Knut Hagberg

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Knut Hjalmar Hagberg (born July 19, 1900 in Torpa , Älvsborgs län; † March 23, 1975 in Djursholm ) was a Swedish writer . He was best known for his biographies on personalities such as Carl von Linné or Winston Churchill .

Life

Hagberg studied English literature and history at Lund University in southern Sweden. After he had submitted his dissertation there in 1925 on the writer Thomas Carlyle and had received his doctorate in philosophy, he began to work as a freelance author. He stood out in particular as the author of biographical studies on well-known personalities of European culture and politics, which were widely read at the time.

In addition to a biography of his compatriot Carl von Linné , translated into English and German, among other things , Hagberg devoted his attention to outstanding figures in British politics: in 1928 he published a volume with short sketches of leading British politicians from the past and present (including David Lloyd George , Stanley Baldwin and Churchill) which also appeared in England as Kings, Churchills and Statesmen . In 1944 there followed a biography of the British war premier Winston Churchill, which was later translated into German, Finnish and Norwegian, among others. Works on Samuel Johnson and Thomas Babington Macaulay followed .

In later years Hagberg also worked as a translator of classics of English literature into Swedish. He translated Thomas Babington Macaulay ( ns erövrare ), John Galsworthy ( aristocrat ) and Charlotte Brontë ( Jane Eyre ). There were also modern broadcasts of parts of Homer's Odyssey ( Nausicaa episodes: fyra sanger ur Odysseen ).

Hagberg's books are aimed more at a general readership than at scientific research. Accordingly, they are written fluently and easily legible and therefore suitable to enable the interested layperson to get an initial approach to a certain historical personality. The professional audience finds little new since Hagberg is based primarily on the content of existing secondary literature, without ante date to tap unpublished source material.

Fonts

  • Thomas Carlyle. romantik och puritanism i Sartor Resartus , Lund 1925. (Dissertation)
  • Viktor Rydberg , Stockholm 1928.
  • Kings, Churchills and Statemen. A foreigner's view , London 1929.
  • Personalities and Powers , 1930.
  • Burke, Metternich, Disraeli , 1931.
  • Uppland , 1936.
  • Carl Linnaeus. A great life from the Baroque , Hamburg 1940. (German translation)
  • Från Aristoteles till Brehm: några blad ur djurskildringens historia , 1941.
  • Thomas B. Macaula , 1943.
  • Winston Churchill , Zurich 1945. (German translation)
  • Samuel Johnson , 1963.

Trivia

  • A knife from the multinational furniture company IKEA was named after him.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs , Vol. 8, No. 2 (March 1929), p. 183.
personal data
SURNAME Hagberg, Knut
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hagberg, Knut Hjalmar (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish writer
DATE OF BIRTH July 19, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Torpa (Gothenburg) , Älvsborgs län
DATE OF DEATH March 23, 1975
Place of death Djursholm