a year in advance. In France, Coubertin's efforts to elicit interest in the Games among athletes and the press met difficulty, largely because the participation of German athletes angered French nationalists who begrudged Germany their victory in the Franco-Prussian War. Germany also threatened not to participate after rumors spread that Coubertin had sworn to keep Germany out, but following a letter to the Kaiser denying the accusation, the German National Olympic Committee decided to attend. Coubertin himself was frustrated by the Greeks, who increasingly ignored him in their planning and who wanted to continue to hold the Games in Athens every four years, against de Coubertin's wishes. The conflict was resolved after he suggested to the King of Greece that he hold pan-Hellenic games in between Olympiads, an idea which the King accepted, although Coubertin would receive some angry correspondence even after the compromise was reached and the King did not mention him at all during the banquet held in honor of foreign athletes during the 1896 Games. Coubertin took over the IOC presidency when Demetrios Vikelas stepped down after the Olympics in his own country. Despite the initial success, the Olympic movement faced hard times, as the 1900 Games (in De Coubertin's own Paris) and 1904 Games were both overshadowed by World's Fairs in the same cities, and received little attention. Further to this, the Paris Games were organized by the organizing committee of the Exposition Universelle, who disagreed with de Coubertin's ideas and subsequently fired him, nor were they called Olympics at that time, while the St. Louis Games were predominantly American. President of the International Olympic Committee The 1906 Summer Olympics revived the momentum, and the Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world's foremost sports competition. Coubertin created the modern pentathlon for the 1912 Olympics, and subsequently stepped down from his IOC presidency after the 1924 Olympics in Paris, which proved much more successful than the first attempt in that city in 1900. He was succeeded as president, in 1925, by Belgian Henri de Baillet-Latour. Years later Coubertin came out of retirement to lend his prestige to assisting Berlin to land the 1936 games. In exchange, Germany nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. The 1935 winner, however, was the anti-Nazi Carl von Ossietzky. Personal Olympic success Coubertin won the gold medal for literature at the 1912 Summer Olympics for his poem Ode to