Marriage To Schlegel
On November 3, 1847, Regine married her old tutor, Frederik Schlegel, in the Church of Our Saviour in Copenhagen. The marriage was happy and stable. Regine and Frederik even read aloud to each other passages from Kierkegaard's writings, which were then getting much attention in Denmark.
On a number of occasions in 1849, Regine and Kierkegaard crossed each other's paths, beginning with dispersing from church after Mass, and later on the routes for afternoon walks both of them took. On November 19, 1849, Frederik Schlegel received a letter from Kierkegaard entreating him to allow him to speak to Regine. Schlegel did not respond to the letter, and denied Kierkegaard further requests to talk with Regine. Soon afterwards, Frederik was appointed governor of the Danish West Indies, and Regine accompanied him there, departing on March 17, 1855.
She was never to see Kierkegaard again. Regine and Frederik returned from the Danish West Indies to Copenhagen in 1860, five years after Kierkegaard's death. The remains of his estate had been bequeathed to his "former fiancé" Regine. Frederick died in 1896. In 1897, Regine moved to Frederiksberg to live with her older brother.
After the death of Schlegel, she accepted requests by biographers, commentators and friends, to discuss her side of the relationship between her and Kierkegaard. The interviewers include Hanne Mourier, Raphael Meyer, Peter Munthe Brun, Robert Neiiendam, Julius Clausen, and Georg Brandes. In 1898 she decided to dictate to, among others, the librarian Raphael Meyer the story of her engagement to Kierkegaard. This account was published after Regine's death in 1904 as Kierkegaardian Papers: The Engagement; Published on Behalf of Mrs. Regine Schlegel, but in general scholars concede that it offers little information that wasn't already known through Kierkegaard and other sources. Regine is buried in Assistens Cemetery in Copenhagen, along with both Kierkegaard and Frederik Schlegel. In his commentary about Regine, Robert Neiiendam wrote that "she knew 'that he took her with him into history.' And this thought made up for what she had suffered."
Read more about this topic: Regine Olsen
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