The jury had to select their favorite aphorisms from more than 1,500 entries penned by more than 300 contributors from all parts of Germany as well as some neighboring countries. For the organizers—DAphA, the Stadtmuseum Hattingen and the local newspaper WAZ Hattingen—it was an astounding response. As chairman of DAphA (and an aphorist myself!), I moderated the evening. A suitably powerful musical program was performed by Dennis Frehse, a young drummer.

Here are some of the runners-up:

An aphorist is not stingy with thoughts but with words. — Marita Bagdahn, Bonn

You are working on your weaknesses as long as they dominate you perfectly. — Helwig Brunner, Graz, Austria

Accidents happen on which the fingerprints of God are still visible. —Nikolaus Cybinski, Lörrach

In a good dialogue, statements that are half-true will not be added together but shared. —Jacques Wirion, Luxemburg

Parliament is where political idealists sober up. —Jürgen Flenker, Münster

In the long run, no one can live with just one lie; he will certainly need some more. —Wolfgang Mocker, Berlin

Meaning is a child. It plays hide-and-seek behind the words. —Adelheid Gosse-Weigl, Kaufbeuren

Third prize was awarded to Frank Rawel, an author for the amateur cabaret “Die Bücherwürmer” (The Bookworms) who lives in Michendorf near Potsdam:

Who has not been held up, does not go far.

Taking a bath purifies.

Second prize went to Tobias Grüterich from Bonn. Born in 1978, he has already published aphorism books. The jury especially commended his witty brevity and ambiguity of expression:

The fate of truth: the wasting away of truth. (In German: Los der Wahrheit: Verwahrlosung.

Who has won? No. He who has, has won.

First prize went to Stefan Schütz from Erfurt. The jury highlighted the laconic, ambiguous and precision of his aphorisms:

The safe and sound world is a plate.

There is enough egoism for all.

Finally, the public chose its own favorite aphorism, by Helwig Brunner:

Obituary to an individualist: he always wanted to be different, now he’s deceased. (In German: (Nachruf auf einen Individualisten: Immer wollte er anders sein, jetzt ist er verschieden.)

This shows again the special difficulty in translating an aphorism, because the German word “verschieden” means “different” as well as “deceased”. Click here to download an article about the contest from WAZ Hattingen.

The organizers of the aphorism contest are now expectantly looking forward to the 3rd German Aphorists’ Convention, which will take place from November the 6 to 8 at the Stadtmuseum Hattingen. The main topic will be the fundamental facets of an aphorism: wit, sense, and metaphor. — Jurgen Wilbert

SARA LEVINE: Aphorisms are “a crash course in prose style”

Tim Crane, director of the Institute of Philosophy, opened the day, which kicked off with a session entitled “What is an aphorism?” Stephen Clucas, reader in Early Modern Intellectual History, Birkbeck, University of London, examined attempts by some modern continental philosophers and theorists (including Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes) to privilege the de-stabilizing, unsettling and open-ended fragment over the oracular completeness of the aphorism. In a witty and entertaining talk, Sara Levine, associate professor, MFA in Writing Program, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, explored the pleasures and dangers of using the aphorism as a crash course in grammar and style for students aspiring to write “the great American novel.”

SIMON MAY: Aphorisms respond to “our need for redemption from doubt”

Simon May, college research fellow in Philosophy, Birkbeck, University of London and author of The Little Book of Big Thoughts, traced how aphorisms have been a principal weapon in the West’s peculiar urge to destroy all so-called ‘totalizing’ ideologies and systems of thought while making surreptitious claims to ‘totality’ themselves.
Roger Scruton, author, philosopher, and research professor for the Institute for the Psychological Sciences, distinguished between true, common-sensical aphorisms and what he called “the way of the wizard,” aphorisms that are false, eccentric and used more as spells than statements.

ROGER SCRUTON: False aphorisms are “spells, not statements”

The next session was entitled: “Aphorisms: international perspectives.” Friedemann Spicker and Jurgen Wilbert, co-founders of the German Aphorism Convention and the German Aphorism Archive, described their aphorism activism—through lectures, workshops and performances—in Germany.
Philippe Moret, author of Tradition et modernité de l’aphorisme, spoke about the beguiling aphorisms of Paul Valery, including this one: “The skin is the deepest thing in man.”
Sami Feiring, chairman of the Aphorism Association of Finland, traced the history of and present trends in Finnish aphorisms. Boris Mitic introduced us to the Belgrade Aphoristic Circle through clips from his documentary film on these satirical aphorists, Aphocalypse Now.

PHILIPPE MORET: Valery’s cahier—”relaxed rumination or sharp thought?”

The next session was entitled: “Aphorisms: practitioners’ perspectives.” Don Paterson, Scottish poet and aphorist, started off by saying that “talking about aphorisms was like singing about painting,” but he nevertheless did manage to carry a lovely tune, outlining how “aphorisms generate aphorisms” through—appropriately enough—a series of aphorisms. James Richardson, American poet, aphorist, and professor of English and Creative Writing, Princeton University, talked about the aphoristic composition process and how it is different from writing poems. Fulvio Fiori, Italian author, playwright and aphorist, showed how he tries to “get aphorisms out of books” by performing some of his own sayings in the context of a talk about Zen and the art of the aphorism.

BERT HELLINGER (center): Aphorisms as “words of healing”

Bert Hellinger, German psychologist and aphorist, talked about—and demonstrated—how aphorisms can function as “words of healing.” The final session was called “Aphorisms: personal perspectives.” (Click here to see the full session on foratv.) I opened the session with a talk about how aphorisms are correctly described as pessimistic but how aphorists are, in fact, the ultimate optimists. (Click here for an excerpt from my talk on foratv.)

FULVIO FIORI: Zen and the art of afiorisms

A.C. Grayling, author and professor of philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London, spoke about the aphorism as an elite form of literature, a point of view over which he and I disagreed during the Q&A portion of the session. John Lloyd, producer of classic British comedies like Not the Nine O’clock News, Spitting Image, Blackadder, and QI, gave a hilarious dissertation on the subject of aphorisms and jokes, part of which you can see here on foratv. Tim Crane closed a day during which we all learned—and laughed—a lot.

All photographs by Sami Feiring.