Vincenz Prize
Established in 2018 to honour the memory of the distinguished scholar and writer Stanisław Vincenz.
Polish writer, philosopher, essayist and cultural scholar. Born on 30 November 1888 in the Carpathian region.
The village of Kryvorivnia shaped his view of the world and provided a foundation for his creative work. Through his research, memoirs and writings, he inscribed the Hutsul region on the map of European culture forever.
To honour the memory of the distinguished scholar and writer Stanisław Vincenz, a prize for “Humanistic Service and a Contribution to Regional Development” was established in Ukraine in 2018.
It is awarded annually during the Via Carpatia International Forum of Eastern and Central Europe.
Ukrainian civic activist, founding member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, Soviet-era dissident and political prisoner (1977–1987), philosopher, scholar of religion, commentator, former vice-rector and now adviser to the rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, laureate of the Stanisław Vincenz Prize
Ukrainian poet and publisher, owner and director of A-BA-BA-HA-LA-MA-HA publishing house. Laureate of the Taras Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine
Member of the Ukrainian Parliament, Co-Chair of the Verkhovna Rada Group for Interparliamentary Relations with Poland, member of the Parliamentary Committee on Humanitarian and Information Policy. Initiator of the Stanisław Vincenz Prize.
Ukrainian journalist, commentator, writer and television presenter, member of PEN Ukraine and laureate of the Taras Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine.
Chair of the Board of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, director of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. Participant in the dissident movement of the 1970s and 1980s.
Ukrainian journalist and editor
Polish journalist and researcher of Ukraine and Ukrainian-Polish relations. An active participant in Polish-Ukrainian dialogue. Member of PEN Ukraine.
Sociologist and cultural researcher, director of the Centre for Studies of the History and Culture of East European Jewry, editor-in-chief of Dukh i Litera publishing house. Member of the Executive Board of PEN Ukraine.
What will help us find the strength to overcome the negative trends and challenges of our time? For me, it is important to reflect on the lives of people who pushed beyond the limits of human capability: Taras Shevchenko, Vasyl Stus, Omelian Kovch, Osip Mandelstam and Yevhen Sverstiuk. But there are also our contemporaries whose texts we should listen to. We will prevail. We have no other way.
The very name of the prize is an exceptionally well-chosen symbol. Love for one’s native land, love for one’s own little homeland — that is what all of us would like to revive.
For me right now, culture is first and foremost a weapon. We can see what the occupiers do when they enter a village or town: they destroy all cultural monuments, museums and books, and worst of all, they kill our cultural figures… Recently, the body of children’s writer Volodymyr Vakulenko, killed by the occupiers, was found in Izium. I accept this Prize as a great honour and dedicate it to Volodymyr Vakulenko and all the cultural figures who were tortured and killed by the Moscow occupiers.
This prize is always awarded to exceptionally worthy people who dedicate themselves to serving society. Stanisław Vincenz was an extraordinary man. He was a Polish writer, yet he wrote two epics about the Hutsul region, On the High Uplands. He is not very well known even in Poland, and here he has been forgotten altogether. Our aim is to restore the memory of this great man, a philosopher who loved Ukrainians above all else. He carried that love throughout his life. When his wife spoke Polish here, he would argue with her and say: “I won’t let you Polonise the Hutsuls.” And she learned Ukrainian. She corresponded with my neighbours in Yaseniv in excellent Ukrainian until the very end.
