Danish Golden Age

The Danish Golden Age is the term for a period of Danish art and cultural life from approx. 1800 to approx. 1850. At the beginning of the 1820s, one could talk about a real Copenhagen art school that made Copenhagen an art center on an equal footing with Munich, Dresden, Berlin and other major cities in Europe. It was CW Eckersberg and JL Lund who laid the foundation for the Copenhagen School through their teaching of artists like Christen Købke, J.Th. Lundbye, Wilhelm Bendz and Constantin Hansen.

Two events are mentioned as the beginning of the Golden Age: Heinrich Steffens ‘ return after his education trip and his lecture on the trip and the Golden Horn Theft.

The golden age ended around 1850 when several of the artists died or ceased practicing their art. Other important events were the Three Years War, the end of the monarchy, the adoption of the Constitution in 1849, the outbreak of coal in Copenhagen in 1853 and the ” fall of violence “, that is, Copenhagen could now expand beyond the inner city.

The Danish culture flourished in research, literature, visual art and music during the period: the physicist HC Ørsted, the poets Adam Oehlenschläger, NFS Grundtvig, BS Ingemann, the authors HC Andersen and Søren Kierkegaard. The painter CW Eckersberg, sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen and composers CEF Weyse and JPE Hartmann.

In 1890 Valdemar Vedel used the term Golden Age for his doctoral dissertation titled Studier over Guldalderen in Danish Digtning and Vilhelm Andersen mentions 1896 Henrich Steffens as the reason for the beginning of the Golden Age in his Golden Horns dissertation. It was now obvious that this was one of the richest sections in Danish cultural history., In a European context, the period of romance is called, and in German and Austrian contexts, the term Bermuda is used in particular in the field of visual arts and crafts.

New Copenhagen
The golden age in Copenhagen is harmonious and idyllic on the surface, but Denmark is suffering from horrible accidents: The Battle of Rheden 1801, the Copenhagen bombing 1807, the money swap in 1813 and the loss of Norway to Sweden in 1814. Despite these challenges, the culture in Copenhagen blossoms: Bertel Thorvaldsen created his sculptures, August Bournonville ‘s ballets, Grundtvig and BS Ingemann poetry hymns, Kierkegaard philosophers and Hans Christian Andersen poeted his adventures. Architect CF Hansen embossed the capital, and Købke, Eckersberg andJ.Th. Lundbye painted city, water and land.

At the Copenhagen fire in 1795, about 950 houses burned to the ground. The construction started quickly, because the economy was good because of Denmark’s neutrality and trade policy in the early Napoleonic wars. It was the architect CF Harsdorff and his students who formed the city. Harsdorff had traveled in France and Italy and was characterized by their distinguished houses and mansions.

Harsdorff was unable to design any of the city’s major public buildings, but it was him who drew the majority of the rich residential class housing. Along Copenhagen’s elegant streets and squares, Harsdorff’s mansions shot up, often with distinguished pilgrims on the classic facades. Kongens Nytorv 3-5 conducted Harsdorff to himself. Along the Holmens Canal are good examples of Harsdorff’s citizen palaces.

City adductor and city builder, Jørgen Henrik Rawert and Peter Meyn, made a plan for the new Copenhagen street after the fire. To facilitate fire extinguishes, the roads should be widened and aligned, and new corner properties should be built with cut corners, so each street crossing was almost a small space. Copenhagen gradually emerged as a lighter and airier city.

The most significant public buildings were designed by Harsdorff’s friend and student, CF Hansen.

The neighborhood around Our Lady Church and Nytorv / Gammeltorv was hit hard by the Englishmen. CF Hansen, as the art historian Hans Edvard Nørregård-Nielsen characterizes as “man of power until the brutal” was the right person to concretize Frederik’s 6th unanimous government in the form of authority institutions, churches, courts and schools. In particular, the Dom House at Nytorv (listed as Council and Arresthust 1815) and Our Lady Church are distinguished by their bastard column stretches towards the street. They show where the power of society lies. He also drew the castle church from 1826, Christiansborgfrom 1828 (burned back in 1884) and the Metropolitan School from 1816.

Copenhagen looked brighter and easier, but the reality of the average citizen was another. In 1801, Copenhagen had 100,000 inhabitants living within the violence. And the population density became larger because roads broadened and the built-up area was smaller. The poor families in Copenhagen were referred to the quarters of the violence. The average population density in the city was 26 per cent. 100 square. In some properties in Sølvgade and Rosengade, it was over 10 people per. 26 square meters. For example, there was a housing block of approx. 2450 square meters (1860 square meters of buildings, rest of the courtyard), housing for about 1000 people, in addition to 30 cows and some horses.

Lack of sanitation and population density increased mortality. It went wrong in 1853, where over 5,000 people died of cholera. Only after the violence was removed in 1855, there was room for building homes and reducing population density in the inner city.

There was a big difference between the poor Copenhageners and the fine citizens. It was rarely reflected in the Golden Age art, which primarily reflects the well-educated citizen class. It was not a golden time for everyone in Denmark, and the freedom of speech was relatively limited.

The romantic thought
The romantic thought lay behind the artistic unfoldment of the Danish Golden Age. It was inspired by the German idealist thinkers Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. They claimed that matter is not built up of small units, but of energies whose tensions create the material world. The energies matched the spirit, and the theory enabled a religious idea of the world and an increased focus on consciousness. Many romanticists had a pantheistic worldview: in nature’s love, God could have an idea, and the artist should depict the spirit in nature. Nature and soul life made contact with God; nature and the spirit. The philosophical theory of recognition was neither guided by senses nor reason.

The pleasure was the poet, thinker and artist who views nature and comes into contact with God through the idea. He explores monism in nature, ie that there is a balance in the universe between hatred and love, the repulsion and attraction. The longing was the power that brought the pleasure forward. Genius’s encounter with God in nature through the idea could often assume the character of the transcendence and was an important element in the romantic poetry. These thoughts, which at the same time laid the ground for the emerging nationalism, were first introduced in Denmark by Heinrich Steffens, who in the last months of 1802 held his Philosophical Lectures onElers’ College. He was 1798-1802 on a study trip in Germany, where he initially saw German romantics. Steffens’ readings became a staple and spread the mindset of Danish scholars and artists.

Visual arts
The visual artists strived for reality without the love of the detail becoming realism. The first steps were taken by CW Eckersberg, learned by his father-in-law, Jens Juel, to paint after nature. The motives were the close, familiar and modest: Everyday, family life, roads and streets, the landscape. CA Jensen painted portraits of his wife and the well-known Wilhelm Bendz, student-soldier and court-home dealership. Rørbye painted on Skagen and Sonne painted popular life sculptures in North Zealand, while Christen Købke, Constantin Hansen, Wilhelm Marstrandand J.Th. Lundbye traveled to Italy and longed home. Others settled in Rome for the rest of their lives. JL Lund united home and home with his acropolis fortress at the Royal Theater. N. Abildgaard drew a number of scenes from ancient times in the first decade, and his great paintings and decorative designs for Frederik VIII’s palace are inspired by the Greek Golden Age.

Painting
Around the beginning of the 19th century, the Golden Age of Danish Painting emerged to form a distinct national style for the first time since the Middle Ages; the period lasted until the middle of the century. It has a style drawing on Dutch Golden Age painting, especially its landscape painting, and depicting northern light that is soft but allows strong contrasts of colour. The treatment of scenes is typically an idealized version of reality, but unpretentiously so, appearing more realist than is actually the case. Interior scenes, often small portrait groups, are also common, with a similar treatment of humble domestic objects and furniture, often of the artist’s circle of friends. Little Danish art was seen outside the country (indeed it mostly remains there to this day) although the Danish-trained leader of German Romantic painting Caspar David Friedrich was important in spreading its influence in Germany.

A crucial figure was Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, who had studied in Paris with Jacques-Louis David and was further influenced towards Neo-Classicism by the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen. Eckersberg taught at the Academy from 1818 to 1853, becoming director from 1827 to 1828, and was an important influence on the following generation, in which landscape painting came to the fore. He taught most of the leading artists of the period, including: Wilhelm Bendz, Albert Küchler, Christen Købke, Vilhelm Kyhn, Jørgen Roed, Holger Roed, Martinus Rørbye, Constantin Hansen and Wilhelm Marstrand.

An investigation of drawings, underdrawings, oil sketches and finished paintings by Eckersberg and his pupils Christen Købke and Constantin Hansen, using their Italian views as examples, points to a number of important aspects which shed light on the creative process in Danish Golden Age painting in the first half of the 19th century. The preliminary drawings – preferably composition drawings – which were done in front of the motif were meticulously constructed and reproduced many details. Architecture received the painters’ greatest attention, whereas vegetation, rocks and stones as well as figures in the landscape received a lower priority. The drawing done directly from the motif was squared up in several instances with a view to its transference to the painting, which was often no larger than the drawing. Some elements could be altered during the process, but by and large the artist retained the original dispositions quite precisely. In some cases the architecture was consciously altered so as to strengthen the forms and create harmony in the picture. In this way, we can prove that although the Italian motifs appear realistic at first sight, they were nonetheless adjusted or even manipulated by the artists.

Prominent artists of the Danish Golden Age of Painting included Wilhelm Bendz (1804–1832), remembered for his many technically accomplished portraits of fellow artists such as Ditlev Blunck and Christen Christensen, a scene from the Academy’s anatomy class, as well as the group portraits “A Tobacco Party” and “Artist in the Evening at Finck’s Coffee House in Munich”; Constantin Hansen (1804–1880), deeply interested in literature and mythology and inspired by Niels Laurits Høyen, who developed national historical painting based on Norse mythology and painted many portraits, including the historical The Constitutional Assembly (Den grundlovgivende Rigsforsamling); Christen Købke (1810–48), influenced by Niels Laurits Høyen, an art historian who promoted a nationalistic approach calling for artists to search for subject matter in the folk life of their country instead of searching for themes in other countries such as Italy; Wilhelm Marstrand (1810–1873), a vastly productive artist who mastered a remarkable variety of genres, remembered especially for a number of his works which have become familiar signposts of Danish history and culture: scenes from the drawing-rooms and streets of Copenhagen during his younger days; the festivity and public life captured in Rome; the many representative portraits of citizens and innovators; even the monumentalist commissions for universities and the monarchy; and Martinus Rørbye (1803–1848), remembered for his genre paintings of Copenhagen, for his landscapes and for his architectural paintings, as well as for the many sketches he made during his travels to countries rarely explored at the time. Among other artists, C.A. Jensen (1792–1870) specialized almost exclusively in portraits.

At the end of the period painting style, especially in landscape art, became caught up in the political issue of the Schleswig-Holstein Question, a vital matter for Danes, but notoriously impenetrable for most others in Europe. But it was not until the 1870s when a number of young artists defied the Academy and studied in Paris that a new style embracing Realism and Impressionism began to emerge.

Sculpture
Bertel Thorvaldsen, strongly influenced by his lengthy stay in Rome from 1797, created many internationally recognized works in his pure Neoclassical style. His breakthrough was Jason with the Golden Fleece which was highly praised by Antonio Canova and purchased by Thomas Hope, a wealthy British art collector. Other well-known works are the large Statue of Christ in Copenhagen Cathedral and the Lion Monument in Lucerne. Many of his works can be seen in Copenhagen’s Thorvaldsens Museum which was not completed until 1848, four years after his death.

Other contributors to sculpture in the Golden Age include Hermann Ernst Freund, whose work centred on Scandinavian gods, and Herman Wilhelm Bissen, who sculpted contemporary figures such as Landsoldaten (The Foot Soldier), a victory monument to the war of 1848–1851.

Architecture
Nicolas-Henri Jardin had introduced louis seize and classicalism in Denmark. It became his student CF Harsdorff, who gave it to new generations. The architects and builders Jørgen Henrik Rawert, Peter Meyn and Andreas Hallander and Johan Martin Quist formed classicalism Copenhagen after Harsdoff’s model. Harsdorff’s House at Kongens Nytorv became a patterned house for younger architects and became a model for many citizen houses, most of which were adapted to the leaning medieval street courses. In Kronprinsessegade, the new urban planning and architectural ideals became reality: Townmaster Peter Meynssmall shop pavilions along the royal garden lay on one side of Crown Princess Street and the long stylish house on the other. Here Hans Christian Andersen met Weyse in his home.

In 1800, Hansen was also charged with rebuilding Christiansborg Palace which had burnt down in 1794. He worked with Gustav Friedrich Hetsch who completed the interiors. Unfortunately, the palace burnt down once again in 1884. All that remains is the magnificent chapel which, with its Ionic columns, conveys a sense of antiquity.

Michael Gottlieb Bindesbøll is remembered above all for designing Thorvaldsens Museum. In 1822, as a young man, he had experienced Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s classicism in Germany and France and had met the German-born architect and archaeologist Franz Gau who introduced him to the colourful architecture of antiquity. His uncle, Jonas Collin, who was an active art and culture official under Frederick VI, awakened the King’s interest in a museum for Bertel Thorvaldsen, the Danish-Icelandic sculptor, and asked Bindesbøll to make some sketches for the building. As Bindensbøll’s designs stood out from those of other architects, he was given a commission to transform the Royal Carriage Depot and Theatre Scenery Painting Building into a museum. Emulating the construction of the Erechtheion and the Parthenon as freestanding buildings released from the traditional urban plan of closed streets, he completed the work in 1848.

Andreas Hallander and Johan Martin Quist were among those who rebuilt the houses in the older sections of Copenhagen which had been destroyed by fire.

Garden plant
The ideas of the 18th century English landscape garden were traded in romantic gardens. The rebuilding had already begun in the late 18th century in royal parks and manor gardens. The reorganization was a reaction to the strict French Baroque, which was easily associated with absolutism and central government. In England, parliamentaryism and a country party were inspired by the heroic landscape painting to try out a different, freer and cheaper type of gardens, by the landscape architect C.Th. Sørensen termed a stylized hill landscape.

The new garden style was, of course, also organized, staged, but it should be experienced as nature. It should be a mood garden where you could discover and be surprised by the different sceneries and ‘garden elements’ that were placed around – a gazebo, a waterfall, a temple. Channel systems and small fragile-looking bridges were landscaped. They had learned from painters to regard nature as a series of vistas, arches, composed scenes to be enjoyed from various points of view, “perspectiver”. The end of the 18th century was also the time when, among other things, Rousseau’s thoughts about nature had paved the way for a changed nature view.

The large gardens were used for economic reasons, especially in the castle and manor gardens. Later in the century, smaller gardens became a gardenesque, ‘gardeny’ design. Rudolph Rothe (1802-77) developed at the end of the period the so-called landscaping principles he had studied on his journey abroad 1824-27. In 1845, he was assigned the task of “improving and cultivating” the garden of Marienlyst Castle and transformed it into a gardenesque plant: “… in a timely combination of formalized and landscaping principles”.

Acting and Ballet
In the golden age Adam Oehlenschläger, Johan Ludvig Heiberg and August Bournonville ruled at the Royal Theater. They embossed the new national romantic drama. In the romance, the past and culture of the people were important: the Nordic tragedies of Oehlenschlägger and Heiberg’s national spectacle as Elverhøj embossed the stage.

C. Hostrups song game The Genbos, 1844, showed a “look into their own winnings” at the theater: The Kobbersmede family visited the Regensen residents and could look into the windows by themselves. The piece shows the known writers of the time like HC Andersen, Søren Kierkegaard and BS Ingemann on stage together with the unreliable Lieutenant von Buddinge. And the masterpiece of copper fighters with lions and welds. The young lovers get each other.

Ballet master Bournonvilles A folk saga showed the way back in time. The music wrote CEF Weyse, Kuhlau, Niels W. Gade and HC Lumbye. Very inspired by the tone of the people’s views. Hans Christian Andersen also inspired the folks. Among other things, the opera Liden Kirsten with music by JPE Hartmann. Johanne Luise Heiberg reached the golden age to become Denmark’s most famous actress. Dancer from the ballet became unfamiliar with Bournonville and made a career abroad.

Music
Danish music first became independent nationality after 1800. Now efforts to counteract the unilateral foreign influence acted upon the creation of a Danish singing game, begun by the Norwegian man Niels Krog Bredal with Gram and Signe (1756) and the Tronföljgen in Sidon (1771).

Hans Christian Lumbye (1810–1874) was employed as the first music director at the Copenhagen amusement park Tivoli when it opened in 1843. Here he had a platform for presenting a large foreign and Danish repertory, including his many waltzes and gallops. In 1839, he had heard a Viennese orchestra play music by Johann Strauss, after which he composed in the same style, eventually earning the nickname “The Strauss of the North”. One of his most popular pieces, associated with Tivoli, is Champagnegaloppen (the Champagne Galop), which starts with the happy sound of a champagne cork popping. It has been used in several Danish films including Reptilicus (1961), and Champagnegaloppen (1938).

Niels W. Gade (1817–1890) participated in the development of Musikforeningen (the Music Society) which had been founded in 1836 with the purpose of extending and improving the understanding of classical music. He became its conductor in 1850, and under his management a number of masterpieces of choral music were given their first performance in Denmark, among them Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in 1875. At the conservatory in Copenhagen, Gade helped teach future generations, including Edvard Grieg and Carl Nielsen. In the spirit of Romantic nationalism, he composed eight symphonies, a violin concerto, chamber music, organ and piano pieces and a number of large-scale cantatas, among them Elverskud, the most famous Danish work of its kind.

The literature
The golden age’s literature is characterized by the romantic thought. Heinrich Steffens played a major role in the emergence of this thought in Denmark. In 1802 he held the first lecture on the connection between nature, history and humanity and inspired a large number of poets. According to the romantic thought, the world was dualistic: behind the proseic sphere, there was a higher spiritual sphere, which was recognized through nature, in history and in religion. It was the task of poetry to point to this higher world. Among the audience was the young Adam Oehlenschläger. The lecture was the starting point for a Danish romantic poetry. Oehlenschlägers Digte 1803 (published in late 1802) was first. Poached the Golden Horns and Schack von Staffeldts Digtefollowed closely. Grundtvig and Ingemann were also characterized by the romantic mindset. They were dealing with history; Grundtvig with the translation of Saxo and Ingemann with its widespread historical novels. The idea of a connection between spirit and nature is also seen in several of Hans Christian Andersen’s adventures. HC Ørsted’s Spirit in Nature came 1850-51.

In Aladdin, Oehlenschläger depicts “The Cheerful Son of Nature,” whose genius plays him the orange in the turban.

Journals
Newest Painting of Copenhagen (1808-1832) published and edited by Salomon Soldin, Berlingske Tidende and Adresseavisen were the citizens’ favorite newspapers. In addition, the magazine Dag (1803-1843) was a highly conservative and government-driven newspaper that took up the struggle with contemporary opposition newspapers. Several others showed up especially in the 1830s: Police friend, the crowing cock, Sandhedsfaklen and rocket. They had a short life span. They were “smudslitteratur” and “scandal press” and introduced a language and content that often brought publishers to the press court.

The most popular and widespread was the Corsair (1840-1855), published by Meir Aron Goldschmidt. It was really a satirical writings magazine, whose favorite victim became Søren Kierkegaard, but it also contained a sharp political and critical breed that often crossed the government.

A large number of other journals focused on different topics: Figaro published from 1839 by Tivoli’s founder Georg Carstensen had the subtitle Journal of Literature, Art and Music. Danne-Virke (1816 – 1819) was Grundtvig’s magazine, which agitated for his thoughts of hedenold, religion and general life.

Philosophy
Danish philosophy was dominated in the first half of the 19th century by the influence of Hegel and Hegelianism. Johan Ludvig Heiberg (1791–1860), Frederik Christian Sibbern (1785–1872), and especially Hans Lassen Martensen (1803–1884), all of whom contributed to the popularity of Hegel’s idealism in various academic disciplines, though Hegel’s influence significantly declined by 1850. The primary critic of Hegelianism, and the most important philosopher in Denmark at the time, was Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), an existentialist philosopher and a theologian. Much of Kierkegaard’s philosophical work deals with the issues of how one lives, focusing on the priority of concrete human reality over abstract thinking and highlighting the importance of personal choice and commitment. His principal aesthetic works include Either/Or (Enten-Eller) (1843), Philosophical Fragments (Philosophiske Smuler) (1844), Stages on Life’s Way (Stadier paa Livets Vei) (1845) and Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments (Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift) (1846). Opposing Hegelian philosophy, they promote the existential approach which raises the individual’s awareness of God but intensifies his despair at not being able to achieve eternal truth. His religious works include Works of Love (Kjerlighedens Gjerninger) (1847) and Practice in Christianity (Indøvelse i Christendom) (1850). Another important figure in Danish philosophy was N. F. S. Grundtvig (1784–1872), whose ideas became an important part of the development of Danish national identity.

Science
One name stands out above all others among those who contributed to science during the Danish Golden Age, that of Hans Christian Ørsted, the prominent physicist and chemist known for observing that electric currents induce magnetic fields, an important aspect of electromagnetism. He shaped post-Kantian philosophy and advances in science throughout the late 19th century.

In 1824, Ørsted founded Selskabet for Naturlærens Udbredelse (SNU), a society to disseminate knowledge of the natural sciences. He was also the founder of predecessor organizations which eventually became the Danish Meteorological Institute and the Danish Patent and Trademark Office. Ørsted was the first modern thinker to explicitly describe and name the thought experiment. He was convinced that all things in the universe were related, both materially and spiritually. He described this in his philosophical work Ånden i naturen (The Spirit in Nature).

Ørsted contributed strongly to the Golden Age, especially through his close friendship with Hans Christian Andersen.

Theology and the Church
Romance placed more emphasis on the feeling than on reason. (In the Enlightenment time, it was the opposite).

In Germany, Schleiermacher had romantic influence on Christianity, but did not get the great influence in Denmark “… and the only one who seemed destined to receive just from the Schleiermacher spirit form, JP Mynster, was basically done in his development before he met Schleiermacher… “(cf. ” repentance ” in Spjellerup 1802). However, HN Clausen had been in Berlin and had an impression of the new flow

His son-in-law JP Mynster was the first ruler of the church from 1834 to 1854. He was a bishop of Zealand; His visitat records from the 1830s and 40’s tell us that there were still many rationalist priests around the priests. They had received their education at the university by people like Münter, PE Müller and Jens Møller at the beginning of the century, as they were still most influenced by rationalism in theology.

The shepherd’s letter of 1817, authored by Bishop Münter, could still assign reason: “the proper use of reason, and the proper interpretation of the Holy Scripture”, that is, a correlation between reason and revelation. Hal Koch believes, however, that the pastoral letter showed that the theological rationalism of the 1700s information was no longer as strong. By acknowledging or emphasizing that in the Scripture there is a divine revelation attached to Jesus’ person and expressed in his teachings, Koch believes that “… therefore it might be more correct to denote this as supra-naturalism. ”

Travel in the Golden Age
HC Ørsted was in 1801 on a trip to Germany and met the whole philosophy, romance. In the meantime, the geologically interested philosopher Henrik Steffens had come to Copenhagen from his education trip to Germany. Steffens lecture in 1802 at the Elers College of Nature, Art, History, Philosophy and Religion was the introduction of romance in Denmark, and it began at the Danish Golden Age. Oehlenschläger poeted the Golden Horns inspired by Steffen’s lectures.

The Golden Age artists often qualified for a trip to the south by winning a competition at the Academy or by receiving a travel scholarship from the Foundation on Usus Publicos with Jonas Collin as secretary from 1803 to 1832.

Rasmus Rask traveled to Iceland in 1813-1815. From 1816 he traveled from Sweden, Finland, Russia across Persia to India and Ceylon. He was gone for more than six years.

The sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen was one of those who traveled to Italy; He stayed in Rome for 40 years. He was a magnet to many other artists; While in Rome he made several sculptures. These were transported by ship from Hermann Ernst Freund and Ludvig Bødtch to Copenhagen, where a public collection in 1837 paid a museum to the sculptures and Thorvaldsen’s tomb. Everything was designed by architect Michael Gottlieb Bindesbøll.

Impact
The leading players in the Danish Golden Age have not only had a lasting impact in Denmark, but throughout the world. Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales have been translated into over 150 languages, more than any book apart from the Bible, and continue to be read to children everywhere. With the exception of Norwegian-born Ludvig Holberg, no Danish writer before 1870 exercised so wide an influence as Adam Gottlob Oehlenschläger. His work was to awaken his compatriots’ enthusiasm for the poetry and religion of their ancestors, to the extent that his name remains to this day synonymous with Scandinavian romance.

In architecture, when designing the Thorvaldsen Museum, Michael Bindesbøll gave special attention to liberating the building from its surroundings. His free perception of space served as a guiding principle for the cities and buildings of the future.

The choreographer, August Bournonville, resisting many of the excesses of the romantic era ballets, gave equal emphasis to male and female roles in his work at a time when European ballet emphasized the ballerina.

N. F. S. Grundtvig exerted considerable influence on education, promoting a spirit of freedom, poetry and disciplined creativity. Opposing compulsion and examinations, he advocated unleashing human creativity according to the universally creative order of life. A spirit of freedom, cooperation and discovery was to be kindled in individuals, in science, and in society as a whole. Søren Kierkegaard has also strongly influenced philosophy and literature right up to the present day. Among the many who have profited from his ideas are Jean-Paul Sartre, Niels Bohr and W. H. Auden.

Hans Christian Ørsted’s scientific advances contributed fundamentally to chemistry, with his work on aluminium, and especially to physics, with his conclusive research on electromagnetism.

Finally, many of the works of the painters and sculptors of the period continue to be exhibited in the world’s finest museums and galleries. Some, like Christen Købke, have attracted renewed interest in recent years.

Source from Wikipedia