Mauthausen Memorial Research Award 2022 Awarded
The Mauthausen Memorial Research Award was presented for 2022 this year. The ceremonial presentation by the jury took place at the Vienna site of the concentration camp memorial. Two submissions convinced the jury of experts, consisting of representatives from contemporary history and memorial culture.
The Mauthausen concentration camp was the largest Nazi concentration camp on the territory of Austria. / Picture: © Wikimedia Commons,Dnalor 01, CC BY-SA 3.0
With the award of this prize, the Mauthausen Concentration Camp Memorial hopes to stimulate research into the history of Nazi camps in Austria.
Special attention is given to the promotion of young researchers. Mauthausen concentration camp complex research and related topics are considered for this prize.
The main prize was thus awarded to Christina Kandler for her diploma thesis "Survival chances. An Analysis of the Prisoner Society of Melk Concentration Camp Based on Personal Data from SS Documents" and Iris Wiesinger for her diploma thesis "The Logistics of Exploitation. The Labor Service Leader Report of the Mauthausen Concentration Camp September 1943 to December 1944."
The laudations at the award ceremony were given by Gabriele Hammermann, Director of the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial, and Monika Kokalj Kočevar, Curator at the National Museum of Contemporary History Slovenia.
"The two award-winning works are not only convincing in terms of content and form. They also close gaps in current research and thus make an important contribution to historical reappraisal," said Barbara Glück, Director of the Mauthausen Concentration Camp Memorial.
Since both theses were found to be particularly worthy of distinction, it was decided to split the main prize of 2,500 euros each between the two prize winners. The Mauthausen Memorial Research Prize is awarded biennially; the next call for entries will be in the spring of 2024.
In addition, the Mauthausen-Studies series, the publication series of the Mauthausen Concentration Camp Memorial, offers a publication platform for particularly worthy works; the Mauthausen Memorial will also be publishing shorter scientific texts on the topic in their eJournal.
About Mauthausen Concentraion Camp
Mauthausen concentration camp was the largest Nazi concentration camp on Austrian territory. It was located 20 kilometers east of Linz in Mauthausen and existed from August 8, 1938, until its dissolution after the liberation of its inmates by U.S. troops on May 5, 1945.
Around 200,000 people were imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp and its subcamps, of whom more than 100,000 lost their lives. The site of the former concentration camp has been home to a Republic of Austria memorial since 1947.