KNOOP, knop, Gerhard Julius Ouckama, German novelist : b. Bremen, 9 June 1861; d. Innsbruck, 6 Sept. 1913. His health in early youth was poor, with the result that in his en forced summer vacations in the country, as well as in his winter quarters in the city, he was cut off from association with boys of his own age, and thus became somewhat sin gular and exclusive in manner. In 1878, a year after the death of his father, he was graduated from the Bremen Realschule, and an uncle, Baron L. Knoop, undertook to pay for his further education, sending him to the Polytechnic Institute at Hanover, to qualify as an industrial chemist. In 1881 he changed for the corresponding institution at Miinchen, and in 1883 he went to Miilhausen in Alsace, first attending the school of chemistry, and then entering a factory for further study. In 1885 he took an important position in the calico printing works at Moscow, which he retained until 1911, when he sottled in Munchen. His
literary work, which he regarded almost en tirely as a pastime, was chiefly in the field of narrative satire. Particularly interesting for Americans are the two novels of which Se bald Soeker is the hero; they describe the adventures in Germany of a young German American who for many years regarded Ger many as the land of his ideal, but who finds, on acquaintance with actual conditions there, that the Fatherland contains much that is vulgar, meretricious and base. His novels are Was Element) (1901) ; 'Hermann Osleb' (Berlin 1904) ; 'Sebald Soekers Pilgerfahrt) (1903) ; 'Sebald Soekers Vollendung' (1905); (Nadeshda Bachini' (Berlin 1906) ; den Papieren des Freiherrn von SlicarpP (1909) ; 'Der Verfalltag) (1911) ; 'Die Hochmiigenden' (1912) ; (Linter Konig Max) (1913).