| Johanne Luise
Heiberg Johanne
Luise Heiberg Johanne Luise Pätges was born in
Copenhagen into an Catholic/Jewish family of modest means. She was the next youngest of 9
children. At an early age she showed a talent for dancing and received lessons. At the age
of 8 she came to the Royal Danish Theatre's ballet school, where solo dancers instructed
her in the classical roles. She soon started to dance children's roles at the theatre and
an elderly admirer, J.G. Harboe, introduced her to art and literature. One evening in 1826
she was performing in Poul Martin Møller's Hans and Trine in the presence of the writer
Johan Ludvig Heiberg, a central figure of Danish cultural life. He discovered the radiance
of her talent and immediately wrote the role of Trine in the vaudeville April Fools for
Johanne Luise Heiberg. She was now taken on as a drama pupil at the theatre. Five years
later she married Heiberg, who was 21 years her senior. Johanne Luise Heiberg was the
greatest actress of the Golden Age. She was the radiant object of the admiration,
friendship and support of many leading male personalities in Denmark. On stage, she was
the living embodiment of Danish Romanticism. Throughout her life she was her husband's
muse, but the other dramatists of the age also took advantage of the range of her talent,
from the Romantic passions to the bourgeois graces. The complex characters with strong
demonic passions, iron wills and radiant sensuality matched Johanne Luise Heiberg's nature
and personality. They included Gudrun in Oehlenschlæger's Kjartan and Gudrun. Johanne
Luise Heiberg also sparkled with charm and poetry in comic roles. Her acting against
Mikael Wiehe in Henrik Hertz' Ninon (1848) has become a legend in the history of Danish
theatre. Whenever Johanne Luise Heiberg performed she revealed new aspects of the human
psyche, but she decided to retire when age began to make its mark after J.L. Heiberg died
in 1860. She had kept this a secret until her last performance as Elisabeth in Elves'
Hill. At that point she had appeared in around 275 roles. From 1867 to 1874 she directed
plays at the theatre. Johanne Luise Heiberg's sharp quill also drew attention. As a social
critic she was the strong-opinioned voice of the intellectual bourgoisie. As a letter
writer she expressed her mind's "nagging, quiet pain". Her most important
literary work was Et Liv, gjenoplevet i Erindringen (A Life Recollected), an autobiography
in 4 volumes published posthumously. This work is a controversial classic among Danish
literary memoires and can still provoke debate. Johanne Luise Heiberg was one of the great
Danish actresses of the 19th century and was honoured as the greatest stage performer in
the Nordic countries. As director at The Royal Danish Theatre Johanne Luise Heiberg
renewed the theatre's repertoire with dramas such as The Newly Wedded Couple and Mary
Stuart in Scotland by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and Henrik Ibsen's The League of Youth and
The Pretenders. |
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