JAEGER, HANS HENRIK

born Sept. 2, 1854, Drammen, Nor. died Feb. 8, 1910, Kristiania [now Oslo] novelist, ultranaturalist, and leader of the Norwegian Bohme, a group of urban artists and writers in revolt against conventional morality. His role in Norwegian literature is based on the police suppression of his first novel. Jger went to sea in his youth and thereafter independently studied philosophy, notably that of G.W.F. Hegel, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Immanuel Kant. An advocate of sexual freedom, Jger believed that the restrictions and frustrations of monogamy were a source of social evil. He made two unsuccessful attempts to express his ideas in a play. In 1885, however, he created a sensation with his novel Fra Kristiania-Bohmen (1885; From Bohemian Kristiania), which was confiscated as pornography. The following year, he was sentenced to 60 days in prison for making the work public and 150 more for printing the volume in Sweden. He avoided part of the sentence by moving to Paris, where he spent most of the rest of his life. Although his novel was of no literary merit, it became a cause clbre, dividing the Norwegian literary world between champions of freedom of speech and advocates of good taste and high standards.