Christian Gesellmann becomes the new town clerk

Why do people turn night into day?

Based on this key question, the three-member jury of experts - consisting of the managing director of Gleis 1 GmbH Thomas Sperling, the actress Karoline Schuch and the deputy director of JenaKultur Carsten Müller - (moderated by Jonas Zipf, director of JenaKultur) came to the conclusion that the next Stadtschreiber scholarship at Villa Rosenthal should be awarded to the freelance author and editor Christian Gesellmann.

Statement of the jury

The commission justifies its decision as follows:

Christian Gesellmann's work is characterized by his ability to aptly characterize the subject and counterpart of his writing. In addition to a pronounced affinity for the web, his writing style brings with it all the means of the attentive interview, the attentively observant reportage and the sensitive portrait that are needed to carefully research the history of the Kassablanca and the stories of the people associated with the Kassablanca and to write them down in an exciting way. Not least his proximity to Jena, to the local socio and club culture, convinces the jury that Christian Gesellmann will succeed in reaching the head, heart and stomach of a broad readership with his Kassablanca story.

Application process

National and international journalists over the age of 23 who had already published texts and had experience in conducting interviews were eligible to apply for the scholarship. A total of 29 applicants from all over Germany and Austria were admitted to the award procedure.

Selection

A two-member committee (Greta Taubert, author and journalist, including Die Zeit, Vice, SZ Magazin and Christian Fuchs, author and journalist, including Die Zeit, Der Spiegel, brand eins, Das Magazin) made the preliminary selection of the future scholarship holder. Both the preliminary jury and the expert jury made their unanimous selection based on qualitative criteria using the documents submitted by all applicants. The basic criteria for the committees' decision related in particular to the coherence between the assignment and the submitted text samples in terms of language work and style as well as the understanding of the work and functioning of a center for youth culture in social space.

Upcoming scholarship period: 01.04.2020 to 31.03.2021

In the upcoming scholarship period - from 01.04.2020 to 31.03.2021 - around 25 interviews with contemporary witnesses will be conducted, on the basis of which the scholarship holder will publish a blog post on the JenaKultur(link is external) blog every two weeks.

JenaKultur and the Kassablanca congratulate Christian Gesellmann on the Clara and Eduard Rosenthal Scholarship for Literature & Urban Writing, which is now being awarded for the third time for a period of 12 months, and would like to thank him warmly for the large number and quality of the individual applications.