Jens Immanuel Baggesen

Jens Immanuel Baggesen was a major Danish Romantic poet, critic, librettist and comic writer. He was born on 15th February 1764, in Korsor, Denmark and died on 3rd October 1826, in Hamburg, Germany aged 62.

“Comiske Fortællinger” (Comical Tales). (1785).
”Labyrinten” (Labyrinth) (1792)
“Parthenais” (1803)

1764: Jens Baggesen was born on 15th February in Korsør, on the Island of Zealand, Denmark. Both his parents were poor and he had a miserable childhood where he attempted suicide several times, however he managed to complete his schooling. 

1782: He enters the University of Copenhagen in Denmark to study theology.

1783: Christen Henriksen Pram publishes his early poems in his periodical “Minerva”. 

1785: Aged twenty-one he has his first success with publication of his collection of poems “Comiske Fortællinger” (Comical Tales). 

1789: He writes the libretto for the first major Danish Opera “Holger Danske” (Ogier the Dane) with music by Friedrich Kunzen. He receives a vast amount of criticism largely due to its literary faults and the lack of nationalism. He is accused of being more German than Danish. Disappointed he embarks on a series of travels through Germany, Switzerland and France.  

1790: He gets married in Bern in Switzerland and begins to write exclusively in German. He publishes his next poem “Alpenlied” (Alpine Song). 

1792: In the winter he writes “Labyrinten” (Labyrinth) in Danish as a peace offering to his countrymen. It is received well and from now on he alternates between the two languages. He is an admirer of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the French Revolution as well as reading Immanuel Kant and praising the Romantic poetry of Adam Oehlenschlager.

1803: His most important German work is “Parthenais oder die Alpenreise” (Parthenais or the Alpine Journey) written in hexameter form.

1806: He visits Copenhagen where he finds Oehlenschlager as the most important poet of the day and that his own popularity has diminished. He then gets into an abusive feud with the younger man determined not to allow Oehlenschläger to be considered a greater poet than himself.

1820: He leaves for Paris.

1822: Both his second wife and his youngest child die.

1826: He is thrown into a debtor’s prison and falls into madness. After release he recovers enough to undertake the journey back to Denmark.

Jens Baggesen died en route home to Denmark on 3rd October 1836 at the Freemason’s hospital in Hamburg. He was buried at Eichhof Cemetery in Kiel, Germany.

Jens Immanuel Baggesen was influenced by the Enlightenment and the early Romantic movement, as well as his travels through Europe and the intellectuals he met there. He has become known as a transitional figure in Denmark between Neoclassicism and Romanticism. 

He was an enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolution which had a major impact on his work and political views. He was also a great admirer of the philosophers Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant. He studied studied theology at the University of Copenhagen and became a Kantian even to the extent of adopting Immanuel as his middle name. This admiration began to wane, however, later in life.

He was an avid reader of the work of the English writer Laurence Sterne and his travelogues such as “Labyrinthen” (The Labyrinth), adopted its rambling and humorous style as seen in Sterne’s “A Sentimental Journey”. “Labyrinthen” was inspired by his first journey through Germany and Switzerland in 1789-90. The poet Christen Henriksen Pram was an early admirer of his work in Copenhagen and had published his early poems in his own (Pram’s) periodical “Minerva” in 1783-84. 

He has been considered a Germanophile and met Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, Christoph Martin Wieland, Johann Gottfried von Herder, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich von Schiller and entered into detailed correspondence with them. As an early proponent of Romanticism in Denmark he met and liking the poet Adam Oehlenschläger though the two would later become estranged especially after his criticism of Oehlenschläger’s opera “Ludlam’s Cave”.

He continued the Danish literary tradition in his translation of Ludvig Holberg’s work “Niels Klim” and his position in Danish literature has been stated as a bridge between Holberg and Oehlenschläger.

During his restless travels, often paid for by his mentor the Duke of Augustenborg, he met many of the leading intellectuals of the day including Madame de Staël and the Swiss-French political thinker, activist and writer Benjamin Constant. Along the way he developed a cosmopolitan worldview. One of the main reasons for his travels away from Denmark was the adverse critical reception he received in his native country for his libretto to the opera “Holger Danske” (Ogier the Dane) in 1789. The fact that he wrote it in German upset many Danes.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, he was acknowledged to be the greatest of living Danish poets but in the new century the Norwegian, Henrik Steffens, expressed the genius of Oehlenschläger in his lectures on German Romanticism and things changed in the literary world. His first poetry book had been published in 1785 as “Komiske Fortællinger” (Comic Tales) and was an instant success. Thereafter followed satires, rhymed epistles, and elegies which added to his fame but he really wanted to be known for his tragedy. Nonetheless in his early work he was known as the champion of “form” and “the poet of the graces”.

His political, critical and philosophical works fell out of public favour by the middle of the nineteenth century but his comic poems remain a staple of Danish literature. The simple song “Da Jeg Var Lille” (There Was a Time when I Was Very Little) was learnt by heart by Danish people for a hundred years after his death and outlived his more epic work. 

Nonetheless he influenced later writers both in Denmark and Germany with his digression from previous literary forms and his satirical work also influenced many. Nowadays his actual texts are not widely read for themselves but his contributions to Romanticism helped shape the literary styles of his own period amongst his fellow writers and his polished and versatile writing style has been much copied by later generations of Danish authors. He often wrote in German and influenced many writers there. “Labyrinten” is often cited as his most important book and influenced writers, such as the German Adam Moltke.

In philosophy he studied German Idealism and was impressed by the works of Friedrich Schelling and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

List of works by Baggesen.

German-Danish literary history: digitalisation of the literary remains of Jens Baggesen