Nicolaus Copernicus is known that Copernicus knew Polish on a par with German and Latin. Historian Michael Burleigh describes the nationality debate as a "totally insignificant battle" between German and Polish scholars during the interwar period. Polish astronomer Konrad Rudnicki calls the discussion a "fierce scholarly quarrel in ... times of nationalism" and describes Copernicus as an inhabitant of a German-speaking territory that belonged to Poland, himself being of mixed Polish-German extraction. Czesław Miłosz describes the debate as an "absurd" projection of a modern understanding of nationality onto Renaissance people, who identified with their home territories rather than with a nation. Similarly,
Nicolas Born Michael Krüger, he was a jury member of the European literary Petrarca-Preis, from when the award was founded in 1975, and onto his death. Twenty five years after his death, his youngest daughter, Katharina Born reedited an almost complete and critical collection of his poems, including several unpublished works: "Nicolas Born - Gedichte" (Wallstein 2004). For the book, Born received, (for the first time posthumously), the renowned Peter-Huchel-Preis (2005). After the big success of the poetry collection and many positive reviews and reactions, a collection of Born's correspondence is planned for Spring 2007. Eric Torgersen translated a collection of his