Wilhelm Hermann Jensen (15 February 183724 November 1911) was a German writer and poet.
Biography
Wilhelm Jensen was born at
Heiligenhafen
Heiligenhafen (; Holsatian: ''Hilligenhaven'') is a town in the district of Ostholstein, in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It is situated on the Baltic Sea coast, opposite the island Fehmarn, approx. 60 km northeast of Lübeck, and 55 km ...
in the
Duchy of Holstein
The Duchy of Holstein (german: Herzogtum Holstein, da, Hertugdømmet Holsten) was the northernmost state of the Holy Roman Empire, located in the present German state of Schleswig-Holstein. It originated when King Christian I of Denmark had hi ...
(now Germany), the illegitimate son of Swenn Hans Jensen (1795–1855), the Mayor of the city of Kiel, later administrator (
Landvogt
A ''Vogt'' (plural ''Vögte'') was a title and office in the Old Swiss Confederacy, inherited from the feudal system of the Holy Roman Empire, corresponding to the English '' reeve''. The German term ''Vogtei'' is ultimately a loan from Latin '' ...
) of the German/Danish island of
Sylt
Sylt (; da, Sild; Sylt North Frisian, Söl'ring North Frisian: ) is an island in northern Germany, part of Nordfriesland district, Schleswig-Holstein, and well known for the distinctive shape of its shoreline. It belongs to the North Frisian ...
, who came of old patrician
Frisian stock. Wilhelm married
Marie Brühl in May 1865 in
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
and they had six children together. Jensen was the son-in-law of the journalist and writer Johann August Moritz Bruehl (1819–1877), the father-in-law of the historian and
editor Eduard Heyck,
botanist Carl Christian Mez
Carl Christian Mez (26 March 1866 – 8 January 1944) was a German botanist and university professor. He is denoted by the author abbreviation when citing a botanical name.
Life and work
Mez came from a family of industrialists in Frei ...
and
Ernst, Prince of Saxe-Meiningen, the grandfather of the writer and poet Hans Heyck and the step grandfather to psychologist
Narziß Ach
Narziß Kaspar Ach (29 October 1871 – 25 July 1946) was a German psychologist and university lecturer in Königsberg, Prussia and Göttingen, Germany.
Biography
From 1890–1895 and in 1898/99 he studied medicine and philosophy at the Univers ...
.
After attending the classical schools at
Kiel
Kiel () is the capital and most populous city in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of 246,243 (2021).
Kiel lies approximately north of Hamburg. Due to its geographic location in the southeast of the Jutland ...
and
Lübeck
Lübeck (; Low German also ), officially the Hanseatic City of Lübeck (german: Hansestadt Lübeck), is a city in Northern Germany. With around 217,000 inhabitants, Lübeck is the second-largest city on the German Baltic coast and in the state ...
, Jensen studied medicine at the universities of
Kiel
Kiel () is the capital and most populous city in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of 246,243 (2021).
Kiel lies approximately north of Hamburg. Due to its geographic location in the southeast of the Jutland ...
,
Würzburg
Würzburg (; Main-Franconian: ) is a city in the region of Franconia in the north of the German state of Bavaria. Würzburg is the administrative seat of the ''Regierungsbezirk'' Lower Franconia. It spans the banks of the Main River.
Würzburg ...
, Jena and
Breslau. He, however, abandoned the medical profession for that of writing, and after engaging for some years in individual private study proceeded to
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...
, where he associated with men of letters. After a residence in
Stuttgart (1865–1869), where for a short time he conducted the ''
Schwabische Volkszeitung'' and became the lifelong friend of the writer Wilhelm Raabe, he became editor in
Flensburg of the ''
Norddeutsche Zeitung''. In 1872 he again returned to Kiel, lived from 1876 to 1888 in
Freiburg im Breisgau, and from 1888 until his death was a resident of Munich and St. Salvator near
Prien on
Lake Chiemsee.
Literary works
Jensen was a prolific German writer of fiction, publishing more than one hundred and fifty works, but only comparatively few of them became popular, such as the novels, ''Karin von Schweden'' (Berlin, 1878); ''Die braune Erica'' (Berlin, 1868); and the tale, ''Die Pfeifer von Dusenbach, Eine Geschichte aus dem Elsass'' (1884). Others included: ''Barthenia'' (Berlin, 1877); ''Götz und Gisela'' (Berlin, 1886); ''Heimkunft'' (Dresden, 1894); ''Aus See und Sand'' (Dresden, 1897); ''Luv und Lee'' (Berlin, 1897); and the narratives, ''Aus den Tagen der Hansa'' (Leipzig, 1885); ''Aus stiller Zeit'' (Berlin, 1881–1885); and ''Heimat''. Jensen also published some tragedies, among them ''Dido'' (Berlin, 1870) and ''Der Kampf fürs Reich'' (Freiburg im Br., 1884).
He was also a poet; a collection of his poetry is contained in "Vom Morgen zum Abend" (1897). His output continued until the year of his death, with ''Fremdlinge under den Menschen''.
Jensen is now remembered mainly as the author of the novella ''
Gradiva''.
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts ...
published an analysis of this work during 1907.
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Jensen, Wilhelm
1837 births
1911 deaths
German poets
People from the Duchy of Holstein
German male poets