Hubert Seipel: Grimme Prize for “Living and Dying in Kabul” will not be revoked

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Filmmaker Seipel (at the Grimme Gala 2009): “Even if Seipel received money from Russia in 2008 or 2007, he would not have invested it in this film.”

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When the jury of the “Information and Culture” competition awarded a Grimme Prize for the ARD film “Living and Dying for Kabul” in 2009, they praised the author Hubert Seipel in their reasoning: He succeeded “in times of controlled, so-called embedded journalism an astonishingly independent and informative film that makes you think: enlightenment in the best tradition.«

The independence of Seipel's journalism is in question, at least for his films about Russia, Gazprom and Vladimir Putin, since investigations by SPIEGEL and ZDF revealed that he received 600,000 euros from Russia.

That's why the director of the Grimme Institute, Frauke Gerlach, announced a review of the awarding of the prize in November. At the time, Gerlach told the media magazine “DWDL” that they had contacted the jury at the time “to clarify the question of whether the honor should be subsequently revoked.”

The institute has now received a statement from the 2009 jury. The journalist Barbarasichtermann, a Grimme juror until 2015, comes to the conclusion that Seipel should not be deprived of the prize.

sichtermann gives three reasons for this. On the one hand, awards should generally not be disputed and revoked afterwards "just because life went on and some things were different than they seemed."

Regarding the content of the accusation of payments from Russia,sichtermann writes that it is understood that Seipel's Putin biography and portrait from 2012 "must be viewed as a favor and therefore dubious." However, the award-winning film “Living and Dying for Kabul,” which received the Grimme Prize, is dedicated to the tasks and mistakes of the Bundeswehr in Afghanistan. “You can still watch it profitably today,” sayssichtermann, “so: the price was and is deserved.”

Even if Seipel had received money from Russia in 2008 or 2007, the journalist concludes, “he would not have invested it in this film. Because there are no opportunities there to make any kind of propaganda for Russia.”

The opinion is the result of the examination

As a follow-up under “Thirdly,” the statement finally states: If you start withholding awards after the fact, you open the door to “cheerful denunciation.” Just as a wrongdoer deserves a new chance after remorse and punishment, one should not assume that he has already taken the wrong path before the wrongdoing, sayssichtermann.

When asked by SPIEGEL, the Grimme Institute confirmed that the statement was the result of the announced review: the prize will not be revoked.

After the hidden payments to Seipel were revealed, the NDR set up an investigative commission. Last week, the commission led by former SPIEGEL editor-in-chief Steffen Klusmann presented its audit report. Accordingly, the payments to the documentary author were not known to NDR. However, no one at the station questioned the filmmaker's lack of distance from Russia - one chapter of the report is titled "In the Intoxication of Scoops."

The book publisher Hoffmann and Campe, which published Seipel's book "Putin's Power" in 2022, decided in November to no longer sell Seipel's books. However, this was the publisher's only public reaction to the allegations.

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