Open AccessKnut Hamsun between cultural Germany and political Germany
Author(s) -
Crina Leon
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
revista română de studii baltice şi nordice
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2067-1725
pISSN - 2067-225X
DOI - 10.53604/rjbns.v16i2_4
Subject(s) - nazism , german , politics , audience measurement , nobel laureate , norwegian , power (physics) , socialism , german literature , literature , art history , political science , history , classics , media studies , art , economic history , sociology , law , poetry , communism , philosophy , linguistics , physics , archaeology , quantum mechanics
Knut Hamsun (1859-1952) is a Norwegian writer who managed to win a place in world literature by the side of the playwright Henrik Ibsen. Hamsun was a complex figure: he was the Nobel Prize laureate in Literature of 1920 but he was also charged with treason after World War II; he wrote stories drawn from Nordland (in Northern Norway), but he also supported National Socialism. That is why, we will make a distinction between culture and politics, between Hamsun as a literary writer and Hamsun as the author of a series of articles in favour of the Nazis. Beyond the controversial side of his life, which started in the 1930s, our aim is to analyze the role Germany played on the cultural side. Germany was the first country where Hamsun became a successful writer in the 1890s due to a wide readership and the support of the publisher Albert Langen, among others. In turn, Hamsun was an admirer of German culture and of the German nation that gained power in the 20th century.