Anna Politkovskaja knew what it meant to face danger, criticism, and threats – all in the name of freedom of the press. The square on the corner of Feldbrunnenstraße and Binderstraße in Hamburg, directly in front of the ZEIT STIFTUNG BUCERIUS building, has been named after the Russian journalist and human rights activist – one of this century’s best known and most committed defenders of independent reporting.
Anna Politkowskaja was born on 30 August 1958. She died on 7 October 2006, when she was shot four times in the head in front of her apartment in Moscow. She was the daughter of Soviet diplomats and lived the first years of her life in New York before later returning in the 1970s to the then Soviet Union. There, she studied journalism and in 1980 earned her degree from Moscow State University. Subsequently she worked for various media outlets, including the newspaper “Obshchaya Gazeta” from 1994 to 1999. Beginning in 1999 Politkowskaja was a staff member of the independent and Kremlin-critical newspaper “Novaya Gazeta”.
Anna Politkowskaja was a vocal critic of the policies pursued by President Vladimir Putin. Her journalistic efforts focused primarily on the autonomous republic of Chechnya, and she initially became famous for her coverage of the second Chechen war being waged between separatists and Kremlin forces, with Politkowskaja investigating atrocities and allegations of abuse on all sides. In 2003, her book “A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya” was published (“Tschetschenien: Die Wahrheit über den Krieg“). English and German translations of her book “Putin’s Russia” were published in 2004 and 2005.
Throughout her career, Politkovskaya reported clearly and unambiguously on human rights violations, including torture, kidnappings, mass executions, and the sale by Russian soldiers of Chechen corpses to their families. Her reporting brought Politkovskaya international recognition and fame. The New York Times has described her as a “pillar of press freedom”, and according to former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the case of Politkovskaya is “emblematic for freedom of the press”. Yet even before her death, the journalist had long been subjected to fierce public criticism from the Russian military and politicians, and she continually faced danger. Among other acts of intimidation, Anna Politkovskaya was kidnapped, she received death threats, and she is said to have been the victim of a failed assassination attempt in 2004 when, according to her own account, she was poisoned in an airplane.
Anna Politkovskaya had ties to Hamburg as well. At a 2002 ceremony held at Hamburg’s city hall, the journalist accepted on behalf of Novaya Gazeta the Gerd Bucerius Prize for Free Press in Eastern Europe (now the Free Media Awards), an honour awarded by the ZEIT STIFTUNG BUCERIUS together with the Norwegian Fritt Ord Foundation. She worked with a publishing house in Hamburg – as well as with DIE ZEIT in 2001 – and her efforts included a report on Russian army prison camps in Chechnya. The naming of the square in honour of Anna Politkovskaya was decided by the Eimsbüttel District Assembly and the Senate of the City of Hamburg in May and July 2024, respectively. Anna Politkovskaya Square is the first location in Germany to commemorate the life of the journalist. Previously, public spaces have been named after her in France, Italy, Georgia, and Austria.
Anna Politkowskaja was the mother of two children, Ilya Politkowski and Vera Politkowskaja. Her daughter Vera, born in 1980, fled and went into exile upon the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Together with journalist Sara Giudice, she authored the book “Meine Mutter hätte es Krieg genannt” (My Mother Would Have Called It War), published in 2023. Ilya Politkowski was in attendance at the square’s dedication in October 2024.