Romano Guardini

I would like to thank the entire Academy for this award. It makes me very happy. It makes me a little self-conscious when I think of the line-up of award winners in front of me. The calibre, the level of the prizewinners. And I always have to see if and where I can fit in. Well, congratulations...

Dear Dr Achim Budde, thank you very much for your kind welcome! Your Royal Highness Duke Franz of Bavaria and his family, esteemed clergy, first and foremost Eminence Dr Reinhard Cardinal Marx and Archpriest Apostolos Malamoussis, IKG President Dr Charlotte Knobloch, State Parliament colleague Johannes Hintersberger, Lord Mayors Tobias Eschenbacher and Gerhard Jauernig, former Minister of State Prof. Dr Dr Dr h.c., Hans Maier, members of the... Hans Maier, members of the...

Your Royal Highness! Honoured Duke Franz of Bavaria, Your Eminence! Dear Archbishop Reinhard Cardinal Marx, honoured guests! His Royal Highness, Duke Franz of Bavaria, was born on 14 July 1933. Six years later, the Second World War began, and it took another six years before it was finally over and the entire Nazi era, including the Holocaust, was reduced to rubble.

A typical text by Romano Guardini could read as follows: I am standing in front of a tree. What is this tree? First of all, it is a series of material components strung together in such a way that certain characteristics appear: green and brown colours, elongated and round shapes, rough and smooth textures, hard and soft places; the tree is...

What can interest theologians about literature? Why does a scientifically trained mind that reflects on religion need poetry? Let's take a look at an initial answer, written down in the middle of the 20th century: the "word of poetry" makes "the thing, the experience, the fate more dense and clearer at the same time". More concretely: It is precisely in the poem that "a gaze is directed from...

The main sources for Romano Guardini's early personal literary history are the reports on my life written in Mooshausen from 1943 to 1945. Two of them were published in 1984. A third, dated 7 March 1945, is as yet unpublished, but contains the most important and "new" insights for the question at hand. Guardini's reports on my life Under the title "Spiritual...