Nobel Prize Recipient. Carl Spitteler received world-wide recognition after being awarded the 1919 Nobel Prize in Literature. The covet award was given, according to the Nobel Prize Committee, "in special appreciation of his epic, "Olympic Spring." His work includes both pessimistic and heroic poems. He received 18 nominations for the Nobel Prize, with five from Wilhelm Oechsli, professor of history at the University of Zurich. Born the oldest son of a government official, he began studying law in 1863 at the University of Zurich after finishing boarding schools. He changed his major in 1865 to theology. After graduation in 1870, he was offered a parish but declined as he felt that was not his calling; he wanted to write. After being a private tutor for eight years in Russia and Finland, he returned to his homeland of Switzerland in 1879, a year after his father's death. Attempting to make an income for himself and his widowed mother, he found positions as a part-time teacher and journalist, contributing articles to an art periodical and later the editor for the "New Zurich Times." In 1883 he married one of his students, Marie Op den Hooff, who came from a wealthy Dutch family. The couple had two daughters. In 1892 he inherited a sum, which afforded him to retire to Lucerne and work on his creative writings. His first successful poem, "Prometheus and Epimetheus," was published in 1881 using the pen name of Carl Felix Tandem. His second poem was "The Olympic Spring," which was the reason he was nominated for the Nobel Prize. He revised his poems in the later days of his life, including "The Olympic Spring" in 1910. His autobiographical 1906 novel "Imago" reflects his own inner feelings of creative gifts and middle-class values, influencing the development of psychoanalysis. The following year Spitteler's prose efforts continued with the release of "Two Little Misogynists," another autobiographical narrative, which was inspired by his childhood in the Swiss village of Liestal. He wrote about mythology, fantasy, and religion, even devising his own metrical scheme. In the late 1890s he was accused of plagiarizing. He did nothing about this situation until 1908, when he proved his writing pre-dated the other author's piece. In his 1914 "Our Swiss View Point," he gives his pro-German viewpoints of World War I, yet even with Swiss' neutrality in the war. Even with his political viewpoints, he received the Nobel Prize, and he earned praise from the French, being awarded the Medal of the Society of French Men of Letters in 1916. In 1928 an English translation of his works, "Selected Poems," was published. His collected works have been published in nine volumes. Being too ill to travel to Stockholm, he received the award from the Swiss Minister of Foreign Affairs, who had accepted it on Spitteler's behalf at the December of 1920 ceremony. His last poem was "Prometheus the Long-Suffering" in October of 1924. His mind was clear to the end, but suffered from circulation problems in his legs. He was the only native-born Swiss to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.