The New York Times was awarded a major German prize on Sunday for its efforts to remain “a beacon of reason and enlightenment in an era of ‘alternative facts’ and allegations of ‘fake news,’” the jury said.

The newspaper’s publisher, Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., and the paper’s top editor, Dean Baquet, accepted this year’s Marion Dönhoff Prize, named after the well-known publisher of the Die Zeit newspaper, awarded for “international understanding and reconciliation.”

The German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, praised the newspaper as “a flagship of freedom of the press” and “a beacon of reason in an age of rampant unreason” in a speech about the newspaper to a crowded theater in Hamburg, where Die Zeit is headquartered.

Mr. Steinmeier, who has been engaged in pressing German political parties to negotiate a new coalition agreement to avoid new elections, told the story of Walter Jacob, who at age 8 watched Nazi rioters destroy his father’s synagogue in his hometown, Augsburg, during Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass, on Nov. 10, 1938.

Shortly afterward, the Jacob family left Germany, realizing that the destruction was widespread in Germany. The German press was censored, but the Jacobs understood the scale of the Nazi threat because, Mr. Steinmeier said, they were readers of The New York Times.

He praised the paper for its courage, its objectivity and its ability to be self-critical. “It is not merely good fortune to be informed freely and independently — it is absolutely essential for democracy,” Mr. Steinmeier said. “Democracy does not survive without it.”

That is why, he said, “we cannot retreat a millimeter from the freedom of the press. If this freedom falls, democracy falls.”

Mr. Baquet praised the Sulzberger family for its stewardship of The Times. With nearly two-thirds of income coming now from subscribers and the newspaper not owned by a conglomerate or a larger internet company, he said, “The New York Times is the most independent newspaper in the United States,” able to cover both presidents and companies “without fear or favor.”

In separate remarks Sunday evening, Mr. Sulzberger said the prize was a tribute to the journalists of the newspaper and “their unwavering commitment to the truth — at a time when the truth is more important, and more under siege, than at any point in my lifetime.”

He vowed that the newspaper, now largely a digital product, would survive. “No matter the latest trend or challenge, quality journalism would forever be our lodestar,” he said.

“Today, against all odds and expectations, The New York Times employs nearly 1,500 journalists,” Mr. Sulzberger said, “more than when I took over 25 years ago. I consider that my greatest accomplishment as publisher of The New York Times.”

Ms. Dönhoff, who died in 2002, participated in the German resistance against Hitler, whose followers sometimes called her “the red countess.” Fleeing to western Germany as the Soviets took over her ancestral home, she joined the fledging Die Zeit in 1946 as political editor, and rose to be editor and then publisher. She pressed for reconciliation with Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and was an expert on relations with the United States.

A separate prize, intended to encourage less established figures, was awarded to the Pulse of Europe, a year-old citizens’ movement founded to support the ideals of the European Union. It has now held rallies in 19 countries and 130 cities, said one of its founders, Sabine Röder.

Previous winners of the main prize include Mikhail Gorbachev; Desmond Tutu; Bronislaw Geremek, the former Polish foreign minister; and the journalist Laura Poitras.

Walter Jacob, the boy of 8 who lived through Kristallnacht, was in the audience. Now 87 and living in Pittsburgh, he became a rabbi and said the prize helped promote “a different understanding of Germany.”

Mr. Jacob remains a daily reader of The Times, he said, which he picks up daily at the grocery store. “I still like a printed paper,” he said.