Tagore Award of our Affiliate in India, a subsidiary of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany Granted in India

• Sudhir Kakar recognized for promoting intercultural exchange between Germany and India
• Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany grants five literary prizes worldwide

Darmstadt, Germany, August 23, 2016 – Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, a leading science and technology company, today announced that it has presented Sudhir Kakar with the third Tagore Award of our Sub in India, a subsidiary of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany in Kolkata, India. The Indian psychoanalyst and writer is being recognized for his contribution to intercultural exchange between India and Germany. In numerous landmark works, Kakar has analyzed the society of the subcontinent from a psychoanalytical perspective, thereby reflecting upon the spiritual soul of India.

In his speech at the Goethe Institut in Kolkata, Frank Stangenberg-Haverkamp, Chairman of the Executive Board and the Family Board of E. Merck KG, Darmstadt, Germany explained how literature helps to build bridges between cultures as follows, "Literature inspires us and opens the door to new, unknown worlds – across cultures and continents. It can also help to shift mental boundaries."

Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany launched the Tagore Award of India, a subsidiary of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany in 2011 to mark the 150th birthday of Rabindranath Tagore (1861 – 1941), an Indian poet and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. The jury comprised one representative each from the Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan India, the German Federal Foreign Office. Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany has a close historical link to the writer Rabindranath Tagore. Elisabeth Wolff-Merck, a member of the family, translated "Chitra", a theater piece by Tagore, from English into German. Her husband, Kurt Wolff, published Tagore’s works in Germany, helping the poet to achieve great fame.

Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany sees the promotion of literature as part of its social responsibility. In addition to health and the environment, culture is a strategic sphere of activity of the company’s sustainability efforts. The Tagore Award is one of five literature prizes that Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany currently awards or promotes worldwide. Building bridges between cultures is also at the forefront of the literature awards in Japan and Russia. In Germany, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany sponsors the Johann Heinrich Merck Award for Literary Critique and Essay of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. With the Premio Letterario of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, the company recognizes authors in Italy who build bridges between literature and science with their works.

Sudhir Kakar, who was born in 1938 in northern India, initially studied mechanical engineering in India and business economics in Mannheim, Germany before training as a psychoanalyst at the Sigmund-Freud Institute in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He taught and worked at Harvard and Princeton as well as in Berlin and Paris before setting up a practice as a psychoanalyst in New Delhi. In 1978, Kakar achieved international acclaim with "The Inner World: A Psychoanalytic Study of Hindu Childhood and Society". In 2007, he wrote "The Indians: Portrait of a People". Featuring in-depth insights into the social and cultural characteristics that form the Indian identity, this book has become a standard work. Today, Kakar lives with his German wife Katharina Poggendorf-Kakar in Goa, India.