Awards and honors
For her literary accomplishments, Blixen was awarded the Danish Holberg Medal in 1949,[81] the Ingenio et Arti medal in 1952 ,[82] granted the inaugural Hans Christian Andersen Scholarship of the Danish Writers Association in 1955 and received the Henrik Pontoppidan Memorial Foundation Grant in 1959.[81] Karen Blixen was proposed by the Swedish Academy's Nobel committee to be awarded the 1959 Nobel Prize in Literature, but committee member Eyvind Johnson (who himself would accept the prize fifteen years later) opposed a prize to Blixen arguing that Scandinavians were overrepresentated among Nobel prize laureates in literature, and the members of the Academy surprisingly voted for a prize to the Italian poet Salvatore Quasimodo instead.[83] Kjell Espmark and Peter Englund, members of the Swedish Academy, has both described it as "a mistake" that Blixen was not awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature,[84] Espmark arguing that Blixen is likely to have been better accepted internationally than other Scandinavian Nobel laureates and that the Academy missed an opportunity to correct the underrepresention of female laureates.[83] When Hemingway won the prize in 1954, he stated that Bernard Berenson, Carl Sandburg and Blixen deserved the prize more than he did [12] Although never awarded the prize, she finished in third place behind Graham Greene in 1961, the year Ivo Andrić was awarded the prize.[85] In 2012, the Nobel records were opened after 50 years and it was revealed that Blixen was among a shortlist of authors considered for the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, along with John Steinbeck (the eventual winner), Robert Graves, Lawrence Durrell, and Jean Anouilh. Blixen became ineligible after dying in September of that year.[86]
Blixen's former secretary and house manager, Clara Svendsen wrote a book, Notes about Karen Blixen (Danish: Notater om Karen Blixen) in 1974, which told of the transformation of the young woman who moved to Africa into the sophisticated writer. Giving personal anecdotes about Blixen's life, Svendsen focused on the private woman behind her public image.[87] Blixen's great-nephew, Anders Westenholz, an accomplished writer himself, wrote two books about her and her works: Kraftens horn: myte og virkelighed i Karen Blixens liv (1982) (translated into English as The Power of Aries: myth and reality in Karen Blixen's life and republished in 1987) and Den glemte abe: mand og kvinde hos Karen Blixen (1985) (The Forgotten Ape: man and woman in Karen Blixen).[88]
Karen Blixen's portrait was featured on the front of the Danish 50-krone banknote, 1997 series, from 7 May 1999 to 25 August 2005.[89] She also featured on Danish postage stamps that were issued in 1980[90] and 1996.[91] The Asteroid 3318 Blixen was named in her honor on her 100th birthday.[92]
On 17 April 2010, Google celebrated her 125th birthday with a Google Doodle.[93]
Rungstedlund Museum
The Karen Blixen Museum in Rungstedlund, DenmarkBlixen lived most of her life at the family estate Rungstedlund, which was acquired by her father in 1879. The property is located in Rungsted, 24 kilometres (15 mi) north of Copenhagen, Denmark's capital.[94] The oldest parts of the estate date to 1680, and it had been operated as both an inn and a farm. Most of Blixen's writing was done in Ewald's Room, named after author Johannes Ewald.[95]
In the 1940s, Blixen contemplated selling the estate due to the costs of running it, but the house became a haven for a group of young intellectuals, including Thorkild Bjørnvig, Frank Jæger, Erling Schroeder, among others, who found the house as intriguing as its occupant. They began using the property as a literary salon,[96] which continued to be used by artists until 1991.[97] Bjørnvig, who edited the journal Heretica also developed a close friendship with Blixen. The house was repaired and restored between 1958 and 1960 with a portion of the estate set aside as a bird sanctuary. After its restoration, the property was deeded to the Danish Literary Academy and became managed by the Rungstedlund Foundation, founded by Blixen and her siblings.[96] It was opened to the public as a museum in 1991.[97] In 2013 The Karen Blixen Museum joined the Nordic museum portal.[91]
Karen Blixen Museum, Nairobi
When Blixen returned to Denmark in 1931, she sold her property to a developer, Remi Martin, who divided the land into 20 acres (8.1 ha) parcels.[98] The Nairobi suburb that emerged on the land where Blixen farmed coffee is now named Karen. Blixen herself declared in her later writings that "the residential district of Karen" was "named after me".[99] The family corporation that owned Blixen's farm was incorporated as the "Karen Coffee Company" and the house she lived in was built by the chairman of the board, Aage Westenholz, her uncle.[100][98] Though Westenholz named the coffee company after his own daughter Karen and not Blixen,[8] the developer of the suburb named the district after its famous author/farmer rather than the name of her company.[98][101][102]
Changing hands several times, the original farmhouse occupied by Blixen was purchased by the Danish government and given to the Kenyan government in 1964 as an independence gift. The government established a college of nutrition on the site and then when the film Out of Africa was released in 1985, the college was acquired by the National Museums of Kenya. A year later, the Karen Blixen Museum was opened and features many of Blixen's furnishings, which were reacquired from Lady McMillan, who had purchased them when Blixen left Africa. The museum house has been judged a significant cultural landmark, not only for its association with Blixen, but as a cultural representative of Kenya's European settlement, as well as a significant architectural style—the late 19th-century bungalow.[98]
