The war in Yugoslavia was one of the bloodiest and most dreadful clashes in post-war Europe. Countless violations of human rights accompanied the decay of Yugoslavia. There weren´t many people who saw the real meaning of the ”ethnic cleansings”.
This year´s award-winner was one of them. In 1992 he resigned from his office as a Minister of Post and Telecommunication as a protest for the lack of engagement of his government in the Balkans.
For his engagement for peace, reconstruction and understanding between the ethnics in the Balkans Christian Schwarz-Schilling was awarded the Hessian Peace Prize 2007. The HSFK-Standpunkt No. 6/2007 “Empathie und Politik. Dokumentation des Hessischen Friedenspreises 2007 an Christian Schwarz-Schilling” publishes the laudation and the speeches made at the ceremony in Wiesbaden on 20th of November 2007.
The orators paid tribute to his emotional engagement which finds nevertheless pragmatic solutions, to his consistency and insistence.