The son of Iran’s deposed shah received the “Freedom Prize” in Frankfurt on Saturday, an honor bestowed in a ceremony that critics deemed illegitimate.
Approximately 18,000 demonstrators, many chanting support and waving pre‑revolutionary Iranian flags, welcomed Reza Pahlavi when he arrived in the German city for the award ceremony, according to police estimates.
The Friedrich Naumann Foundation, an activist organization linked to Germany’s liberal FDP party, presented the prize.
Speaking at St. Paul’s Church—historically the site of Germany’s first elected parliament in 1848‑49—Pahlavi asserted, “Iran is not a country that needs to be taught democracy; it is a country that is being prevented from exercising it.”
He added, “A people willing to die for the right to vote is also willing to cast that vote,” drawing applause.
Anti‑government protests erupted at the end of last year in Iran and were violently suppressed in a January crackdown by security forces; rights groups allege that tens of thousands were killed.
Pahlavi’s voice trembled as he referenced the families of those killed, some of whom were present in the hall.
“No one could have chosen a people better equipped to understand the true meaning of freedom,” he told the foundation.
While Pahlavi received visible support on Frankfurt’s streets, his acceptance of the prize was not universally welcomed.
His father, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was Iran’s last shah, an autocratic ruler who fled into exile in 1979 amid a broad revolution that toppled the monarchy and ushered in Islamist clerical rule.
Critics accuse Pahlavi of overtly supporting Israel and of not sufficiently distancing himself from his father’s autocratic legacy.
Around 200 Iranian prisoners signed a letter protesting Pahlavi’s receipt of the prize, according to Sahar Sanaie, spokeswoman for the Society for German‑Iranians in Hesse, who described him as a symbol of a “bygone dictatorship.”
Frankfurt branches of the centre‑left SPD and the Greens boycotted the event, arguing Pahlavi could not represent the Iranian people legitimately.
The far‑left Die Linke faction in Frankfurt asserted that the church should not host political events, citing municipal statutes that prohibit such usage.
On Saturday, Pahlavi said he was accepting the prize solely as a “trustee” until a democratically elected government assumes power in Iran.
“I hold it only temporarily,” he said. “One day I will place it in the hands of its rightful owners—not on foreign soil, but in Tehran, the capital of Iran.”
