On Wednesday, Egyptian fine artist Mohamed Abla won the Goethe Medal 2022. The medal is an official badge of honor of the Federal Republic of Germany and the most important prize in its foreign cultural policy. The medal honors personalities who are particularly committed to international cultural exchange or teaching the German language.
The Goethe Medal will be awarded by the President of the Goethe Institute, Carola Lentz, at a ceremony on August 28 in Weimar.
In his works, Mohamed Abla shows the diversity of Egyptian culture and, through his close connections to Europe, makes it accessible to an international audience.
For decades he has been committed to understanding and diversity, particularly in the Egyptian cultural scene, and advocates freedom of expression. As a multimedia artist, his central motive is to bring Egyptian society in all its facets closer to a national and international audience.
The Goethe Prize, worth €50,000 ($72,000), is awarded every three years on Goethe’s birthday to someone whose works are deemed to reflect the spirit of the German literary giant.
The Goethe Medal is given to artists who support the German language in an extraordinary way. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is considered one of Germany’s greatest authors. He was born on 28 August 1749 in Frankfurt and wrote poems, plays, and novels, now considered classics of German literature.
Abla was born in 1953 in Belqas in the Egyptian Nile Delta. After studying fine arts in Alexandria, he moved to Europe, where he studied sculpture and printmaking in Vienna and Zurich, and finally found a second home in Walsrode, Lower Saxony.
