This year's Leopold-Lucas-Prize was awarded to René Girard. His understanding of Biblical religion insistently urges Christianity to remain mindful of its enduring inspiration from the spirit of the Hebrew Bible, and to hold onto it in the form of the Old Testament as the basis of its own Bible.

This year's Leopold Lucas Prize was awarded to René Girard. Girard's description of a religion which is authentic, free from illusion, and therefore also free from violence - for which he gives biblical religion as an example - and of a religion which remains blinded by illusion and therefore also does not overcome violence, but merely has a stabilizing effect, itself provides a tool for diagnosing historical conditions in human society, right up to the present day. This tool has been widely used. However, it is of greater importance that Girard's understanding of biblical religion urges Christianity to remain mindful of its enduring inspiration from the spirit of the Hebrew bible and to hold onto it in the form of the Old Testament as the basis of its own Bible. This characterizing feature of René Girard's understanding of Christianity corresponds entirely to the purpose of the Dr. Leopold Lucas Memorial Prize's endowment by his son Franz Dietrich Lucas in 1972.

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Geboren 1923; Professor emeritus für französische Sprache, Literatur und Kultur an der Stanford University, USA; Mitglied der Académie française gewählt.