Hans Henny Jahnn

Hans Henny Jahnn (born Hans Henny August Jahn; 17 December 1894 – 29 November 1959) was a German playwright, novelist, and organ-builder.

Personal life Hans Henny Jahnn was born in 1894 in Stellingen, one of Hamburg's suburbs, and was the son of a shipwright.

Jahnn met Gottlieb Friedrich Harms "Friedel" (1893–1931), with whom he was united in a "mystical wedding" in 1913, at a secondary school (the St. Pauli Realschule) which they both attended, and they fled from Germany to Norway to avoid enlistment into the army for World War I, where they lived together between 1914 and 1918, and after the war ended they returned to Hamburg. In 1926, Jahnn married Ellinor, and Harms married Sybille Philips, Ellinor's sister, in 1928. When Harms died in 1931 Jahnn designed his gravestone.

Writing As a playwright, he wrote: Pastor Ephraim Magnus (1919), which The Cambridge Guide to Theatre describes as a nihilistic, Expressionist play "stuffed with perversities and sado-masochistic motifs"; Coronation of Richard III (1921; "equally lurid"); and a version of Medea (1926). Later works include the novel Perrudja, an unfinished trilogy of novels River without Banks (Fluss ohne Ufer), the drama Thomas Chatterton (1955; staged by Gustaf Gründgens in 1956), Includes: Kebad Kenya Sassanid King A Master Selects His Servant The Night of Lead

Plays

Pastor Ephraim Magnus (1919) Die Krönung Richards III (1921) Der Arzt / Sein Weib / Sein Sohn (1922) Der gestohlene Gott (1924) Medea (1926) Neuer Lübecker Totentanz (1931) Straßenecke (1931) Armut, Reichtum, Mensch und Tier (1933) Spur des dunklen Engels (1952) Thomas Chatterton (1955)