy” (2021), each of which traces the mechanisms of authoritarian power. She has also received several prominent awards, including the Pulitzer Prize in 2004 and most recently the Carl von Ossietzky Prize in 2024.
In her new book “Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World,” which Doubleday will publish in the original on July 23, Applebaum focuses on the ever-growing global networks of authoritarian rulers who support each other in international alliances to undermine democracies worldwide. Siedler will publish the German-language edition, “Die Achse der Autokraten” on October 9.
“Anne Applebaum’s analyses of authoritarian rule,” says Britta Egetemeier, Managing Publisher of Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe, “make her an extraordinary defender of democracy and peace. We congratulate our author on winning the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.”
Born on July 25, 1964 in Washington, D.C., to Jewish parents, Applebaum studied Russian history and literature at Yale University before shifting her focus to international relations at the London School of Economics and Oxford. In 1988, she began a career in journalism, working as a foreign correspondent in Poland for the British magazine “The Economist”. In 1989, immediately following the fall of the Wall, she reported for that magazine on-site from Berlin. She then went on to work for other British newspapers, including “The Spectator,” “The Evening Standard,” “The Daily Telegraph,” and “The Sunday Telegraph.” For four years starting in 2002, she was a member of the editorial board at “The Washington Post” and was also active there as a columnist until 2019. Since then, she has mainly written for the American magazine “The Atlantic.”
In 2012, she held the Philippe Roman Chair of History at the London School of Economics and Political Science for one year. In 2011, she worked as director of the “Transitions Forum” at the Legatum Institute in London, an international think tank where she headed up a two-year program examining the correlation between democracy and growth in Brazil, India and South Africa. Together with the magazine “Foreign Policy”, she also developed the “Democracy Lab”, which sheds light on the ways in which states become more democratic or more autocratic. As early as in 2014, Applebaum anticipated today’s debate surrounding “fake news” with the launch of a series of broadcasts on propaganda and disinformation called the “Beyond Propaganda” program. Due to the increasing Euroscepticism of the Legatum Institute, she returned to the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2017 as a “Professor of Practice.” In 2019, she relocated the “Arena” research program on disinformation and propaganda in the 21st century, which she’d conceived at Legatum, to the Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University.
Applebaum has lived on and off in Poland for the past 30 years, and in 2013 she gained Polish citizenship in addition to her American nationality. She has been married to the Polish politician Radosław Sikorski since 1992. Sikorski was foreign minister of Poland from 2007 to 2014 and assumed this office again in 2023. The couple has two sons.
The Peace Prize of the German Book Trade award ceremony takes place on October 20, 2024 in the Church of St. Paul in Frankfurt am Main and will be broadcast live on ARD. The Peace Prize has been awarded since 1950 and is endowed with €25,000.
