The Dresden Prize was awarded for the twelfth time in the Semperoper on Sunday. That year it went to the Spanish doctor Cristina Marin Campos. The association “Friends of Dresden” announced that they received the award on behalf of the medical staff worldwide who have achieved and are still doing outstanding things in the corona pandemic.
Prize is endowed with 10,000 euros
The 32-year-old Spaniard had been chosen as the winner since December. Because of the corona pandemic, the honor could not be presented in February as usual. The peace prize, endowed with 10,000 euros, is sponsored by the non-profit Klaus Tschira Foundation and awarded by the “Friends of Dresden” association.
Letters for corona patients
When the first wave of pandemics hit Spain particularly hard in spring 2020, Christina Marin Campos’ hospital in Madrid was also overcrowded. She quickly noticed that the sick in the isolated wards suffered particularly from the isolation. That is why she called on the population via social media to send letters to patients.
I wanted to make the situation a little more humane for the sick, to give them encouragement.
“I wanted to make it a little more human,” said Campos: “With encouraging messages.” Although the senders did not know who the letter was addressed to, they would have written as if to a close relative. She doesn’t see herself as a heroine, said the Spanish surgeon in her acceptance speech in Dresden, she just had the idea. The real thing would have been done by those who sent the letters. The recognition goes to them.
The campaign met with a huge response in Spain. 35,000 letters were received on the first day. They came from children, from people in old people’s homes, and even from prison inmates.
Gerhart Baum criticizes protests against corona protective measures in a laudation
“In the public, the past year was often perceived as a year of political controversy. What really counts and will remain in the end, however, are such great human gestures of solidarity as those of Dr. Marin Campos”, explained the former Federal Minister of the Interior Gerhart Baum (FDP), honorary member of the “Friends of Dresden” Germany, who gave the laudation for the Madrid doctor.
In the end, the more than 110,000 letters “were a bond of humanity,” said Baum. The Spanish doctor gave “an example of how human dignity must be defended”. In his speech, Baum criticized protests against the corona protective measures, whose participants put their own rights above the suffering and death of other people. So far, four million people have died of Corona worldwide.
Hanna Schygulla reads a letter
At the award ceremony, actress Hanna Schygulla read excerpts from the letters to the Spanish corona patients. Artists like opera star René Pape and the Italian singer-songwriter Etta Scollo want to remember medical staff who themselves became victims of the pandemic. It is estimated that more than 100,000 doctors and nurses have died of Covid 19 disease worldwide.
Prize winners from Gorbachev to Daniel Ellsberg
The Dresden Prize has been awarded since 2010. Previous winners have included Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet officer Stanislaw Petrow, the Duke of Kent, whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and the athlete and civil rights activist Tommie Smith. In February of last year, the young Syrian Muzoon Almellehan was honored, a woman who campaigns for education in crisis areas.