Marcus Jansen examines the award process of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation Prize. He identifies the characteristics of awarded and nominated essays and investigates the relationship between the Thyssen Prize and other performance indicators in academia. The author demonstrates that the Thyssen Prize does not represent a completely new dimension of excellence attribution and correlates with other qualitative performance indicators in research. Further investigation reveals that different types of authors are involved in the award process, and that awarded and nominated essays differ significantly in content from non-nominated essays. Possible causes discussed include selection and discrimination effects, as well as actual quality differences that are reflected in the various characteristics.