On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier awarded the Belarusian Nobel laureate in literature Svetlana Alexievich the Grand Cross of Merit of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany on June 15 in Bellevue Palace. Especially in her works “War Has No Female Face” and “The Last Witnesses” she impressively portrays the atrocities of the Second World War and the suffering of the civilian population.
Svetlana Alexievich is a Fellow of the Martin Roth Initiative at the DAAD’s Berlin Artists-in-Residence Program.