Hans Henrik Jæger

Norwegian writer, playwright, novelist, bohemian and anarchist, an important friend and influence on Edvard Munch, born. The son of a police officer, when he was orphaned at the age of 14 he joined the navy and would later go on to become an officer. Having quit the navy in 1874, he enrolled as a student the following year studying philosophy, with a personal emphasis on Kant, Fichte, and Hegel, and frequented the bohemian group Kristianiabohemen – Kristiania being the former name of Oslo. In the debates at the Studentersamfundet, Norwegian Student Society, Jæger declared himself a supporter of determinism and rejected all morality and religion. During his studies he supported himself by working as a stenographer for the Norwegian parliament (Stortinget). In the early 1880s he was part of a militant group of young intellectuals and painters, who included his friend Edvard Munch, who mobilised to promote free love and to call for the abolition of marriage and the support and respect for prostitutes, whose situation society alone was responsible for.

Jæger became noted for two contributions in the Kristiania Arbeidersamfund (Workers Society of Kristiania), where he had characterised marriage and the social injustice as society's two greatest evils. Without free love and socialism there was no chance of abolishing immorality, and the question should therefore be in what form one wished to preserve it. Marriage – which is not based on love, but economic interests – hinders people from living a rich life. [It should be noted that Jæger's conception of free love was that full sexual freedom between the sexes should only operated within the same social class i.e. the bourgeoisie, and not between them.] During this period he also wrote an essay on Kant, 'Kants fornuftskritik' (Kant's critique of pure reason; 1878) and two educational plays, 'Olga' (1883) and 'En intellektuel Forførelse' (An Intellectual Seduction; 1884).

In December 1885 Jæger published a naturalistic novel 'Fra Kristianiabohêmen' (Scenes from Kristianiabohêmen). The book was an all-out attack on the civil society, on small town Kristiania and the hypocrisy of bourgeois society, with its supposed adherence to the values of Christianity, morality and justice. One hour after it had gone on sale in Kristiania it was confiscated. The same thing happened in Sweden when he had the book reprinted and sent there with a new and innocent cover as 'Julefortællinger av H.J.' (Christmas Stories by H.J.). For 'Fra Kristianiabohêmen' he was sentenced in 1886 to 60 days in prison with a large fine, as well as loosing his job as a parliamentary stenographer and kicked out of university. Denied the right to study in Norway, he left for Paris, where he continued his philosophy studies and spent two years working as a foreign correspondent for the 'Social-Demokraten' newspaper. There he also came into contact with the Danish anarchist Jean Jacques Ipsen, who introduced him to anarchism. "When I gave the first anarchist papers and pamphlets to him he had hardly ever heard of writers such as Reclus, Kropotkin and Jean Grave." In the summer of 1888 he returned home but, following a failed attempt to land a position as a parliamentary reporter, he travelled back to Paris in 1890 where his friend Ipsen got him a job at the insurance company he worked for.

In 1893, Jæger published 'Syk kjærlighet' (Twisted Love), the first volume of the trilogy 'Bohemens erotiske bekjennelser' (The Erotic Confessions of the Bohemians) aka 'Kristiania-bohemens Bekjendelser' (The Confessions of Kristiania), a diary novel about the author's life between November 1887 and October 1888 that was based on his stormy relationship with the painter Oda Krohg, who was married to his friend the painter and writer Christian Krohg. The second and third volumes, 'Bekjendelser' (Confessions) and 'Fengsel og fortvilelse' (Prison and Despair), followed in 1902 and 1903 respectively.

In 1906 in Copenhagen he published 'Anarkiets Bibel' (The Bible of Anarchism), a raging attack on religion, capitalism, private property and the state, in which he advocated his vision of a path towards an anarchist society based upon an expropriative general strike coupled with the need for individual and sexual liberation.

In 1907, with Ipsen he published a social struggle newspaper 'Kosaren' (The Corsair), subtitled "et kamporgan mod den socialdemokratiske alliancepolitik og statsparlamentarisme" (A Campaigning Paper Against Social Democratic Alliance Policy and State Parliamentarism) and, in the same year, 'Skorpionen' (The Scorpion), which would later become 'Revolt' (The Revolt).

Hans Henrik Jæger died following a cancer operation on February 8, 1910 at a hospital in Kristiania.