Karl Adolph Gjellerup

Karl Adolph Gjellerup (1857-1919), Danish writer and Nobel laureate, born on the island of Sjælland. He studied theology, but later became an atheist under the influence of the Danish literary critic Georg Morris Brandes. After 1892 Gjellerup lived in Germany; many of his writings are in German and demonstrate his admiration for the humanistic and mystical side of German culture. His last writings also show a preoccupation with Buddhism. Among his works are the novels En idealist (1878), Minna (1889; trans. 1913), and The Pilgrim Kamanita (1906; trans. 1911). Gjellerup was also a poet and a playwright. He shared the 1917 Nobel Prize in literature with the Danish novelist Henrik Pontoppidan.