Wilhelm Jensen (1837 - 1911)

Wilhelm Hermann Jensen (15 February 1837 – 24 November 1911) was a German writer and poet. Wilhelm Jensen was born at Heiligenhafen in Holstein (Germany), the natural son of Swenn Hans Jensen (1795–1855), the Mayor of the city of Kiel, later administrator (Landvogt) of the German/Danish island of Sylt, who came of old patrician Frisian stock. Jensen was the son-in-law of the journalist and writer Johann August Moritz Bruehl (1819–1877), the father-in-law of the historian and editor Eduard Heyck, and the grandfather of the writer and poet Hans Heyck. 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 Schwabische Volks-Zeitung and became the lifelong friend of the writer Wilhelm Raabe, 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 from 1888 until his death was a resident of Munich and St. Salvator near Prien on Lake Chiemsee.