The creator of “The Ugly Duckling,” “The Little Mermaid,” “The Snow Queen,” “Thumbelina,” “The Princess and the Pea,” “The Tinderbox,” “The Steadfast Tin Soldier,” and “Ole-Luk-Oie” was a master storyteller not only in his works but also in his own life. His mysterious fate and unique personality continue to captivate interest in Denmark’s most famous figure even 200 years later.
Marfan Syndrome
Scientists have noted signs of genetically caused disproportionate gigantism in the writer’s appearance. This rare hereditary condition was also seen in U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and the brilliant violinist Niccolò Paganini (the anomaly occurs in about 1 in 50,000 individuals). According to the first discoverer of the condition, French pediatrician Antoine Marfan, the genetic defect leads to a developmental disorder of connective tissue, affecting all organs and posing life-threatening risks at any age.
The disproportionate body parts, characterized by abnormally long and thin arms and legs, turned the individual into a “giant spider.” Contemporary observers remarked about the owner of size 47 shoes: “He didn’t have to worry about anyone borrowing his galoshes.” Witnesses described Andersen as a tall “stork” standing at 6 feet 1 inch, with a prominent nose paired with small eyes, poor posture, excessive limbs, and awkward movements.
The only natural compensator for this anomaly could be considered the heightened adrenaline in its victims. People with arachnodactyly live in a constant state of tension, becoming incredible workaholics with an excitable psyche. It is known that Andersen rewrote his works a dozen times, exhibiting a fiery temperament, heightened nervousness, and sensitivity.
Christian Albrecht Jensen – H. C. Andersen (1836)
“Cockroaches” in His Head
Due to his nervous tension, the writer suffered from numerous phobias that influenced both his life and the touching plots of his melancholic fairy tales. For instance, the enormous fierce dogs in “The Tinderbox” reflect the author’s own fear of dogs. The ending of the tale about the tin soldier “illuminates” his fear of dying in a fire: the storyteller always carried a rope with him in case of a fire, so he could escape through a window from a burning building.
For a long time, the writer slept on a mattress, fearing to acquire a bed due to its associations with a deathbed. Andersen was terrified of being buried alive, so he arranged to have his veins opened and blood drained before his funeral (which was indeed done), and when he fell ill, he left a note by his bed stating, “I am alive,” to prevent being mistaken for dead.
Once, the storyteller received the world’s largest box of candy from admirers and, fearing it might be poisoned, gave it to neighborhood children to try first. When the kids tasted the gift and didn’t die, the “sweet” author of moral tales took the candies back from them and ate them alone.
He could spend a long time worrying that he had lost money or documents, overpaid for a ticket, or failed to seal or sign a sent envelope. He feared being laughed at and became so lost in unfamiliar surroundings that he struggled with tics and stuttering. The poor man was wary of robbery, cholera, hired assassins, accidents, losing teeth, overdosing on medication, temptation, poisoning, madness, and the impending End of the World.
His sensitivity knew no bounds. From childhood, the distrustful Andersen felt like the “ugly duckling” he described in his autobiographical fairy tale with real prototypes. The writer recalled feeling like a drowning dog, pelted with stones by cruel children for their amusement. Perhaps his early psychological traumas influenced his later avoidance of children, to whom he never tried to endear himself. He only thought of his young readers when choosing music for his own funeral: it had to match the rhythm of little steps, as children would likely come to say goodbye. The storyteller emphasized that he primarily wrote for adults, and when approving the sketch for his lifetime monument, he requested not to surround his figure with children: “In such company, I wouldn’t be able to write a single line.”
Skeletons in the Closet
The unmarried writer, like his sister who was not welcome in his life even when renting a place nearby, did not have children, seeing no value in continuing a shameful lineage—one with a mentally ill great-grandfather, a grandmother who had been convicted three times for immoral behavior, an alcoholic mother, a brothel-keeping aunt, and a sister who was a prostitute, whom the brother referred to as “the daughter of the mother” (Mary Karen died when Hans was 41).
Andersen came from the poor slums of the Danish island of Funen. He was even ashamed to show his actual home—a three-family dwelling in Odense, where five family members lived in a single room of 452 square feet—preferring to present a more prosperous neighboring building.
The house in Odense where Andersen was born
The boy was born on April 2, 1805, to washerwoman Anne Marie Andersdatter and 22-year-old hereditary shoemaker Hans Andersen, who was 12 years younger than his wife. It is known that at the time of their marriage, the mother was seven months pregnant with the future writer, raising doubts about the official paternity.
Andersen himself started the legend of his supposed royal lineage, hinting at a connection to the royal family. In his early biography, he mentioned his childhood friend, Prince Fritz, who later became King Frederick VII. Rumors circulated that the source of such claims was a parental revelation to the son that he was actually related to the king.
Andersen spoke of his mother with tears in his eyes (he was generally not restrained in his emotions: all his feelings were somewhat exaggerated). His mother’s childhood was spent under a bridge, where, barely able to walk, she had to beg for alms. She would sit on the damp ground all day and drink from puddles, and upon returning “from work,” she would receive beatings if she had not brought enough. From the age of eight, she worked as a maid in a wealthy household. At 26, she gave birth to Andersen’s older sister from a local potter and, leaving her daughter with her parents, earned a living as a grocer, a road worker, and a washerwoman. After giving birth to a son at 34, Anne Marie continued to work as a cleaner.
To financially support the family, the husband had to fight in Napoleon’s army, but after the defeat, ordinary soldiers had little chance of getting rich from the war. The volunteer returned home sick and died at the age of 33. By that time, his son Hans was only 11 years old. The boy had only good memories of his father. Two years later, one shoemaker in the family was replaced by another: the mother remarried, but increasingly turned to alcohol. She would die at 62 without support and be buried in a poor cemetery, just a year or two before her 28-year-old son achieved fame.
“Becoming Famous”
Andersen wrote his first fairy tale in childhood. However, this was not known until 2012, when researchers of his literary legacy discovered the earliest manuscript of the writer, a 700-word story titled “The Greasy Candle.” The plot of this story is strikingly dramatic for a teenager’s perspective: the candle did not know its purpose until it met the flint. This encounter ignited the flame, and the candle burned out, illuminating the darkness.
Andersen’s imagination found an outlet in a homemade puppet theater, for which the boy wrote plays that he performed, acted in, and watched. His invented stories did not interest rough peers or preoccupied parents, so his refined passion for theater was shared with a single listener and audience member in this “temple of art”—an old cat named Karl. Just as in childhood, when Hans imagined stories through the movement of carved figures, his writing period would begin with cutting out cardboard characters.
After trying to sew clothes for the dolls, the boy decided to learn tailoring. Having only mastered grammar by the age of 10, due to financial difficulties, Andersen left his studies at a Jewish school for poor children to earn money and break into the arts. He got a job as an apprentice to a weaver. He initially worked at a wool factory, then at a tobacco factory. However, the teenager was not prepared to remain a factory worker for life.
At 14, Hans left home to move to the capital and “become famous.” He was helped by the nurse of Prince Ferdinand: Sophia Charlotte Hermansen turned out to be a friend of his mother’s. Gathering recommendations from “important people,” she took on the expenses of providing Hans with clothing and food, taught him German, hired dance and singing teachers, and assisted in arranging the young man’s work and education.
A statue in Central Park, New York, dedicated to Andersen and his tale “The Ugly Duckling”
A Life Well-Lived
The owner of a beautiful tenor envisioned himself on the grand stage. He was equally captivated by opera and ballet. Who else would be taken into the chorus of the Royal Theater of Copenhagen “from the street”? It was no wonder that rumors circulated in the city that the palace manager and the nurse of the heir to the throne were paying attention to the illegitimate son of the king, who had sinned with a washerwoman. Nothing else could explain why all of European high society opened doors for a rootless provincial with the appearance of a “sad stork.”
After being dismissed from the theater due to his changing voice, Andersen began inundating the cultural institution with plays. He even sent one to the king, resulting in funds for publication. This work did not achieve success, but Hans was awarded a scholarship for further study.
He entered the Latin school when others were already finishing it: the 17-year-old grew up learning alongside 12-year-olds. The school director took him in to live with him and struggled greatly with the excessive sensitivity of the student, who had left his previous school (at the age of 5) after the first conflict with a teacher. With great difficulty, the nervous young man endured the morals of his educator, completing his studies at 23, and then went on to the University of Copenhagen.
And although the master of artistic words wrote with mistakes until the end of his life, this did not prevent him from publishing, according to the Andersen Center, 4 autobiographies, 212 fairy tales, 1,024 poems, 8 epics, 28 sagas, 51 plays, 7 satires, 6 novels, 25 travel notes, 42 articles, 24 collections, and 37 brochures.
The autobiography “The Fairy Tale of My Life” astonished even his supporters. Contemporary acquaintances were struck by the writer’s self-absorption. “To publish intimate confessions through printed words is base and vain,” noted the lifetime promoter of the storyteller’s work, Xavier Marmier. In the opinion of the writer, dedicating 200 pages of text to listing compliments to oneself was inappropriate.
People also found it strange that a person with “non-standard” appearance had a passion for photography (the writer employed over a hundred photographers worldwide) and his attention to mirrors, where he lingered to inspect himself from all angles, fix his hair, and make a “genius face.” The writer himself confirmed his desire to appear larger than he was. “Living in an image” turned out to be easier than enduring the trials of a finely organized soul.
“Whimsical Aspirations”
Many dissertations have been written about the storyteller’s personal life. This aspect of his personality is no less intriguing than his creativity. A number of biographers directly speak of “fake” attractions to women to conceal his true sexual interest in men. However, there are also supporters of the theory of the storyteller’s bisexuality. Initially, Andersen suffered due to the engagement of his beloved girl, Riborg Voigt, to another man. His next love interest (the wife of a lawyer) could not reciprocate his feelings because she was not free. And the Swedish opera singer Jenny (Annie) Lind refused the writer’s intimate advances, offering him friendship instead. According to biographer Carol Rosen, she became the prototype of the cold-hearted Snow Queen in Andersen’s eponymous tale.
Researchers of the writer’s correspondence, Axel Dressler and Michael Rüts, assert that for a long time he was in unrequited love with Stockholm official Edward Collin, to whom he wrote elevated letters, confessing that he longed “like for a pretty Calabrian girl,” and warning that “the femininity of his nature and their friendship must remain a secret.” The unrequited love of the characters in the tale “The Little Mermaid” was actually drawn from Andersen’s relationship with Collin, who broke his friend’s heart by marrying a woman.
During a visit to Charles Dickens in 1857, Andersen requested permission to stay in the bathroom with the young son of his colleague, to which he received an indignant refusal and was expelled from the house.
The writer’s life was filled with many “whimsical unrequited sexual desires,” and unfulfilled longing reportedly led him to drugs and pornography.
Biographer Jackie Wullschleger, who received a city award in Odense for her research, claims that Andersen was repeatedly involved in physical relationships with men and names Danish dancer Harold Scharff as a likely lover, who dined alone with Andersen and gifted his friend a silver toothbrush for his 57th birthday, indicating the closeness of their relationship. Andersen marked the events of March 1862 in his diary as “an erotic period that ended his loneliness.” However, on November 13, 1863, the storyteller wrote that Scharff had not visited him for eight days and that “it was all over with him.”
There is no shortage of intriguing content in those diaries (the intimate part of the memoirs was published in the 1960s), including notes marked with “+” indicating successful masturbation. Not depending on the stresses of partnership was likely Andersen’s most desired choice, as he claimed to remain a virgin despite frequent visits to brothels: he did not seek physical pleasures but only engaged in long conversations with prostitutes.
At the age of 70, Andersen died of liver cancer at the country estate of banker Moritz Melchior near Copenhagen. There was no weeping widow or heirs in attendance at his funeral.
A statue in Odense, half-submerged in water.