Henri Nathansen
Henri Nathansen, 1909
Born	( 1868-07-17 ) 17 July 1868 Hjørring , Denmark
Died	16 February 1944 (1944-02-16) (aged 75) Lund , Sweden
Pen name	Frater Taciturnus
Occupation	Novelist , dramatist , stage director , biographer
Literary movement	Naturalism
Notable works	Indenfor Murene , Mendel Philipsen & Søn

Henri Nathansen (17 July 1868 ? 16 February 1944) was a Danish writer and stage director, today best known for the play Indenfor Murene (the Danish rendering of the Latin expression intra muros , meaning "within the walls").

Biography [ edit ]

Nathansen grew up in a merchant family in Copenhagen . Abandoning a legal career, he turned to writing and later directing. His best known work, Indenfor Murene , premiered in 1912 at the Royal Danish Theatre , directed by the author. ^[1] The play centers around a wealthy, loving, but conservative Jewish family whose only daughter breaks away from tradition by attending lectures at the university and secretly becoming engaged to her teacher, a gentile . Still frequently performed, the play was included in the official Canon of Danish Culture in 2006.

Nathansen's 1932 novel Mendel Philipsen & Søn , about a Jewish woman who falls in love with a gentile painter but instead enters into a loveless marriage with her Jewish cousin, was adapted for the 1992 movie Sofie . ^[2]

Late in his career, Nathansen wrote a number of biographies, notably one of Georg Brandes (1929).

In October 1943, when the Nazis attempted to round up the Danish Jews, Nathansen fled to Sweden . Four months later, he killed himself.

Legacy [ edit ]

A bust of Nathansen stands in the small garden complex Digterlunden next to the Town Hall Square in Frederiksberg .

References [ edit ]

Sources [ edit ]

External links [ edit ]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Henri Nathansen .

• Henri Nathansen at IMDb