Marius Daniel Popescu

Marius Daniel Popescu was born in 1963 in Craiova, Romania. In his native country he was a poet, he frequented literary circles in Braşov and had been part of the "Group of Braşov". He lives in Lausanne since 1990. He taught himself all the subtleties of the French language and in the first five to six years in Switzerland has improved learning French. At the beginning of his new literary career, wrote lyrics in French. His ambition was to publish in Paris and wrote his great novel.

Bus driver during the day, writer during the night, Marius made his literary debut with a novel published in 2007 at José Corti Publishing House in Paris. La Symphonie du loup (Symphony of the wolf) is an autobiographical novel that crosses many cultures and generations in Romania under the dictatorship. The author evokes scenes from his adolescence, incidental death of his father, remembering his grandfather, tutelary figure which has replaced the one of the father since its disappearance.

Walser Prize, named after a famous Swiss writer and poet Robert Walser (1878-1956), is awarded every two years, rewarding debut novel for young authors. The novel has seduced the jury through the story and writing style. It is the first time that this award is given to a writer of French expression. It is noted that Marius Daniel Popescu did not know French at all at the time he came in Lausanne. In 2009 he published a sequel to his debut novel, Les Couleurs de l'hirondelle (The colors of the swallow).

Elie Wiesel - Nobel 1986

Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel (born September 30, 1928 in Sighet) is a writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor.


Elie Wiesel was born in Sighet, a little town in Transylvania, (now Sighetu Marmaţiei), Maramureş, Kingdom of Romania. His father, Sholomo Wiesel, was an Orthodox Jew, who instilled a strong sense of humanism in his son, encouraging him to learn modern Hebrew and to read literature, whereas his mother, Sarah, encouraged him to study the Torah and Kabbalah. Wiesel’s early life, spent in a small Hasidic community, was a rather hermetic existence of prayer and contemplation. In 1940 Sighet was annexed by Hungary, and in March 1944 the town was brought into the Holocaust. Within days, Jews were “defined” and their property confiscated. By April they were ghettoized, and on May 15 the deportations to Auschwitz began. Wiesel, his parents, and three sisters were deported to Auschwitz, where his mother and a sister (Tzipora) were killed. He and his father were sent to Buna-Monowitz, the slave labour component of the Auschwitz camp. In January 1945 they were part of a death march to Buchenwald, where his father died on January 28 and from which Wiesel was liberated in April.


After the war Wiesel settled in France, studied at the Sorbonne (1948–51), and wrote for French and Israeli newspapers. Wiesel went to the United States in 1956 and was naturalized in 1963. He was a professor at City College of New York (1972–76), and from 1976 he taught at Boston University, where he became Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities.

During his time as a journalist in France, Wiesel was urged by the novelist François Mauriac to bear witness to what he had experienced in the concentration camps. The outcome was Wiesel’s first book, in Yiddish, Un di velt hot geshvign (1956; “And the World Has Remained Silent”), abridged as La Nuit (1958; Night), a memoir of a young boy’s spiritual reaction to Auschwitz. It is considered by some critics to be the most powerful literary expression of the Holocaust. In the US, Wiesel wrote over 40 books, both fiction and non-fiction, and won many literary prizes.

All of Wiesel’s works reflect, in some manner, his experiences as a survivor of the Holocaust and his attempt to resolve the ethical torment of why the Holocaust happened and what it revealed about human nature. He became a noted lecturer on the sufferings experienced by Jews and others during the Holocaust, and his ability to transform this personal concern into a universal condemnation of all violence, hatred, and oppression was largely responsible for his being awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. In 1978 U.S. President Jimmy Carter named Wiesel chairman of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust, which recommended the creation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Wiesel also served as the first chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1985, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, The International Center in New York's Award of Excellence, KBE (Knight of The British Empire) and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1996. (From Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica)

Herta Müller - Nobel 2009

Herta Müller (born 17 August 1953) is a Romanian-born German novelist, poet and essayist noted for her works depicting the harsh conditions of life in Communist Romania under the repressive Nicolae Ceauşescu regime, the history of the Germans in Banat, and the persecution of Romanian ethnic Germans by Stalinist Soviet occupying forces in Romania.


She was born in August 1953 in the German-speaking village of Niţchidorf (German: Nitzkydorf), in the Banat district of Romania. The daughter of Banat Swabian farmers, her family was part of Romania's German minority; her father had served in the Waffen SS and her mother survived five years (1944-1949) in a slave labour camp in the Soviet Union during and after World War II. While she speaks German as a native language, she is also fluent in Romanian. Hertha left her village to study German and Romanian literature at the University of Timişoara. Here she became part of the Aktionsgruppe Banat (Campaign Group Banat), a group of idealistic Romanian-German writers seeking freedom of expression under the Ceauşescu dictatorship.


After her studies she was employed as a translator in a machine factory. Contacted by intermediaries of the Romanian Secret Service (Securitate), she strictly refused any collaboration which led to her losing her job in the factory. The Secret Service expected to get information from her about the Aktionsgruppe Banat, of which she was a member. During this period, she began writing her first stories which she collected under the title of 'Niederungen', but she had difficulty satisfying the censors, and this work was not published until 1982, and then in radically modified form.


In 1984, 'Niederungen' was published in Germany in an uncensored version. Awards and invitations to Germany followed. Although Herta Müller hadn’t had the permission to leave Romania as yet, traveling became possible for her hereupon. She even achieved an employment as teacher shortly before. After she had criticized severely the Ceauşescu dictatorship in interviews, however, a publication and traveling ban was imposed on her – culminating in death threats by the Secret Service. In 1987, she left Romania with her husband, novelist Richard Wagner and since then they lived in Berlin. Over the following years she received many lectureships at universities in Germany and abroad. She currently lives in Berlin. Müller received membership of the German Academy for Writing and Poetry in 1995, and other positions followed. Beside the prizes for her debut (among others the 'aspekte Literaturpreis'), she received many awards, such as Kleist, Aristeion, Würth, Impac, Cicero, and many others.


Herta Müller was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999 and 2009. The Swedish Academy awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature to Müller "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed".

Pomme d'Or

Founded in Paris in 1954 by the National Associations of France and Belgium, FIJET (French: Federation Internationale de Journalistes et Ecrivans de Tourisme, English: The International Association of Professional Travel Writers and Journalists) is the oldest association of professional travel writers and journalists in the world. With a membership that currently exceeds 600 members in over 35 countries on five continents, it is also one of the world's largest professional organization of travel journalists. Each year, at its annual World Congress, FIJET promotes a particular aspect of world tourism. The Congress, which is held in a different country each year, highlights an area of significant international interest in travel and tourism.


"La Pomme d'Or" or "The Golden Apple" (Romanian: Mărul de Aur) is the FIJET equivalent of the Oscar. This award for excellence is presented each year to an organization, country, city, or person in recognition of superior efforts in promoting and raising the level of tourism. The Golden Apple has gained significant recognition over the years and always has a list of prestigious candidates vying for it. Since it was established in 1970, The FIJET Golden Apple Award has been presented to 41 recipients.


For the first time, this year were awarded three Golden Apples, and is the first time the prize is assigned, the same year, for three tourism destinations / personalities of the same country. The Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve, Mărginimea Sibiului (the surroundings of Sibiu), considered by Forbes Magazine "the most romantic area of eco-tourism in the world" and Blue Air (the airline company with the most dynamic growth in Eastern Europe) won for Romania the three prestigious trophies. With Moldoviţa in 1975, Romania is in the exclusive club of countries that hold four prizes, as Belgium and Spain.

Palme d'Or / Corneliu Porumboiu

Corneliu Porumboiu (born September 14, 1975, Vaslui), Romanian film director and screenwriter. He is the son of well-known football referee and businessman Adrian Porumboiu.


Corneliu Porumboiu won in 2004 second place in the Cinefondation section of Cannes Film Festival with short film Traveling to the city (Romanian: Călătorie la oraş). His 2006 feature 12:08 East of Bucharest (Romanian: A fost sau n-a fost?) has won the Camera d'Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2009, Porumboiu won the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section and the FIPRESCI Prize at the Cannes Film Festival with his drama film Police, Adjective (Romanian: Poliţist, Adjectiv); this film won also the Transilvania Trophy at Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF).