Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/655

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1em 1em 1em  HEIBERG, (1791–1860), Danish poet and critic, was the son of the political writer Peter Andreas Heiberg, and of the famous novelist, afterwards the Baroness Gyllembourg-Ehrensvard. He was born at Copenhagen, December 14, 1791. In 1800 his father was exiled, and he was taken by Rahbek and his excellent wife into their house at Bakkehuset. They found him, however, very difficult to manage, and about 1802 sent him back to his own family. His mother’s marriage being by a state decree annulled, she married the Swedish baron Gyllem- bourg-Ehrensvird, keeping up, however, friendly corre- spondence with her first husband in Paris. In 1805 she describes, in one of these letters, the brilliant precocity of the young Johan. The latter proceeded to the university of Copenhagen in 1809. It was not needful that he should earn his bread, and accordingly his mother indulged for many years his extraordinary thirst for knowledge. In 1812 he visited Sweden, and made some long stay in Stockholm; he afterwards sent to his mother from Upsala the first important poem which he composed, //jemkomsten (The Return Home), a piece of remarkable strength and brightness. In 1813 his first publication appeared, a romantic drama for children, entitled The Theatre for Marionettes. This was followed by Christmas Jokes and New Year's Tricks in 1816, The Initiation of Psyche, 1817, and The Prophecy of Tycho Brahe. These works attracted attention at a time when Baggesen, Oehlenschliger, and Ingemann possessed the popular ear, and were understood at once to be the opening of a great career. In 1817 Heiberg tuok his degree, and in 1819 went abroad with a grant from Government. He proceeded to Paris, and spent the next three years there, under his father’s roof. In 1822 he published his drama of Nina, and was made professor of the Danish language at the university of Kiel. At this town he delivered a course of lectures, comparing the Scandinavian mythology as found in the Zdda with the poems of Oelilenschliger. These lectures were published in German in 1827, In 1825 Heiberg came back to Copenhagen for the purpose of introducing the vaudeville on the Danish stage. Mean- while he was producing dramatic work of a more serious kind: in 1828 he brought out the national drama of Filverhii, in 1835 the comedy of The Elves, and in 1838 Fata Morgana. In 1841 Heiberg published a volume of New Poems, containing “A Soul after Death,” which is perhaps his masterpiece, “The Newly Wedded Pair,” and other pieces. All this time he had been busily engaged in editing the famous journal, The Copenhagen Flying Post, which he founded in 1827 and continued until 1837. In 1831 he married Johanne Louise Pztges, the greatest actress that Scandinavia has produced. Heiberg’s scathing satires at last began to make him very unpopular; and this antagonism reached its height when, in 1845, he published 