Johan Ludvig Heiberg (Copenhagen 1791 – Bonderup 1860), playwright and poet, was one of the leading literary critics in Denmark in the mid-19th century. He made a significant contribution to the emergence of a truly national theatre in Denmark by introducing vaudeville to the Danish stage, while folding this French genre into the comical-burlesque tradition of Holberg and in the process giving it a distinctive Danish flavour. Heiberg’s most well-known play, Elverhøi (“Elves Hill”, 1828), an uncharacteristically serious national drama, was the most popular play of the century, with more than 300 productions prior to 1900. Based on a popular folktale around the Renaissance King Christian IV, Elverhøi was very soon embraced as Denmark’s national play, not least because of Friedrich Kuhlau’s folk-song-inspired incidental music.
In 1799, when Heiberg was only 8 years old, his father, a political writer and philologist, was forced into exile in Paris. Soon after his parents divorced and his mother herself a novelist, remarried; young Johan Ludvig was brought up by family friends. At their manorial farm and in his mother’s household he met some of the great minds of his day, including the poets Adam Oehlenschläger and Jens Baggesen, in that time the opposing figureheads of a bitter controversy in Danish literary society.
Heiberg himself made his debut in 1814 with two Romantic dramas published under the title Marionettheatret (“Puppet theatre”), earning praise from, among others, both Oehlenschläger and Baggesen. His Julespøg og Nytårsløjer (“Christmas Jokes and New Year’s Tricks”), a satire on Romantic hypersentimentality (in particular in the work of Bernhard Severin Ingemann), drew even more attention and was fiercely attacked by N.F.S. Grundtvig, who came to Ingemann’s defence. In his work Heiberg was not only influenced by the German Romantics but also, more unusually, by Calderón and other Spanish playwrights, whose works he had studied with interest.
Between 1819 and 1825 Heiberg left Denmark and stayed first in London, then Paris (where he joined his father), and finally Kiel, where he was appointed professor of Danish at the University. Homesickness drove him back to Copenhagen, where he not only introduced vaudeville to the stage, but also championed the philosophy of Hegel.
The remainder of the 1820s and the 1830s proved a particularly fruitful period in Heiberg’s career. During these years he wrote and composed the entire body of his vaudevilles as well as his biggest success, Elverhøi. In the meantime he had also started the periodical Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post (“Copenhagen’s Flying Post”), in which he published his aesthetic critiques on art and literature. Heiberg was the first in Denmark to develop a form of critical writing that relied on general principles rather than personal taste; Hegel’s literary genre theory played a key role. Unsurprisingly, vaudeville was the genre he rated most highly (something which would have surprised Hegel), while the epic drama, the preferred genre of his Romantic adversaries, ranked significantly lower.
Heiberg had remained aloof from the first Oehlenschläger feud (1813-19); a decade later he took up the gauntlet and with razor-sharp criticism of Oehlenschläger’s work provoked the same heated reactions as Baggesen had experienced before him. Heiberg, however, received more support than Baggesen had met with; this, and his unique wit, saw him victorious in the end.
In 1849 Heiberg was appointed director of the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, a position he would hold until 1856. His years in charge were marked by personal and artistic quarrels. The fact that his wife, the famous Johanne Luise Heiberg, was the theatre’s prima donna did not increase his popularity among the staff. More importantly Heiberg’s stubborn adherence to the formalism of his vaudeville hampered theatrical innovation. In the end, the quarrels over this issue caused a split and the establishment of a rival theatre dedicated to realism.
