This year's Goethe medals were awarded at a digital ceremony in the Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar on Saturday.
The awards went to the Chinese dancer and choreographer Wen Hui, the Cameroonian social economist Princess Marilyn Douala Manga Bell, and the Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa.
They would be honored for their outstanding commitment to international cultural exchange, said the President of the Goethe Institute, Carola Lentz.
Due to the corona, only Wen Hui was able to receive the medal in person, the other two award winners followed the ceremony in a live stream.
"Those who wall themselves in, block the future," said the State Minister for International Cultural Policy in the Foreign Office, Michelle Müntefering (SPD).
That is why the work of the awardees is so important.
According to the Goethe-Institut, the social economist Manga Bell was honored for her pioneering ideas for coming to terms with colonial injustice and international cultural work.
The Japanese composer Hosokawa received the medal "for his unmistakable musical language, which he creates from the tension between 'western' and traditional Japanese culture".
The choreographer Wen Hui is one of the avant-garde of dance theater in China.
The Goethe Medal is traditionally awarded on August 28, the birthday of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), in Weimar. Since 1955, more than 350 personalities from 67 countries have been honored.