Hans Henrik Jæger

Hans Henrik Jæger (born September 2, 1854, Drammen, Norway—died February 8, 1910, Kristiania [now Oslo]) was a novelist, ultranaturalist, and leader of the Norwegian “Bohème,” a group of urban artists and writers in revolt against conventional morality. His role in Norwegian literature stems in part from the police suppression of his first novel.

Jæger went to sea in his youth and thereafter studied independently philosophy, notably that of G.W.F. Hegel, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Immanuel Kant. An advocate of sexual freedom, Jæger believed that the restrictions and frustrations of monogamy were a source of social evil. He made two unsuccessful attempts to express his ideas in a play. In 1885, however, he created a sensation with his novel Fra Kristiania-Bohêmen (“From Bohemian Kristiania”), which was confiscated as pornography. The following year, he was sentenced to 60 days in prison for making the work public and 150 more days for printing the volume in Sweden. He avoided part of the sentence by moving to Paris, where he spent most of the rest of his life. Although his novel had little literary merit, it became a cause célèbre, dividing the Norwegian literary world between champions of freedom of speech and advocates of good taste and high standards. Fra Kristiania-Bohêmen’s expressions of extreme individualism and irrational and subconscious drives had something of an impact on later writers such as Knut Hamsun and Hans Ernst Kinck.