Johannes Jørgensen
Johannes Jørgensen ( born November 6, 1866 in Svendborg, † May 29, 1956 ) was a Danish poet and writer. He received international notoriety primarily for his biographical representations of Saint Francis of Assisi ( 1907), Catherine of Siena ( 1915) and Bridget of Sweden ( 1946). A major work is next to his autobiography With Liv's Legend ( "The Legend of my life " ), which was even translated into Japanese.
Life
In Svendborg on Funen grew up as the son of a captain, Jørgensen left at age 16 to his hometown to make Copenhagen a high school and study. Here is his first poetic attempts originated. At the same time he met the Danish cultural radicalism, a mainly artists and intellectuals supported religion, moral and socio-critical flow. However, their monism did not satisfy him, and he turned to the symbolism. With like-minded people, he gave the magazine Tårnet ( "The Tower " ) in the years 1893/94 out, in which, often, an idealistic view of the world represented in controversial style. In the intellectual spokesmen, especially George and Edvard Brandes, he earned for rejection and ridicule. From the Danish Ministry of Culture, he received a scholarship for a study trip to Germany, Italy and France.
New encounters, including with the painter and monk Willibrord Verkade converts, whom he visited in the Archabbey Beuron 1894, as well as with the Jewish converts to Catholicism Mogens Ballin, triggered a spiritual crisis. With Ballin Jørgensen 1894 spent three months in Assisi. The figure of St. Francis, then would not let him go. Jørgensen 1896 was received into the Catholic Church.
Since then, he turned increasingly as a writer on religious topics. His biography of Francis in 1907 was translated into many languages and brought him an honorary citizen of Assisi and later the city of his birth Svendborg. In the years 1913/14, he held a professorship of Aesthetics in Leuven. In Assisi, he took his residence in 1915, after he had separated from his wife Amalie Ewald 1913 and the seven common children. In 1937, two years after Amelia's death, he married the Austrian Helena Klein.
The time in Assisi was interrupted from 1938 to 1947, during the Second World War, by a stay in Sweden during the Vadstena monastery Saint Bridget, whose biography he wrote now.
Jørgensen maintained personal friendships with writers such as Paul Verlaine, Léon Bloy and Stéphane Mallarmé. As a translator from and into Danish, he acquired a reputation as an " ambassador of world literature ". For years he had a weekly column in the Copenhagen Berlingske Tidende.
As a 86- year-old pulled John Jørgensen 1952 of Assisi back to Svendborg, where he was buried at the city cemetery.
Aftermath
Despite the success of his saints biographies abroad and the recognized power of speech, especially his nature and travel descriptions Jørgensen remained in Denmark only small circles known. The Danish Højskolesangbogen, a collection of exemplary seals Danish literature contains only a text from him.