Karl Gjellerup
1857–1919
Biography
Karl Gjellerup was a Danish poet and novelist, born in 1857 at Roholte near Præstø in Zealand, the son of a parish priest who died when Karl was three. In the 1870s and 1880s he wrote bold novels in the spirit of the naturalists around Georg Brandes, then turned to a more romantic and idealist outlook. In 1892 he settled in Germany, and he died near Dresden in 1919. In 1917 he shared the Nobel Prize in Literature with his compatriot Henrik Pontoppidan.
Denmark greeted the prize coolly, since for many years he had been counted as an author of German literature, and today he is little remembered there. His best-known work abroad is Der Pilger Kamanita (1906), a novel about the son of an Indian merchant who makes a spiritual journey toward nirvana. It reflects his deep interest in Buddhism and Oriental culture in his last years, and it is the book of his that has been translated most widely.
Two of his books on this site come from his early career. Germanernes Lærling (1882), which its title renders as The Germans' Apprentice, is a partly autobiographical story of a young theologian who becomes a pro-German atheist. Minna (1889) reads on the surface as a love story, but it is more a study of a woman's inner life.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
Germanernes Lærling
by Karl Gjellerup
The young theology student Hjorth grows up in a Danish world still bitter about the lost war of 1864 and loyal to its church. As he reads his way into the new free thinking, loses his faith and turns for guidance to German philosophy and culture, he finds his loyalties in love…
Summary written by Claude Opus 5.5.Minna
by Karl Gjellerup
A young Dane, Harald Fenger, takes lodgings in Dresden and comes to know Minna, a gentle and gifted German girl living in modest circumstances. Told by Harald years afterwards, the story follows their love through summer outings, misunderstandings, pride and the arrival of a…
Summary written by Claude Opus 5.5.