Literature: 1917

1) Gjellerup, Karl pronounced GEHL luh rup, (1857-1919), a Danish writer, shared the 1917 Nobel Prize for literature with another Danish writer, Henrik Pontoppidan. Gjellerup lived much of his life in Germany, and much of his work reflects the influence of German Idealist philosophy and Romantic art.

Karl Adolph Gjellerup was born in Roholte, Denmark. He studied theology but soon considered himself an atheist. He proclaimed his atheism in his first novel, An Idealist, A Description of Epigonus (1878). Gjellerup eventually turned to the study of Asian religions. His best-known novel in English is The Pilgrim Kaminita (1906), a story of reincarnation set against a background of India. He showed his interest in Germanic culture in his drama Brynhild (1884) and in his translation of several songs from the medieval collection of poems called the Poetic Edda.

2) Pontoppidan, Henrik pronounced pawn TAWP ee dahn, (1857-1943), a Danish novelist and short-story writer, shared the 1917 Nobel Prize in literature. The long novels The Promised Land (1895), Lucky Per (1904), and The Realm of the Dead (1916) are among his masterpieces. These novels are realistic, giving a penetrating, unflattering, and often somber picture of contemporary Danish society. Pontoppidan was concerned with the problems of individual honesty and of finding one's own personality. He was born in Fredericia, Jutland, Denmark.