Throughout his life, Henrik Pontoppidan also suffered tight financial constraints. Even the Nobel Prize money he received was reduced by a bank failure in 1927. Randers became Pontoppidan's paradise on earth, particularly in his memoirs and his literary works. The Prussian occupation of Jutland from April to November 1864 made an early impression on him that did not diminish during his adult life. While his three older brothers grew up in the optimistic rush of victory after the war with Prussia (1848 to 1850) over Schleswig-Holstein, Pontoppidan, along with many of his peers, was marked for life by the Danish defeat of 1864 in the second war with Prussia.
In the early 1870s, after returning home from his visit to Bogø, Pontoppidan founded a literary group in Randers consisting of five schoolmates. The group met once a week to discuss their favorite authors, present new ideas, drink, and smoke. Outside of school, Pontoppidan led an active outdoor life: he swam and sailed in the fjord and hiked with friends, particularly north to the ocean and west to the moors and the world of his favorite author, Steen Steensen Blicher.
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