Helga Johansen (1852–1912) was a Danish writer whose works are associated with the period in Scandinavian literature known as The Modern Breakthrough. The sister of painter

Viggo Johansen Viggo Johansen (3 January 1851 – 18 December 1935) was a Danish painter and active member of the group of Skagen Painters who met every summer in the north of Jutland Jutland (; , ''Jyske Halvø'' or ''Cimbriske Halvø''; , ''Kimbrische H ...

, she was brought up in a well-to-do Copenhagen home. After intermittently working as a teacher, she began to suffer from mental illness. In 1896, writing under the pen name Et Fruentime (A Woman) she made her debut with the novel ''Rids, tre monologer'' (Outline, Three Monologues). This was followed in 1900 by ''Hinsides: En psykologisk Redegørelse'' (Beyond: A Psychological Account), drawing on her own experience of hospitalization with a confused combination of thoughts and monologues.

Early life

Born on 12 August 1852 in Copenhagen, Helga Johansen was the daughter of the merchant Frederik Christoph Johansen (1804–74) and his wife Camilla Petrine née Jepsen (1815–92). While still a small child she suffered a leg injury but nevertheless was able to care for her ailing mother until she died in 1892. Graduating in 1879 as a teacher from the Beyers, Bohrs and Femmers College, she taught intermittently while undertaking her own studies of Hebrew and of philosophy with the assistance of

Harald Høffding Harald Høffding (11 March 1843 – 2 July 1931) was a Danish philosopher and theologian. Life Born Høffding was born in Copenhagen, the son of businessman Niels Frederik Høffding and Martha Høffding (née Jhellerup). The family lived at the ...

. Johansen suffered from mental illness and was hospitalized more than once in the 1880s.

Career as a writer

It was not until her mid-forties that Johansen embarked on writing, publishing three novels around the turn of the century. The first ''Rids'' (Outline, 1896) under the pen name Et Fruentimmer is made up of three sections, two of them monologues, the third based on her own dramatic experiences of the mental hospital Sankt Hans which the patients try to burn down on the eve of midsummer's night. Using the pen name Hannah Joël she went on to publish ''Hinsides'' (Beyond, 1900) and ''Brev til Menneskene'' (Letter to Humankind, 1903). An imaginary account of the author's medical history is presented in ''Hinsides'', as she plays with the relationship between language and phenomena, evoking limbs and hands rather than people with elements such as dots and stripes. In ''Brev til Mennesjene'', she expresses the effects of facing up to madness with the result that abstraction becomes symbolism and aetheticism, myth. Helga Johansen died on 25 December 1912.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Johansen, Helga 1852 births 1912 deaths Writers from Copenhagen 19th-century Danish writers 20th-century Danish writers Danish women novelists