On February 6, 2003, the Gutenberg Museum (lecture hall) hosted the 19th presentation of the City Writer's Literary Prize by ZDF and the City of Mainz: The City Writer in Mainz, the city of Gutenberg, for 2003 is the author Urs Widmer, born in Basel in 1938. After studying German, Romance languages, and history in Basel, Montpellier, and Paris, he received his doctorate in 1966 with a thesis on German postwar prose and then worked as a publisher's editor at Walter Verlag (Olten) and Suhrkamp Verlag (Frankfurt/Main). Since the late 1960s, he has published numerous radio plays, theater and crime plays, short stories, tales, and novels. Urs Widmer has
received more than 20 awards for his literary work since 1974, including the 1985 Swiss Schiller Foundation Prize for his entire oeuvre.

• the 1985 Swiss Schiller Foundation Prize
• the 'Basel Literature Prize' in 1989
• the 'Art Prize of the City of Zurich' in 1995
• the 1997 Art Prize of the municipality of Zolikon
• the Heimito von Doderer Literature Prize in 1998
• 1999: the 'Culture Prize' of the municipality of Riehen
• 2001 Bertolt Brecht Literature Prize of the City of Augsburg
• 2002: the 'Grand Literature Prize' in Munich from the jury of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts

In 1995, Urs Widmer was accepted into the Academy for German Language and Literature (Darmstadt

), and in 1999 into the Academy of Arts Berlin Brandenburg. The City Writer's Literature Prize from ZDF and the City of Mainz
The annual City Writer's Literature Prize was established by the City of Mainz and Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF) in 1984. The aim of the award, which is endowed with 12,500 euros, is to honor German-language writers who influence or shape German-language literature with their works and who also strive to promote the interaction between literature and television.

The jury that selected the 2003 winner included previous winners

Katja Behrens (1992)
Katja Lange-Müller (2002)
Gabriele Wohmann (1985)
Dr. Friedrich C. Delius (1997)
Dr. Hanns-Josef Ortheil (2000 and 2001)

- as well as representatives of Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF) - Werner von Bergen, Dr. Wolfgang Herles, Dr. Hans Helmut Hillrichs, Dr. Thomas Hocke, Hans Janke, Dr. Gottfried Langenstein - and the head of the cultural department of the city of Mainz, Peter Krawietz.