THE Philippines is taking center stage at the 2025 Frankfurt Book Fair, which started on Wednesday, as the country is this year’s guest of honor. Sen. Loren Legarda, who is the driving force of the country’s guest of honor responsibilities, honored the legacy of the country’s national hero, Jose Rizal. She talked about Rizal’s adventures in Germany, where he encountered German literature and drama. “Ours was a medical doctor, a poet and novelist, in the name of Dr. José Rizal, who made imagination his sharpest weapon. His words carved hope where despair had reigned, dignity where oppression had prevailed. For that imagination, he was executed in 1896, condemned not for violence but for radical thought,” she added. “It was not arms the colonizers feared most, but ideas: ideas that roused a nation and ignited the first revolution in Southeast Asia... Such is the power of literature to us Filipinos: to awaken, to resist, to liberate,” the senator said. “Rizal forged this temper into his own vision: a Filipino people who would stand free and never again live under foreign dominion.” The senator said that she imagined the country’s role as the bookfair’s guest of honor a decade ago. “Ten years ago, in 2015, I first imagined the Philippines as the Guest of Honor of the Frankfurter Buchmesse, knowing what I have always believed that Filipino voices belong among the world’s greatest literature,” Legarda said. “The circle of history closes, but it also opens anew. Today, let the world see us for what we are: as knowledge makers, culture bearers and conceivers of ideas from which the world itself may learn,” she added. “And so tonight, in honoring his legacy, we continue what Rizal began: To let imagination describe the world as it is, and to refuse what it must not be. To unsettle the comfortable who can look upon suffering and remain unmoved.” “In a time when walls rise higher than bridges, when children’s bodies shrink to the bone from starvation, when entire families are crushed and buried beneath shattered concrete, when hands are cuffed for nothing more than their color, we return to the threatening truths for which Rizal gave his life and through which a nation arose: that literature must provoke the conscience, break the silence imposed by fear and ignite courage where misery has been sown by the despotic, the corrupt and the cruel,” Legarda added. Filipino poets Merlie Alunan, Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta and Marjorie Evasco appeared as literary speakers on behalf of this year’s guest of honor. In this year’s edition, the Philippines has around 500 different titles, as well as 500 different authors, illustrators, artists and publishers present in the Philippine spaces for the bookfair. “With a translation subsidy program announced only in late 2023, more than a hundred, 173 to date to be exact, international translations across literary genres have been sold across Europe, Asia and the Middle East, with editions already out in Germany, Spain, Egypt and France. Around 30 German-publishers are releasing translations of works by Filipino authors and books about the Philippines as part of the Guest of Honor program. By the end of the year, there will be around 60 new publications from and about the Philippines that have appeared on the German-language market since fall 2024,” the event’s statement read. Rizal’s books, “Noli Me Tangere” and “El Filibusterismo,” were translated to the German language and were also launched during the bookfair, along with other books and essays such as ”The Boy from Ilocos” by Blaise Campo Cacoscos, ”Aswanglaut” by Allan Derain, ”The Colaborators” by Katrina Tuvera, ”Second Opinion” by Gideon Lasco, ”Unang Kadaugan” by Arteena Lefty, ”The Age of Umbrage” by Jessica Zafra, and ”Philippine Cinema: Essays and Reflections” by Nick Deocampo. The Philippine catalog in the bookfair has the following categories: New Adult and Poetry, Fiction, Creative Non-Fiction & Social Sciences, Comics & Graphic Novels and Children’s. Events held on Thursday included Jose on the Go: A Heritage Walking Tour with historian Ambeth Ocampo, who invited participants to follow Rizal’s footsteps in Frankfurt. “Rizal visited Frankfurt in 1886 and had a pivotal experience in Germany, including the printing of ‘Noli Me Tángere’ in Berlin. To this day, remnants of his legacy remain in parts of Germany and Europe. Walk through iconic spots and explore the landmarks that captured Rizal’s sharp mind — from Gutenbergplatz and Goetheplatz, to Städel Museum and Liebieghaus,” the National Book Development Board (NBDB) said in its invitation to the public. Other events were held at the Philippine Pavilion, that also included talks with National Artist Virgilio Almario, as well as literary translator and The Manila Times columnist Danton Remoto, and broadcast journalist Howie Severino. The Philippines’ guest of honor participation in the Frankfurt Book Fair is a project of the NBDB, National Commission for Culture and the Arts, Department of Foreign Affairs and Legarda’s office.