The Frege Prize in Light of the Antisemitic Statements of Its Namesake
Members of the GAP have approached the Presidium with the request to reconsider the namesake of the Frege Prize in light of his antisemitic statements. Below, we provide links to key documents and summarize the most important information.
The GAP Presidium and the entire board are committed to addressing this important yet sensitive issue, weighing the arguments for and against a possible renaming of the "Frege Prize" through rational discourse.
Initial Workshop
As a first step, the two GAP Presidents organized a workshop on August 2, 2024, in Bonn. The event brought together philosophers and experts in antisemitism studies to discuss whether renaming the prize is necessary or appropriate or, as others suggest, an overreaction.
- workshop recordings on the GAP YouTube channel
Next Steps
We have completed the first round of our member survey regarding a potential renaming of the Frege Prize.
The voting results, comments, and all name suggestions we received have been anonymized and shared confidentially with all members. A shorter summary, publicly accessible, will be published shortly on our society’s website.
In the second part of the member survey, the vote, we now want to decide solely on whether the Frege Prize should be renamed. The survey began on April 30 and ends on May 30, 2025.
We will wait for the result and only begin the process of finding a new name if a (clear) majority is in favor of renaming. If the result is too close, the board reserves the right to make the final decision at the GAP.12 members’ assembly.
We had also announced that the board would make a preliminary selection from among the name suggestions. We continue to reserve the right to do so.
The invitations to the second round, the vote, were sent to GAP members via email. Thank you for your participation and support!
Key Documents and Information
Shortly before his death, Gottlob Frege expressed his monarchist, anti-democratic, and German nationalist views in diary-like entries dated March 10 to May 9, 1924. These entries include antisemitic passages and support for the political ideas of Erich Ludendorff. Ludendorff was a prominent figure behind the conspiratorial “stab-in-the-back myth,” a leading member of the far-right “German Völkisch Freedom Party,” and a participant in the 1923 Hitler Putsch. Frege’s writings, later referred to as his "political diary," became widely known following their publication in the German Journal of Philosophy (Berlin 42 (1994) 6, 1057-1066).
- diary entries
- excerpt on Ludendorff
- slides from the workshop (in German), including quotes from Frege’s diaries and information on the prize's origins within the GAP