Writer Orhan Pamuk Recipient of Honorary Doctorate from Freie Universität Berlin

The Turkish writer and Nobel laureate in literature in 2006, Orhan Pamuk, was awarded an honorary doctorate from Freie Universität Berlin. With this distinction, the Department of Philosophy and Humanities honored the 54-year-old as an exceptional figure in world literature.

The governing mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit, was a participant in the conferral ceremony in the Henry Ford Building of Freie Universität. There were over 500 guests in the audience. Pamuk and the actor Ulrich Noethen read from Pamuk’s autobiographical book Istanbul: Memories and the City.

The honorary doctorate certificate awarded by the Department of Philosophy and Humanities, states that with Orhan Pamuk’s narrative work and literary criticism, Turkish literature became a part of modern world literature. “In a subtle and questioning manner, Orhan Pamuk’s narratives, including the use of intertextual and intermedial techniques, establish the question of Turkish identity as a theme.” He succeeds in uniting Eastern narrative traditions and their theoretical reflection with Western narrative traditions and literary theory.

Previous recipients of honorary doctorates from the Philosophy and Humanities Department of Freie Universität Berlin in the setting of Dahlemer Impulse include the literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki (2006) and the writers Imre Kertész (2005) and Günter Grass (2005).