Ferdinand von Schirach will deliver the laudatory speech marking the presentation of the M100 Media Award to French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

On September 17, following the international M100 Sanssouci Colloquium media conference, the M100 Media Award will be presented in the Sanssouci Orangery in Potsdam. Gérard Biard, editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo, will receive the award on behalf of the entire editorial team.
The award honours contributions to the protection of the freedom of expression and the deepening of democracy, as well as special services in the cause of inter-European understanding and communication. In stating its grounds for this year’s choice, the M100 board said the free world must show solidarity with the victims in every way possible. Freedom of the press and the freedom of expression are constitutive elements of every democracy, and must be protected at all costs, the board said.
The award ceremony will be introduced by Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who will give the evening’s political keynote speech. The Lord Mayor of Potsdam, Jann Jakobs, will offer a welcome to the roughly 200 invited guests.

In a terrorist attack on the Paris editorial offices of Charlie Hebdo on 7 January 2015, 12 men were killed, including eight employees of Charlie Hebdo – among them publisher Stéphane Charbonnier by two Islamist-motivated perpetrators. Since that time, the remaining editors and staff have lived under personal protection. Some cartoonists have given up their jobs and left the editorial team for fear of future attacks.
 
“If we lose freedom, we lose everything.” (Ferdinand von Schirach)
 

Ferdinand von Schirach’s short-story collections “Crime” and “Guilt”, as well as his novels “The Collini Case” and “The Girl Who Wasn’t There”, have become international bestsellers, published in more than 40 countries and selling millions of copies. Currently, “The Girl Who Wasn’t There”, the English-language version of the German “Tabu”, is No. 1 on the TIMES (The Times Saturday Review) bestseller list.
In Japan, a theatrical adaptation of “Tabu” played for a number of weeks at the country’s National Theatre, selling out all performances. On 3 October 2015, his play “Terror” will be simultaneously premiered at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin and the Schauspiel Frankfurt, and 15 additional German theatres plan to produce the play in the 2015/2016 season. The film rights have already been sold.
“Crime” and “Guilt” were produced as a primetime series on ZDF. A third season is currently in preparation, and more films have been announced.
Schirach is the recipient of multiple literary prizes, including a number of international awards, among them the Kleist Prize and the Japanese Honya Taishō. The SPIEGEL has called him a “great storyteller”, the New York Times has deemed him an “exceptional prose stylist”, the INDEPENDENT has compared him with Kafka and Kleist, and the DAILY TELEGRAPH has written that he is “one of the most distinctive voices in European fiction”. The French LIBÉRATION explains his success as follows: “Schirach’s great feat is to show us that – however monstrous someone’s deeds may initially seem – that person is, and remains, a human being.”