Axel Munthe

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Axel Munthe

Axel Martin Fredrik "Puck" Munthe [ ˌakːsəl ˈmɵnːtə ] (born October 31, 1857 in Oskarshamn ; † February 11, 1949 in Stockholm ) was a Swedish doctor and author .

Job and life

Axel Munthe was born in 1857 as the son of a pharmacist. He studied medicine in Uppsala , Montpellier and Paris .

From 1880 he began to practice as a doctor in Paris and Rome . Over the years he still worked in Naples, London and Stockholm. During his student years in Paris, he was particularly impressed by the work of Jean-Martin Charcot . Even in later years his special professional interest was in psychiatry . His professional career shows a number of external breaks. He partly worked as a doctor for the lowest strata of the population, while at the same time or shortly afterwards he ran a fashion doctor's practice. In Rome, for example, he set up his practice in the Keats-Shelley House on the Spanish Steps . a. was inhabited by the poet John Keats . From 1908 Munthe was the personal physician of the Swedish Queen Victoria , a born princess of Baden , who stayed regularly in Munthe's neighborhood on Capri until her death . In his Villa San Michele in Anacapri he was also visited by Henry James , Oscar Wilde , Rainer Maria Rilke and Curzio Malaparte . The house with its splendid garden and wide view over the sea has served as a museum since the 1950s.

Axel Munthe became internationally known for his memoirs The Book of San Michele , published in 1929 and translated into numerous languages . In this, however, the biographical and the fantastic are mixed up to the point of inseparability; in their Munthe biographies, published in 2003 and 2007, respectively, Bengt Jangfeldt and Thomas Steinfeld demonstrated numerous differences between the real and the “autobiographical” life of the author.

Munthe died in 1949 in his last apartment in a wing of the royal palace in Stockholm .

Works

  • Små skizzer , 1888
  • Bref och sketch , 1909
  • Red Cross and Iron Cross , 1916
  • The Story of San Michele , 1929
  • En gammal bok omomanniskor och djur , 1931
    • German title: An old book of people and animals , 1934; Paperback, titled Strange Friends , 1952

filming

Under the title Axel Munthe - The Doctor of San Michele , the life of the doctor was shown in a feature film in a German-French-Italian co-production in 1962. Directed by Georg Marischka , who was later replaced by Rudolf Jugert , the actor OW Fischer played the leading role based on the script by Hans Jacoby . At his side were Rosanna Schiaffino , Sonja Ziemann , Maria Mahor , Heinz Erhardt , Ingeborg Schöner , Renate Ewert and Christiane Maybach . The soundtrack comes from Mario Nascimbene , producer was Artur Brauner .

literature

  • Agneta Freccero: Romersk marble . Wahlström & Widstrand, Stockholm 2003
  • Wolfgang Genschorek: Axel Munthe. The people and animals lover of San Michele . Hirzel, Leipzig 1988, ISBN 3-7401-0114-8 / Edition Wötzel, Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 3-925831-05-3 ; Teubner / Hirzel, Leipzig 1990, ISBN 3-7401-0114-8 .
  • Bengt Jangfeldt : Drömmen om San Michele . Bonnier, Stockholm 2000.
  • Bengt Jangfeldt: En usalig ande. Advice from Axel Munthe. Wahlström & Widstrand, Stockholm 2003, ISBN 978-9146204824 .
  • Bengt Jangfeldt: Munthes Capri . A story in pictures, 2005.
  • Gustaf Munthe: The book by Axel Munthe . List, Munich 1951.
  • Josef Oliv: San Michele di Axel Munthe . Alhems, Malmö 1954.
  • Helena Seiler: Axel Munthe and his work “Red cross and iron cross”. The dispute with the German medical profession in 1932/33 about a book unknown in Germany . 1992, DNB 921245114 (dissertation, University of Munich, 1992).
  • Thomas Steinfeld : The doctor from San Michele. Axel Munthe and the art of giving life a meaning . Hanser, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-446-20844-5 .

Web links

Commons : Axel Munthe  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See the reviews of Jürgen Verdofsky: Neuschwanstein auf Capri. In: Frankfurter Rundschau, March 14, 2007 and by Ursula März: Self-staging as a life's work. In: Deutschlandfunk Kultur, April 4, 2007.
personal data
SURNAME Munthe, Axel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Munthe, Axel Martin Fredrik (full name); Munthe, Puck (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish doctor and author
DATE OF BIRTH October 31, 1857
PLACE OF BIRTH Oskarshamn
DATE OF DEATH February 11, 1949
Place of death Stockholm