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Image courtesy of publisher's website.
y separately published work icon Five Weeks at Humanitas single work   autobiography  
Issue Details: First known date: 2010... 2010 Five Weeks at Humanitas
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Manfred Jurgensen, a multiple-award-winning writer, editor, literary critic and translator, was born on the border between Denmark and Germany in 1940, a 'midnight child'. He has always been sensitive to boundaries and what's beyond the borders, emotionally and physically.

He has chosen to reveal his life history - to a very large extent dominated by World War II and its aftermath - in a highly original form. The protagonist and his lifetime experiences are wrapped within a semi-fictional presentation through which he philosophises about the nature of 'coincidence' as a life-force. Set in Switzerland, this imaginative narrative begins just after the author suffers a nervous breakdown while delivering a doctoral seminar at the University of Basle.

In a luxurious sanatorium for mentally disturbed patients called Humanitas, he is asked to write about his life experiences, including his own awareness of the Nazi era and what it meant to be one of 'Hitler's children'; he is regularly interviewed by a Board of distinguished psychiatrists based on these accounts. An involuntary prisoner, he longs to achieve his freedom and be reunited with his wife. ' (Source: Publisher's website)

Notes

  • This memoir has a semi-fictional presentation.
  • Dedication: In memoriam Max Frisch (1911-91)


  • Epigraph:
    Everything can be told,
    but not the true story of one's life.
    -Max Frisch

    Artists sometimes sense they must
    revise their work where they love
    -Rainer Maria Rilke

    Our doubt is our passion and
    our passion is our task.
    The rest is the madness of art.
    -Henry James

    Why do we tell stories
    so brazenly about ourselves?

    I am preparing
    myself for some arcanum
    in my own story.
    -Vincent Buckley

  • Epigraph:
    I am a Book

    I am not the one who's crazy!
    -Philip Roth, My Life as a Man

    A Harvard professor kept badgering
    Dylan Thomas about the meaning of symbols.
    'Mr Thomas, on like three you say...'
    Thomas finally exploded:
    'Don't you appreciate that to me
    it's not a symbol, it's real?'

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Ormond, Brighton - Moorabbin area, Melbourne - Inner South, Melbourne, Victoria,: Hybrid , 2010 .
      image of person or book cover 8757574289117187258.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: x, 413pp.
      Description: [20] p. of plates : illus., map, ports.
      Note/s:
      • Published 20th November 2018
      ISBN: 9781921665028 (hbk.)

Other Formats

Works about this Work

WriteTurn Phil Brown , 2011 single work review
— Appears in: Brisbane News , 2 - 8 March no. 823 2011; (p. 23)

— Review of Five Weeks at Humanitas Manfred Jurgensen , 2010 single work autobiography
WriteTurn Phil Brown , 2011 single work review
— Appears in: Brisbane News , 2 - 8 March no. 823 2011; (p. 23)

— Review of Five Weeks at Humanitas Manfred Jurgensen , 2010 single work autobiography
Last amended 27 Feb 2020 11:30:00
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