Germany announced €900,000 support to Ukrainian publishing industry

Germany’s Minister of State for Culture and the Media Claudia Roth has earmarked €900,000 to support a number of cultural projects to foster deeper exchange between Germany and Ukraine. German Publishers and Booksellers Association reported this on their website.

This initiative is aimed to support the Ukrainian book trade, the work of Ukrainian authors, publishers and media professionals. The initiative will also promote greater awareness of Ukrainian culture and history in Germany. 

“With its war of aggression against Ukraine, Russia is also systematically waging war against Ukrainian culture and social identity. We see this whenever and wherever Russian aggression is specifically directed against libraries, printing houses and other institutions associated with literature. It is almost impossible for publishers to work under such conditions, and the public’s access to books in general is also made extremely difficult. This makes our project in service of a stronger exchange between the German and Ukrainian book industries all the more important,” Claudia Roth stated.

Oleksandra Koval, Director of the Ukrainian Book Institute, said: “Given the conditions caused by Russia’s full-scale military aggression against Ukraine, I cannot overestimate the importance of support for the Ukrainian book industry within the framework of cultural cooperation. I am especially grateful for the collection of books by prominent German authors that will be made available to our public libraries, but also for the active inclusion of Ukrainian authors at leading German cultural events and support for the Ukrainian book trade at Frankfurter Buchmesse. All of these opportunities provided to Ukrainian literature help to strengthen the voice of Ukrainian culture in Europe. This is something that is especially vital to all Ukrainians at the present time.”

The German Publishers and Booksellers Association will head up the project, working in close cooperation with Frankfurter Buchmesse, the Ukrainian Book Institute, the cultural institution Mystetskyi Arsenal, the online literary and cultural magazine Chytomo, and the Goethe-Institut in Ukraine.

The activities set to receive support include expanding the collection of German literature in Ukrainian libraries, inviting Ukrainian authors to speak at German bookstores and other literary venues, a new “Ukrainian Publishing Prize,” an English-language online platform for literature from Ukraine and other countries in the region, and spotlighting of Ukraine at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

The funding period is scheduled to run until June 2024.

The Ukrainian Book Institute is a state institution under the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine, designed to shape state policy in the book industry, promote book reading in Ukraine, support book publishing, translating, and popularize Ukrainian literature abroad.

Mystetskyi Arsenal is a public cultural institution, a museum and art exhibition complex located in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Read also: The list of books supported for translation in 2023 has been published

Source: boersenverein.de

Image: cfg.polis.cam.ac.uk