The medal and diploma Maurice Maeterlinck received from the Swedish Academy when he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911 did not find a buyer at an auction organised by Sotheby's, according to auction results published on the auction house's website on Wednesday.
Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949) remains, to this day, the only Belgian to have received the Nobel Prize for Literature and the second French-speaking writer to have been given the prestigious award, after Sully Prudhomme in 1901.
The starting bid for the 65-millimetre-diameter gold medal and diploma had been set at €90,000.
The Maurice Maeterlinck Foundation had regretted on Tuesday in a statement that "these unique heritage objects are being offered for sale to the highest bidder."
The Foundation hopes that these pieces will find a place in a Belgian public heritage institution, such as the Maurice Maeterlinck Cabinet in Ghent or the Archives & Museum of Literature (AML) of the Royal Library in Brussels.
Ghent-born Maurice Maeterlinck was a poet, playwright and essayist. A leading figure of Belgian symbolism, he is the author of the plays 'Pelléas et Mélisande'(1892) and 'L'Oiseau bleu,'(The Blue Bird), along with the 'Serres chaudes' (Hothouses, 1889) collection of poems and many other works.
