Hans Christian Andersen’s "Fairy Tales" for Adults

by Norman Berdichevsky (Sept. 2007)

Denmark but throughout Europe with many festivities, exhibitions, seminars, exhibits and tours of his home town of Odense and where he lived in Copenhagen for many years.

Most Americans have basic misconceptions about Andersen and his work based on having seen the romanticized film about his life starring Danny Kaye and use of the term “fairy tales”, usually considered appropriate only for children Almost all of his 156 short stories or “adventures” (a better meaning of the Danish word “eventyr” usually translated as “fairy tales”) can be appreciated on two levels – one for adults and one for children.

Central Park that portrays Andersen reading to children perched on his knee. The themes of his lesser known short tales include time travel, adultery, murder by decapitation, death, grim poverty and social inequality, child psychology, intense drama, split personality, husband-wife relations, snobbery, social climbing, Jewish identity, and a deep abiding love for his Danish homeland.

Your children may have enjoyed the colorful characters, wizards and creatures of the Harry Potter series or The Wizard of Oz but what have they learned of any value for later life? Most Andersen short stories have left a moral legacy about life, its struggles, human nature and the beautiful innocence of childhood. It is ironic that his work is much better known and appreciated to tens of millions of children in China or Russia who continue to love Andersen, than in America or Britain.

Andersen Museum in Odense, his birthplace, boasts a display of several Andersen short stories in more than 120 languages including Esperanto, Basque, Khmer, Estonian, Maltese, Korean, Albanian, Gaelic, Catalan, Icelandic, Yiddish, and VolapüCentral Florida Community College last Spring, I was not surprised that the turnout was comprised almost entirely of women (85%). They all claimed that men would hardly be interested in “simple children’s stories” yet at the end of the last class, in summing up what they got out of the course, attitudes had changed profoundly. Several women spoke with tears in their eyes about how the stories had struck a powerful chord with them and even the men (who should properly be called “gentlemen”) spoke about how they had been totally surprised by the range of Andersen’s interests.

), snobs () and church hierarchy and also expanded his themes to time travel (

He had achieved his early most notable successes that established his reputation as a great writer in Germany and been wined and dined by the nobility of many of the small principalities and was always welcomed as an honored guest at the home of the Prince of Weimar. Andersen returned this love and respect with a deep admiration for high German culture and was shocked by the Prussian path under Bismarck to world power status and the unification of the small German states into a powerful and militaristic empire.

Germany. Many Danes with snobbish pretensions made an effort at using both German and French loan words in their speech and writing, a habit that Andersen satirized in his story “The Goblin and the Woman”.

Denmark had already declared it had no interest in preserving the allegiance of Holstein, an area populated wholly by German speakers who had indicated their desire to become part of a larger German Confederation.

(Det Utroligste)

The World of Yesterday”. Zweig believed that the humane cosmopolitan civilization he had known was doomed by the evil bestiality of Nazism and could not defeat it. It is perhaps fitting that he is not remembered today whereas a dozen German, Russian, American, British and Italian authors rose up to the challenge of both Fascism and Communism and fought them with every fiber of their being – Erich Maria Remarque (“All Quiet on the Western Front“), Thomas Mann (“An Appeal to Reason“, “Buddebrooks“, Joseph and His Brothers), Ignacio Silone (“Bread and Wine“), George Orwell (1984, “Homage to Catalonia”), Alexander Solzhenitsyn (“The Gulag Archipelago, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich“), Ernest Hemmingway (“For Whom the Bell Tolls”) and others.

Denmark belongs in the latter group. His story, “The Most Incredible Thing” turned out to be a prescient warning to future generations. It was taken up by the Danish Resistance Movement that had struggled during the early years of German occupation (1940-42) to rally support for active sabotage and an end to the government’s policy of appeasement.

These features and their respective times are a follows:

Moses writing the first commandment to symbolize there is ONE true God at the hour of 1:00

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden at the stroke of 2:00.

The Three Wise Men bringing gifts to the manger at the birth of Jesus at the stroke of 3:00.

The Four seasons at the stroke of 4:00.

The five sense at the stroke of 5:00

The seven days of the week at the stroke of 7:00.

The nine muses representing the arts at the stroke of 9:00.

The Ten commandments at the stroke of 10:00.

Twas at the midnight hour – Our savior He was born.“

Everyone agreed that this was the most marvelous, charming and incredible thing. It represented all the values, beliefs and aspects of our civilization and life on earth we hold dear. The artist who made it is a sincere and generous young man who is kind and loves his parents. The crowd considers him a worthy candidate to marry the princess.

Al-Qaeda and the Islamist fanatics of today.

Dead men cannot walk the earth…That’s true but a work of art does not die. Its shape may be shattered but the spirit of art cannot be broken.”

Andersen would undoubtedly have been pleased that his story about resistance to evil and the faith he had in the values of our civilization would inspire his countrymen in World war II at a time when opportunists and those who had favored a policy of appeasement for Denmark preached that resistance was hopeless. The moral of the story is just as true today.

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