The Modern Novel

Biography

Hans Henny Jahnn was born in 1894 in Stellingen. His father was a ship’s carpenter. When he was nineteen, he and his friend Gottfried Harms tried to run away to Iceland but were brought back. They failed again the following year. They did travel successfully to Norway, to avoid military service. Jahnn started writing and both started designing statues and furniture for their utopian town of Ugrino. Jahnn also started to learn about organs. The pair returned to Germany after World War I, to the town of Eckel, where they were setting up Ugrino. Jahnn had his play published and then staged. He also worked on an organ in a church in Hamburg, repairing Arp Schnitger’s seventeenth-century organ at St. Jacobi. He had a lifelong interest in the organ and, at Ugrino, he and Harms published much German organ music. The two friends married two sisters, Ellinor and Sybille Philips, though remaining bisexual. Harms died in 1931 and, in 1933, Jahnn and his wife left Germany for Denmark when Hitler came to power, returning to Hamburg after the war. He was very opposed to atomic weapons and campaigned against them. He died in 1959. He will be remembered for his unfinished trilogy Fluß ohne Ufer. Sadly only the first book has been translated into English and, even in Germany, he is virtually forgotten.

Books about Hans Henny Jahnn

Jan Bürger: Der gestrandete Wal (biography – in German)

Other links

Hans Henny Jahnn
Hans Henny Jahnn
Hans Henny Jahnn (in German)
Der seltsame Fall des Hans Henny Jahnn (in German)
Die sieben Todsünden des Hans Henny Jahnn (in German)