Frederick Philip Grove
He was a prolific translator in Germany, working under his original name Felix Paul Greve and posing as a dandy, before he left Berlin to start a new life in North America in late July 1909.
Settling in Manitoba, Canada, in 1912, he became a well known Canadian fiction writer exploring Western prairie pioneer life in vibrant multi-cultural communities.
Grove was born Felix Paul Greve in Radomno, West Prussia, but was brought up in Hamburg where he graduated with the Abitur from the Gymnasium Johanneum in 1898.
After studying classical languages and archaeology in Bonn, he became a prolific translator of world literature and a member of Stefan George's homoerotic group, the George-Kreis, around 1900.
During his year in Munich, he befriended Karl Wolfskehl, and briefly shared an address with Thomas Mann at the Pension Gisels from August to September 1902.
Unable to repay loans made by his intimate friend and wealthy patron Herman Kilian, he was promptly charged and convicted of fraud; from 1903–04, he served a deeply humiliating one-year sentence in the penitentiary in Bonn, leaving his reputation destroyed.
While in prison, Grove composed his first novel, Fanny Essler, a thinly veiled roman à clef about Else's sexual adventures, including her marriage with August Endell.
From 1904 to early 1906, the pair lived in voluntary exile, first in Wollerau, Switzerland, then in Paris-Plage, France, from where Grove paid H. G. Wells a few visits in his Sandhurst villa just across the Channel.
Grove moved west and stayed on a large Bonanza farm near Fargo (based on the Amenia & Sharon Land Company) in the late summer of 1912.
[8] He first taught in rural areas, such as Haskett, Winkler, Virden, and Gladstone, but after settling in Rapid City in 1922, he devoted himself entirely to his writing career.
His novels are populated with a range of Swedish, German, French, Icelandic, and Ukrainian immigrants, offering a vibrant multi-culturalism as a vision for Canada's social fabric.
As an author he assumed the role of "spokesperson for the young Canadian nation," who cleverly staged himself as "an adopted son [in Canada]" in lecture tours, essays, and advertisements.
Andrew R. Rutherford: a pseudonym suggested (but not used) for his first Canadian book Over Prairie Trails (1922); the name, which references Grove's friend Herman Kilian's maternal grandfather, a renowned Scottish judge, also appears in relation to his unpublished typescript in the University of Manitoba Archives, Jane Atkinson (ca.
In this poem, she juxtaposes the beginning and the ending of their ten-year relationship, using eroticized horseback riding as a metaphor for a highly charged journey through memory.
[14] The Canadian heavy metal band Torture for Pleasure quote from Groves' novel Settlers of the Marsh in their song "TETELESTAI (Sweet Darkness)," released independently in 2013.
This was preceded by Martens' A Dirge for My Daughter, a careful edition of selected poems by Grove which includes photographs and reproductions of handwritten letters and notes.
It has also been argued, by Martens in Over Canadian Trails, perhaps more persuasively, that Greve understandably changed his identity in order to escape internment as a German national at the outbreak of the Great War.
A great deal of research results have been provided by Dr. Gaby Divay at the University of Manitoba Archives, who also published a comprehensive edition of Grove's, Greve's and "Fanny Essler"s poetry in December 1993, and as an e-Edition in 2007.
