The Cultural Crisis of the Danish Golden Age ― Heiberg, Martensen, and Kierkegaard

The Danish Golden Age spanned a period of time that saw a number of different kinds of crisis: political, economic and cultural. Events such as the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, the national bankruptcy in 1813, the Revolution of 1848 and the first Schleswig War radically transformed Danish society. The many changes that took place at this time made it a dynamic period in which artists, poets, philosophers, and religious thinkers were constantly enjoined to reassess the current situation. Some of Denmark’s greatest luminaries, such Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Hans Lassen Martensen and Soren Kierkegaard, articulated the nature of the crisis and proposed different solutions to it. The present work traces the different aspects and dimensions of this crisis by means of a series of case studies. It shows how the perception of the crisis was a kind of spirit that haunted many of the intellectuals and artists of the period. But far from being something negative or destructive, it was a motivating and stimulating force that helped to make the Golden Age what is was. It made artists and thinkers more willing to break with the past and seek new solutions and approaches. Thus it is argued that the crisis can be seen as one of the central defining elements of what we know as Danish Golden Age culture. But the present work is not a purely historical study since it is shown that many of the key elements of the crisis can still be found in our modern world today. Heiberg’s diagnosis of the period as suffering from relativism, subjectivism and nihilism sounds strikingly familiar to the modern reader. When seen in this manner, the Danish Golden Age becomes profoundly interesting and relevant for the broad spectrum of problems of modernity.