The Maurice Maeterlinck Foundation is not pleased with the sale of the Nobel Prize medal and the writer’s diploma through auction house Sotheby’s. The medal and diploma are part of Belgium’s cultural heritage and belong in a public heritage institution, it sounds.
In a response, the foundation regrets that “these unique heritage objects are being offered for sale to the highest bidder and wishes that these pieces will be given a place in a Belgian public heritage institution, such as the Cabinet Maurice Maeterlinck in Ghent or the Archives et Musée de la Literature of the Royal Library in Brussels”.
One of Maeterlinck’s heirs also complains that “an heir wants to provide some change with this sale”. “If he really values the memory of Maurice Maeterlinck that much, it would be to his credit if he donated this medal to the Maeterlinck Cabinet of the City of Ghent, which has to make do with a copy of the original document.”
