Jahnn, Hans Henny (Stellingen, Hamburg, 1894-1959, Hamburg), as a young pacifist took refuge in Norway from 1915 to 1918. After the 1914-18 War he became an expert on organs and their construction, and up to 1933 was official adviser on organ matters to the Hamburg municipality. In this year his writings were banned by the National Socialist regime, and Jahnn emigrated, first to Switzerland, then to Bornholm, his Danish refuge, where he farmed, breeding horses, and carrying out genetic research. A German citizen, he was expropriated by the Danish authorities in 1945; he returned to Hamburg, where he set up as a publisher and resumed his writing. In 1950 he was elected president of the Freie Akademie der Künste.

Deeply influenced by S. Freud as well as Expressionism (see Expressionismus), Jahnn wrote a series of plays in which violent and perverted sensuality is in conflict with a desire to achieve a harmony of balanced impulses. These include Pastor Ephraim Magnus (1919), Die Krönung Richards III. (1921), Der Arzt, sein Weib, sein Sohn (1922), Der gestohlene Gott (1924), Medea (1926), Straßenecke (1931), and Neuer Lübecker Totentanz (1931, revised 1954). After the 1939-45 War followed the plays Thomas Chatterton (1955) and Die Trümmer des Gewissens (published posthumously and produced under the title Der staubige Regenbogen in 1961).

As a novelist Jahnn began with Perrudja (2 vols., 1929), but his best-known work is the trilogy of novels Fluß ohne Ufer consisting of Das Holzschiff (1949), Die Niederschrift des Gustav Anias Horn (2 vols., 1949-51), and Epilog (unfinished and posthumously published with postscr. by W. Muschg, 1961). Another novel, Jeden ereilt es, begun in 1951, remained unfinished; published posthumously in 1968, the project yielded the Novelle Die Nacht aus Blei (1956), a pertinent expression of Jahnn's own tragic view of creation. Jahnn was a writer torn between elemental impulses, expressed in brutality and terror, but also possessed by a yearning for harmony in nature, manifesting itself in kindness to man and beast. His standing as a writer has been hotly disputed by rival schools of criticism.

Werke und Tagebücher (7 vols.), ed. Th. Freeman and Th. Scheuffelen, appeared in 1974, Werke in Einzelausgaben (11 vols.), Hamburger Ausgabe, ed. U. Schweikert and U. Bitz, 1985-94, and a cassette edition in 8 vols., Jubiläumsausgabe, in 1994; correspondence with P. Huchel, Ein Briefwechsel 1951-1959, ed. B. Goldmann, in 1974.

The Oxford Companion to German Literature. Copyright © 1976, 1986, 1997, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.