German author, born at Heiligenhafen in Holstein on the 15th of February 1837, the son of a local Danish magistrate, who came of old patrician Frisian stock. After attending the classical schools at Kiel and Lübeck, Jensen studied medicine at the universities of Kiel, Würzburg and Breslau. He, however, abandoned the medical profession for that of letters, and after engaging for some years in individual private study proceeded to Munich, where he associated with men of letters. After a residence in Stuttgart (1865–1869), where for a short time he conducted the Schwäbische Volks-Zeitung, he became editor in Flensburg of the Norddeutsche Zeitung. In 1872 he again returned to Kiel, lived from 1876 to 1888 in Freiburg im Breisgau, and since 1888 has been resident in Munich.
Jensen is perhaps the most fertile of modern German writers of fiction, more than one hundred works having proceeded from his pen; but only comparatively few of them have caught the public taste; such are the novels, Karin von Schweden (Berlin, 1878); Die braune Erica (Berlin, 1868); and the tale, Die Pfeifer von Dusenbach, Eine Geschichte aus dem Elsass (1884). Among others may be mentioned the following: Barthenia (Berlin, 1877); Götz und Gisela (Berlin, 1886); Heimkunft (Dresden, 1894); Aus See und Sand (Dresden, 1897); Luv und Lee (Berlin, 1897); and the narratives, Aus den Tagen der Hansa (Leipzig, 1885); Aus stiller Zeit (Berlin, 1881–1885); and Heimath (1901). Jensen also published some tragedies, among which Dido (Berlin, 1870) and Der Kampf für’s Reich (Freiburg im Br., 1884) may be mentioned. His later works include Die Fränkische Leuchte (1901); Vor der Elbmündung (1905); Unter der Tarnkappe (1906); and Fremdlinge unter den Menschen (1911). He died at Munich on the 24th of November 1911.
See J. A. Erdmann, Wilhelm Jensen, sein Leben und Dichten (1907); W. Barchfeld, Wilhelm Jensen als Lyriker (1913). See also “Letters from the Beloved.”
