Jacob Paludan

Stig Henning Jacob Puggaard Paludan (born February 7, 1896 in Copenhagen , † September 26, 1975 in Birkerød ) was a Danish writer .

Life

Jacob Paludan, born in Copenhagen in 1896 as the son of a literature professor, trained as a pharmacist and worked in this profession until 1920. He lived in Ecuador for two years and then toured the United States . Returning to Denmark he devoted himself to his literary work. His last and most important novel, Jørgen Stein , was published in 1933; after that Paludan mainly published essays.

plant

His first novel De Vestlige Veje (1922), The Story of an Emigrant, attacks the “ American way of life ”, which Paludan criticizes as artificial and materialistic. The following year, Søgelys (Searchlight), a satire of the Danish way of life in the interwar period, appears. From 1925 Paludan worked as a literary critic for the newspapers Dagens Nyheder , Politiken and Århus Stiftstidende . In the novel Fugle omkring Fyret , published in 1925, Paludan deals with the destructive effects of modern technology on nature. The culmination of his pessimism is the work Markerne modnes (The fields mature), a story about the failure of two artistically gifted young men.

Paludan's main work Jørgen Stein , an educational novel, was published in 1932 and 1933 in two parts. The hero of the novel, Jørgen Stein, born in 1898, comes from a noble and long-established family of officials in the province. The traditional values ​​conveyed to him in his upbringing are called into question by the First World War. Jørgen grew up in the fictional town of Havnstrup - which can easily be recognized as Thisted in North Jutland . He moves to lively Aalborg and then to the capital Copenhagen . With the return to the pristine nature of the province, the circle closes. On the one hand, Jørgen longs for the fragile idyll of the pre-war period, while he is helpless in the face of developments in the modern world. The novel is considered one of the most important works in Danish literature between the world wars.

Jacob Paludan had been a member of the Danish Academy since 1960 and was honored with its grand prize in 1964 .

Prices

• 1939: Holberg Medal
• 1951: De Gyldne Laurbær
• 1964: Grand Prize of the Danish Academy

Bibliography (selection)

• De Vestlige Veje. 1922 German. The new world. Franz Schneider, Berlin 1924
• Søgelys. 1923 German. In the light cone. Goverts, Hamburg 1940
• Urolige sange. 1923
• En Vinter long. 1924
• Fugle omkring Fyret. 1925 German birds around fire. S. Fischer, Berlin 1926
• Feodor Jansen's jeremiader. 1927
• Markerne Modnes. 1927 German. The fields ripen. G. Kiepenheuer, Potsdam 1927
• Landet forude: et spil om utopia. 1928
• Året rounds: trykt og utrykt. 1929
• Jørgen Stein. 1932/33 German thunderstorm from the south. Schünemann, Bremen 1940

Web links

• Literature by and about Jacob Paludan in the catalog of the German National Library