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Karl Adolph GjellerupDanish Novelist and Playwright, 1917 Nobel Laureate for Literature
Brief biography of Karl Adolph Gjellerup, best known for his novels with religious themes.
Danish poet and novelist Karl Gjellerup (1857-1919), is best known for his Eastern-infuenced novels The Pilgrim Kamanita and Møllen (The Mill), inspired by the life of Emile Zola. His early works were published under a pseudonym, Epigonos. Gjellerup spent most of his adult life in Germany, and eventually identified more with German culture than Danish. Although he studied theology, he became an atheist, and in later years, drifted towards Buddhism. He wrote books and poems featuring free love and eroticism. Early Life of Karl GjellerupKarl Adolph Gjellerup was born on June 2, 1857, in Roholte, Denmark. The son of a minister, he was raised to be a minister, and was expected to have a career in the church, so he studied theology. Religious InfluenceSoon, however, he discovered the works of Charles Darwin and Georg Brandes. Darwin's book the Origin of Species was not against religion, but it showed that the account of the creation of the world in the Bible could not be true. Brandes, an influential figure in Scandinavian literature, attacked religion in his book Jesus, a Myth. These influences convinced Gjellerup to become an atheist – someone who doesn't believe in God. His break with religion is the subject of two novels: An Idealist, A Description of Epigonus, published when he was 21, explains his loss of religious faith and The Apprentice of the Teutons follows the life of a young theologian who becomes a freethinker and develops his own beliefs and rules of behavior. Midlife in Germany and German Idealist PhilosophyGjellerup went to Germany and became involved in German idealist philosophy. This is the theory that the physical world does not exist independently of the human mind but is 'created' by the mind. Buddhism and Other Indian BeliefsGjellerup never really lost his longing for religion, and he later turned to Buddhism and other Indian faiths. His changing beliefs inspired two novels: Minna, set in the Germany of his day, and The Pilgrim Kamanita, set in India and based on the idea that after a person dies their soul is reborn into another body known as reincarnation. He died at the age of 62 in Klotzsche, Germany. Books by Karl A. Gjellerup
Sources:Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una McGovern, Chambers, 2002 Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring, Larousse, 1994
The copyright of the article Karl Adolph Gjellerup in Great Writers is owned by Tel Asiado. Permission to republish Karl Adolph Gjellerup in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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