World Mourns Death of Georg Brandes, Famous Critic

(Jewish Telegraphic Agency)

Dr. Georg Brandes, famous Danish Jewish critic died here today after a year’s illness. He was eighty-five on Feb. 4. He underwent an operation for intestinal trouble a week ago, but his age militated against his recovery.

Georg Brandes was born in Copenhagen on Feb. 4, 1842. His real name was Georg Morris Kohn. He was educated at the University of Copenhagen, where after taking up the study of law, he soon shifted to philosophy and esthetics.

Dr. Brandes, whose work extended over a wider field than that of any writer of his time, exercised an influence on the literature of most of the European countries. Equally well known as critic and philosopher, he might have gained renown in jurisprudence, which he first studied when he entered the University of Copenhagen, or as a poet, having shown a remarkable gift for verse when a young man. However, his poems were never sufficiently abundant for separate publication and he did not collect them until 1898.

While in the university Brandes was under the influence of the writing of fieldburg in criticism and of Soren Kierkegaard in philosophy, influences which continued to leave traces in later work. In order to broaden his knowledge of literature he traveled extensively in Europe from 1865 to 1871.

Dr. Brandes’s first important contribution was his “Aesthetic Studies” in 1868.

Several important works in 1870 broughty him to the front as the leading critic of Northern Europe. These included. “The French Aesthetics of Our Day,” dealing chiefly with Taine; “Criticisms and Portraits,” and a translation of John Stuart Mill’s “The Subjection of Women.”

Becoming reader in belles-lettres at the University of Copenhagen, he delivered lectures which were the sensation of the hour and resulted in the refusal of the authorities to elect him professor of aesthetics when the chair became vacant in 1872. His ardent advocacy of modern ideas was given as the cause. However, the chair remained vacant, no one daring to place himself in comparison with Brandes.

In the midst of an important literary controversy, of which he was the centre, Dr. Brandes began to issue the most ambitious of his works, “Main Streams of the Literature of the Nineteenth Century,” of which four volumes appeared between 1872 and 1875. His monographs on Tegner, Disraeli, Lassalle, Holberg, Ibsen and Anatole France attracted wide attention. He wrote a monumental study of Goethe and was one of the editors of the German version of Ibsen. One of his most important works was his study of Shakespeare, regarded as one of the most attractive on the subject.

Dr. Brandes left Copenhagen in 1877 and settled in Berlin, where he lived six years and then returned to Copenhagen.

He made one visit to the United States in 1914, to lecture at Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Minnesota.

During the war, although his country was neutral, he devoted his efforts toward ending hostilities and issued a peace appeal in 1916. A controversy between Brandes and Georges Clemencean, before the latter became War Premier, resulted in the breaking of a friendship between the two which had lasted forty years. The dispute started when Clemenceau called upon Brandes to explain a suspicion of want of sympathy for the Allices. Brandes retorted he was sympathetic with France and Belgium but opposed to Russia.

Dr. Brandes’s book, “Jesus, a Myth,” which was recently translated into English called forth much discussion in religious as well as literary circles. In this book he contended that the New Testament story was legend and that the Sermon on the Mount had been taken from pre-Christian Jewish records.