Nobel Prize controversies works there were available only in samizdat-published, clandestine form. After the Swedish government refused to hold a public award ceremony and lecture at its Moscow embassy, Solzhenitsyn refused the award altogether, commenting that the conditions set by the Swedes (who preferred a private ceremony) were "an insult to the Nobel Prize itself." Solzhenitsyn later accepted the award on 10 December 1974, after the Soviet Union banished him. Critics suggest that Solzhenitsyn was awarded the prize because of his political stance, not his writing. Leo Tolstoy was nominated for the two first-ever Nobel Prizes in Literature. In the first year, the
Georg Büchner Prize for potential future Nobel Prize winners writing in the German language. Most recently, however, the Swedish Academy in Stockholm preceded the German Academy for Language and Literature in awarding a prolific writer from the German "sprachraum". Herta Müller received the Nobel Prize in Literature but has not yet been awarded the Georg Büchner Prize. Other writers who were omitted but received the Nobel Prize in Literature were Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, and Nelly Sachs. Georg Büchner Prize The Georg Büchner Prize () is the most important literary prize for the German language, along with the Goethe Prize. The award is