Did goebbels receive a nobel prize
Executive summary
Joseph Goebbels did not receive a Nobel Prize; he was never a laureate. What is historically documented is that Norwegian author Knut Hamsun, who won the 1920 Nobel Prize in Literature, gave his physical Nobel medal (and in some reports the diploma) to Goebbels in 1943; that gift has been repeatedly cited in modern reporting to explain how a Nazi official once came into possession of a Nobel symbol [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. The core fact: Goebbels was not a laureate
The Nobel committees’ public records and contemporary press accounts list laureates by name and year; Joseph Goebbels does not appear as a recipient of any Nobel Prize, and modern news stories make the same distinction—Goebbels possessing a Nobel medal does not equate to him having been awarded the prize [1] [2] [5]. Multiple outlets explicitly note that the 1943 transfer was a gift from Knut Hamsun, the 1920 Nobel literature laureate, not a prize conferred upon Goebbels [1] [2] [3].
2. How the physical medal changed hands in 1943
Historical accounts and contemporary summaries say that after traveling to Germany in 1943 and meeting Nazi officials, Knut Hamsun sent his Nobel medal to Joseph Goebbels as a gesture of thanks or admiration; news outlets and institutional statements use that episode as the precedent when discussing modern cases of laureates gifting their medals [1] [3] [6] [4]. Reporting from major outlets and encyclopedic entries repeats that Hamsun “gave” or “sent” his Nobel medal to Goebbels during World War II, framing it as a symbolic act that reflected Hamsun’s wartime sympathies [2] [5] [4].
3. Why possession of a medal is not the same as being a laureate
The Norwegian Nobel Committee and reporting make clear the legal and symbolic distinction: the honor and record of a Nobel Prize remain attached to the original laureate regardless of what happens to the physical medal, diploma, or prize money, and there are no statutes preventing a laureate from giving away those objects [1] [2]. Modern coverage of a 2026 incident where a living laureate handed her medal to a U.S. president invoked the Hamsun–Goebbels example precisely to underline that the transfer of a medal does not confer laureate status on the recipient [2] [5].
4. How the episode is used rhetorically today
Contemporary news pieces and opinion columns cite the 1943 gift as a rhetorical device when debating the optics and legitimacy of medal transfers; outlets from Reuters and the Nobel Institute’s press commentary to opinion pages reference Hamsun’s gesture to show precedent and to warn that the tangible symbol can be abused without changing the historical record [2] [1] [5]. Some commentators conflate possession with honor in heated rhetoric, but reporters and institutions keep returning to the factual separation between ownership of a medal and Nobel laureate status [3] [6].
5. Caveats, sources and what cannot be claimed
Primary archival documents from Hamsun’s correspondence or Goebbels’s personal papers would offer the fullest contemporaneous account, but the sources provided here are consistent: institutional Nobel commentary and multiple reputable news outlets report that Hamsun gave his 1920 Nobel medal to Goebbels in 1943 and that Goebbels was not a Nobel laureate [1] [2] [3] [5] [4]. If any reader seeks primary archival confirmation beyond these secondary accounts, those specific documents are not included in the provided reporting and therefore cannot be quoted here.
6. Bottom line
Joseph Goebbels never received a Nobel Prize; he briefly acquired a Nobel medal as a gift from laureate Knut Hamsun in 1943, an event widely cited to illustrate that the material symbols of the prize can change hands while the honor itself remains tied to the original laureate [1] [2] [3] [4].