Träumeland the play

 

was staged in Hamburg last Sunday. Then a little prince from the land of dreams on the blue planet received a German tooth gift, Zahngeld *, not to be mixed up with Zahngold, which still seems to be in high demand among some Germanic tribes .

*[Tannfé; From the Norse lit. and mythol.: Tooth gifts was given to children, when they lost their first tooth].

Last Sunday, precisely at eleven o'clock AM, Andri Snær Magnason of Iceland was honoured with the KAIROS Prize, which the Toepfer Foundation in Hamburg presents to intelligent people. The presentation took place in the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg and various acompaqneurs from the Dreamland joined Magnason to make his day more memorable.

Alfred Toepfer, whose name this foundation in Hamburg uses, was a fervent nazi, and his story is rather ugly. Toepfer disinfected his own legacy with handing out money to the arts and culture. Earlier, I have told the story of Alfred Toepfer here on my blog, when it was first announced in December 2009 that Andri Snær Magnason had received the Kairos award. See here and here.

Toepfers blood money is clearly a lucky strike for the young Icelandic author, who wants to keep the image of Iceland clean and beautiful. However, the story of the money which Andri Magnason receives is ugly and blood driven. Maybe not every euro or cent of it, but there is a stain on this prize, which cannot be washed off with a German magic soap that contains a handful of some toxic ultra from the wonderland of the soap commercials.

Here you can read a communiqué by French historian Gérard Loiseaux, who is an ardent critic of the Toepfer Stiftung in Hamburg. Dr. Loiseaux sent this communiqué to the Icelandic media. Did they bother print it, or has Le petit Prince of Icelandic literature reached the same level as Nobel laurate Halldór Laxness?

Late last year, Andri Snær tried to get the coordinators of blog.is (the blogosphere attaché to the Icelandic daily Morgunblaðiðd) to restrict my discussion about his prize. I received a warning because he argued that I had used his portrait without a permission. It turned out that Andri wasn't the copyright holder of the photograph, although he had sent it to the Toepfer Stiftung in Hamburg, which published it without the permission of the photographer. Toepfer Stiftung remover the image of Magnason, when they learned this. Since then, I dare not publish images of prophets or phony gurus, but doesn't the boy in the picture above resemble Andri Snær Magnason, just a little bit?

I had hoped Magnason would reject the award in Hamburg, keeping in mind that some money actually smells, and instead remember the victims of Nazism in an appropriate way. That would have been much more in line with his dreams and ideals, or does it not matter where the "sweets" come from?

It is clear that Andri Snær aims far in his dreams when he is quoted saying:

"Yes, it certainly makes a difference. The award comes at a good time for me as an artist: not too soon, not too late! It's good for artists to receive such awards when they need them. The Nobel Prize for Literature, for instance, is rarely awarded to writers until their old age." 

The Nobel Prize? Well... how about thinking about the lives of those who were the victims of the killing machine, which Toepfer was a part off, now when Magnason has received the next best thing after the Nobel Prize?

Since Andri Snær Magnason accepted the Kairos Prize in Hamburg, I am sending him three extra gifts, which are definitely not Gold, Francinsence and Myrrh. Criticizing an upcoming icon in Iceland definitely also excludes me as a wise man. That is a small problem compared with the sufferrings you can all see in the three small film fragments 1, 2, and 3 surviving from hell, where one can see what the Utopia of Alfred Toepfer once brought us.