Hermann Bohlen will be awarded the 2026 Günter Eich Prize.
Leipzig, 28 May, 2026. The 2026 Günter Eich Prize, awarded by Media Foundation of Sparkasse Leipzig, goes to radio drama author Hermann Bohlen. This decision was made by the jury chaired by Thomas Fritz, a long-standing radio drama dramaturg - including at MDR public broadcasting. The prize, which carries a cash award of 10,000 euros, honours authors who have made outstanding contributions to German-language radio drama. The award ceremony will take place on 2 July, 2026, during the summer festival of the Sparkasse Leipzig Foundations at Media Campus Villa Ida in Leipzig, the foundations' headquarters. The Axel Eggebrecht Prize for radio features - awarded this year to feature author Marie von Kuck - will also be presented on the same day.
"Hermann Bohlen never rests on his laurels. He constantly asks himself: Is this all there is? Can the audio drama achieve even more? As an author, director, producer, and voice actor for his own original characters - in works such as *Die Wauwautheorie*, *Prozedur 7.7.0*, and *Gräser fliegen nur noch selten* - he has spent over 30 years exploring the full scope and nuances of the audio drama genre, pushing its boundaries and venturing beyond them," said Stephan Seeger, Managing Director of Media Foundation and Director Foundations of Sparkasse Leipzig, in tribute to the award winner. "I offer Hermann Bohlen my warmest congratulations on this well-deserved honor. I also wish to thank the jury for making such an outstanding choice," Seeger added.
Award winner Hermann Bohlen - nominated by the Radio Drama, Culture | MMT Fiction Audio department of Swiss Radio and Television (SRF) - expressed his gratitude for the Günter Eich Prize: "At certain moments, on certain days, our existence strikes me as almost impossible, and that has nothing to do with wars, social crises, or diseases. Just think of the countless tiny chemical reactions with extremely tight tolerances that must take place merely to ensure a supply of oxygen to my brain! And then, if I wiggle my toes... and at that very moment the news arrives that I have won the Günter Eich Prize - thank you very much for this special award; I am overjoyed. And the unwavering commitment of Media Foundation of Sparkasse Leipzig to radio drama is truly a beacon! Please keep up the great work."
The jury - which, in addition to chairman Thomas Fritz, included Diemut Roether (specialist editor for media topics at *epd medien*) and Wolfgang Schiffer (long-time head of radio drama, radio features, and literature at WDR public broadcasting) - explained its choice of winner as follows: “Among the avant-gardists, Hermann Bohlen is the one with the keenest alertness and the finest sense for the exciting diversity of tradition; among the radio drama encyclopedists, he is - in his own mischievous way - the most daring re-thinker and innovator.” (Note: full jury statement at the end of the announcement)
About the laureate
Hermann Bohlen, born in Celle in 1963, studied Sinology in Hamburg, Berlin, and Shanghai from 1986 to 1992. He created his first radio plays while still a student and has worked as a freelance radio play creator since 1995. Bohlen’s early works - such as *Gekaut!! (Bis es von alleine herunterläuft)* (1990) and *Die Wauwautheorie* (1995) - play with the sounds of language and demonstrate a 'pataphysical interest in the philosophy of language. *Gekaut!!* portrays the life reformer Horace Fletcher using an artificial language composed of German, Low German, English, Chinese, and French, while *Die Wauwautheorie* deals with onomatopoeia.
With *Prozedur 7.7.0* (1996), Bohlen employs the "found-sound" radio drama - using actual recordings rather than actors - as a form of hoax, following in the tradition of Orson Welles’s *War of the Worlds* (staged as a live radio report). Bohlen’s piece presents a world in which transponder chips are implanted in individuals who refuse to communicate, in order to identify them. As in many of his radio plays, the voices heard here belong exclusively to non-professionals. In *Sag doch auch mal was* or *Das Luxurieren der Bastarde* (1998), Bohlen assembles private audio recordings found at flea markets and elsewhere, creating a 50-minute panorama of a transitional era - caught between a war that was slowly fading from memory and the gradual rise of pop culture. He employs a similar approach in *Onager* (2004), though in that instance he creates situations more akin to chamber drama. While all his plays since *Prozedur 7.7.0* had been improvised based on the author's instructions, *Gräser fliegen nur noch selten* (2005) marked a return to working with a production script. The *Süddeutsche Zeitung* hailed this radio play as the "pinnacle of his work to date." In 2000, Hermann Bohlen conceived and launched the "Plopp" competition for independent radio drama creators at the Berlin Academy of Arts; he was appointed a member of the Academy in 2009.
Hermann Bohlen’s radio plays have received numerous awards, including the Academy of Arts Radio Play Prize (1997), the ARD German Radio Play Prize (2012), and the German Audio Story Prize in the "Innovative or Artistic Radio Play" category (formerly the War-Blind Radio Play Prize).
About the Prize
The Günter Eich Prize, awarded by the Media Foundation of the Sparkasse Leipzig, honors authors who have dedicated a body of work demonstrating both thematic and formal excellence to the radio drama genre. Previous recipients include Alfred Behrens (2007), Eberhard Petschinka (2009), Hubert Wiedfeld (2011), Jürgen Becker (2013), Ror Wolf (2015), Friederike Mayröcker (2017), Andreas Ammer & FM Einheit (2019), Paul Plamper (2021), Ulrike Haage (2022), and Katharina Bihler & Stefan Scheib (2024). The prize is awarded biennially alongside the Axel Eggebrecht Prize, which recognizes outstanding authors of radio features.
Die vollständige Jury-Begründung
Hermann Bohlen entered the world of radio drama during the burgeoning independent scene of the 1990s, and he has remained true to the spirit, verve, inspiration, and boldness of those radio-drama adventurers. To this day, he writes and directs many of his own pieces, "cobbling them together" (in Bohlen’s own words) through hours or even days of work at his computer...Often, he even casts himself as the lead actor. His voyage of exploration and discovery across the vast landscape of radio drama and broadcasting has yielded nearly thirty productions - curious not only about the ever-expanding fringes but also about the medium's secret heart: those dramaturgically sophisticated genre and entertainment formats.
Yet he also has a soft spot for those classics that remain impervious to the clamor surrounding new releases. It is no coincidence, then, that in 2007 Hermann Bohlen was entrusted with the four-hour special broadcast - aired by all ARD public broadcasting stations - marking the centenary of Günter Eich’s birth. Among the avant-gardists, he is the one with the keenest alertness and the finest sense for the exciting diversity of tradition; among radio-drama encyclopedists, he is - in his own mischievous way - the most daring re-thinker and innovator
The playful inventiveness, formal daring, technical perfection, and inexhaustible, supremely dry humor of his unmistakable works - which are always layered with deeper meaning yet delivered with a wink - have been recognized with numerous awards. Most recently, in 2025, he received the German Audio Story Prize (Deutscher Preis für Audiostories), which continues the legacy of the War-Blinded Audio Drama Prize - an award that shaped the history of literature and media for seven decades. In a unanimous decision, the jury has honored Hermann Bohlen - along with the Swiss Radio and Television audio drama department that nominated him - with the 2026 Günter Eich Prize.