Danish Golden Age - Impact

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 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.

Nikolaj 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.

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