Nominations In 1972, the
Swedish Academy received 158 nominations for 100 writers. Böll started earning nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature since
1960. In total, he received 29 nominations with the highest number in 1972 which eventually led to his awarding. Twenty-seven authors were newly nominated such as
Philip Roth,
Norman Mailer,
Bernard Malamud,
Nadine Gordimer (awarded in
1991),
V. S. Naipaul (awarded in
2001),
Francis Stuart,
Doris Lessing (awarded in
2007),
Alan Paton,
Astrid Lindgren,
Anthony Burgess, and
Sri Chinmoy. The most number of nominations was for the British-American poet
W. H. Auden with 10 nominations. The oldest nominee was
Compton Mackenzie (aged 89) and the youngest was
Philip Roth (aged 39). The Polish-born American poet
Jacob Glatstein and Indian novelist
Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay were nominated posthumously by Moshe Starkman (1906–1975) and the Academy's Nobel Committee respectively. Five of the nominees were women namely
Nadine Gordimer,
Doris Lessing,
Astrid Lindgren,
Anna Seghers, and
Marie Under. The authors
Natalie Clifford Barney,
John Berryman,
Victor Bridges,
Fredric Brown,
Américo Castro,
Michał Choromański,
Richard Church,
Cecil Day-Lewis,
R. F. Delderfield,
Jacques Deval,
Robert Faesi,
Abraham Joshua Heschel,
Ernestine Hill,
Taiko Hirabayashi,
Helen Hoyt,
Vera Inber,
Norah Lange,
Violette Leduc,
Laurence Manning,
José Nucete Sardi,
Kenneth Patchen,
Betty Smith,
Edgar Snow,
Violet Trefusis,
Mark Van Doren, and
Ivan Yefremov died in 1972 without having been nominated for the prize.
Prize decision In 1972, the Nobel committee consisted of author, critic and permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy
Karl Ragnar Gierow (chair), author and critic
Johannes Edfelt, author
Lars Gyllensten, author
Eyvind Johnson, author and critic
Artur Lundkvist and author and critic
Anders Österling. The reports from members of the committee made public fifty years later reveal that the committee for the 1972 Nobel Prize in Literature firstly focused on awarding an author from the field of
German literature. Heinrich Böll had been considered for the prize by the Nobel committee since the first time he was nominated in 1960. The publication of
Gruppenbild mit Dame in 1971, a year when Böll was not nominated for the prize, strengthened his candidacy, and in 1972 the Nobel committee proposed that Böll should be awarded the prize.
Karl Ragnar Gierow said in his report that his evaluation emphasized "tactical evaluation rather than literary valuations". While saying that Eugenio Montale's work to him appeared as the "artistically maturest and most essential", Gierow did not want to place Montale first among the candidates but argued that German literature for long had been neglected by the Nobel committee and that there were now two serious candidates in Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass, and also mentioned
Siegfried Lenz. Gierow listed Böll as his first proposal, a shared prize to Böll and Grass as his second proposal, White as the third and Montale as the fourth proposal. Committee member
Lars Gyllensten made a similar proposal in his report, saying that Böll was the strongest candidate but that a shared prize with Grass could also be well motivated. Committee member
Artur Lundkvist agreed that the German literature was "highly worthy to be recognised" and supported the committees recommendation of Böll as the first proposal, while saying that he would put Patrick White's work ahead of Böll's. ==Reactions==