There was never such an award ceremony in Hausen. Neither is such a prizewinner. It seemed to fit together that Sibylle Berg did not personally accept the Johann Peter Hebel Prize, which was awarded to her last year, in the rustic festival hall of the community on Saturday, but was connected via video conference from Zurich. You saw her all the time on a huge screen: constantly smiling, friendly, not amused. A corona case in the area prevented the award winner from coming at very short notice. The day before the slimmed-down celebration, which had little to do with the traditional Lever Festival, her agent pulled the emergency brake. According to Berg in an email to Mayor Martin Bühler, she was vaccinated twice and quarantine was not necessary. But she wants to be on the safe side.

Nun yes. One is used to grief because of Covid 19. Sibylle Berg, who finished a new book a few days ago, has promised a Hausener reading in the spring. She was already looking forward to her village, said the Weimar-born author with Swiss citizenship bravely – and maybe she meant it seriously. You’d think so, at the end of the ceremony Sibylle Berg described herself as a “great lover”: There will certainly be a place in her heart for the place in the Wiesental. Apparently she really liked the four gentlemen of the Hebel-Musik Hausen, who played brass arrangements in her honor: After Glen Miller it was the turn of the Beatles with “Lady Madonna” and “Yellow Submarine”.

The – symbolic – awarding of the prize was for the first time in the hands of District President Bärbel Schäfer, who dignified the Stuttgart Art Ministry as the award-giver – with a speech that made it clear what connects Berg’s work with that of Lever: the enlightening gesture, the interference in socio-political debates – and, as the laudator Nicola Gess, literary scholar at the University of Basel, emphasized, philanthropy – vulgo: humanism. In addition to admitting her shyness, the award winner had a “fear” poem with her, born out of desperation about the corona situation. The mild features of the Hebel portrait in the hall seemed to resemble hers for the moment.